My wife, 8 year old daughter and I just got back from our trip on the Star. This was our first cruise, but have been monitoring the board here for about a year, and found many very helpful hints. We really viewed this as an experiment, as the entire cruise concept was pretty foreign to our usual life and entertainment in rural Alaska. Because we were not experienced cruisers, I don't want to focus on details and can't compare, but think some overall impressions might be helpful to others coming from similar backgrounds.
After an efficient and uneventful embarkation, we spent a good part of the trip trying to puzzle out what was happening and what to do. We found the experience fairly confusing and the options not very well spelled out. For example, we signed our daughter up for the kid's club, took her to the club at 9:30 the next morning when we had been told it would start, but it was closed. They were holding a Santa gift service in the Atrium, but no one had mentioned that, and we found out about it about noon. Entertainers would not know where they were going to be playing the next day, making planning for dinner difficult. I'm sure experienced cruisers would dive right in, but we just experienced things to be crowded and confusing. I had been told by fans of cruising to expect to feel extremely pampered, but to the contrary, the sensation was not of being pampered but of being herded. Our mini-suite came with "concierge services", but it was not what I associate with that title; they were more or less a directory assistance, telling us where to go to get what we needed rather than making sure our needs were supplied. For example, our daughter got a stomach bug and soiled some linen during the night. We called the concierge for assistance in getting new linen, but by the time the call was returned some hours later we had located new linen on our own. We then received two more messages to report to the medical center, even though no medical assistance was necessary. We did so, but after a 20 minute wait the clinic asked us why we had bothered to come.
The food was really quite good. It was not really like eating in a fine restaurant every night (I missed being able to order meat cooked to order in the main restaurants, and the meals were very light on fresh vegetables), but close. The specialty restaurants were very good, but I was impressed with even the "open all day" buffets.