To prevent this from becoming an extremely long post, I will try to briefly describe my experience with NCL this time around. I have to start off by saying that I have never had a bad experience with NCL which might have played into the level of disappointment I feel. We started planning this trip last year because this was our destination wedding trip where we had 17 people in our party sailing to the Bahamas where I got married. When my parents had booked, they were told that they would be receiving the AARP rate, however, when they made the final payement, they were told that there was no such rate but upon further inspection, there was and they were denied the rate.

To start off our trip, several people told me that the people in the Manhattan port were extremely rude but my husband and I lucked out and did not encounter these employees. The people who had negative encounters then felt as if this experience would reflect on the rest of their trip.

We boarded the ship and it was beautiful. I think this has been my favorite design of an NCL ship that I've seen. We only had to wait briefly for our rooms to be ready and my husband and I were highly satisfied at the condition of our room. They do have a strange energy saving function for the lights now so that a room key needs to be inserted into a slot about 3 feet away from the entry door. A few people in our party did tell us that their rooms were filthy when they were finally allowed in. The carpets weren't vaccumed and there were urine stains on the toilet seat all of which should have been taken care of before they were allowed in. But, once again, my husband and I had a good experience when other people did not. Read more