We booked this cruise for a family of nine. This was my third Norwegian cruise and my last cruise on Norwegian. Food was cafeteria style at its most mediocre, portions in the "complimentary" dinning areas, were always cold, mostly underprepared and always small portions. Beware, the buffet line can be dangerous. Really, they should be featured on Kitchen Nightmares. We figured that's how NCL drives people to buy the food upgrade for $119.00 per person. The biggest trouble is, there is no variety, I think the reason the food was always cold was because they had to carry it all over the ship from the buffet line! Anyway, It worked on us! The food in the "upscale" dinning halls was rarely better, sometimes bigger portions and sometimes the food was even hot. (Cagney's and Moderno are the best.) They always ask what kind of water you prefer, sparkling, bottled or tap. The only one they don't charge for is tap water. Buckets of beer cost 37.00, don't forget the tips! We finally asked a waiter at one of the "fine" dining halls if the tips we gave him went to him and he said no, all non cash tips on the ship go to the ship to be distributed equally among the staff. NCL also charges a $12.00/day/person service charge. Our six month old baby got a nasty letter demanding payment when we didn't assign him a credit card to charge on, same thing with a three year old next door. NCL removes the charge, if you ask-I wonder how many people do. We were tipping for everything and at first I thought it was ok to charge the service charge but when I found out how it was distributed and how my tips all over the ship were funneled through the cruise line, I felt taken advantage of AND I think the staff deserves better treatment, so we began tipping in cash.

The pools are small and crowded and after a day were just "people soup." Yuk.

We took a private tour excursion and they kept a cooler stocked with water for us......FREE! They gave us a big lunch with hot food and margaritas.....FREE! And we only paid them $59.00 per person. We took an NCL excursion for $99.00 /pp. and the first thing on the bus, they offered to sell us water for $2.00 each. We paid NCL about $900.00 for the cruise and our cabin of two adults and a six month old was charged an additional $800 in charges! Thank god the baby didn't have a credit card.