My husband and I (both 62 years old) have cruised with NCL on the Gem, Epic, Pearl and Dawn. I have been on the Gem and Epic twice. We have always preferred NCL because of the Freestyle Cruising idea since neither of us are interested in getting dressed up when we are on vacation. However we have also cruised on Princess, Celebrity, Royal Caribbean and Carnival so we can do some comparisons.
We left on November 7th from NS and stayed overnight in Miami at the Airport Hilton. We arrived at the port at around 10 AM and we were on the ship by around 11:30. The embarkation went very smoothly which may have partially been due to our early arrival.
Naturally we headed up to the Garden Café to have lunch. I was very impressed with the layout of the whole area especially the idea of having different colour schemes on each side which made it easier to find where you were sitting. Lunch was rather disappointing in the buffet as I did not see many alternates to hamburgers, hotdogs and French fries. Breakfast was a much better meal in the buffet and we only had supper there once and it was OK.
The cabin was very quiet and we never noticed any noise. Ship movement was hardly noticable. The balcony was TOO small (4 by 8), there were NO drawers in the main room. Bed was extremely comfortable. You could not see the wake of the ship from the balcony because the life boats are blocking the view. Bed was beside the balcony doors with about one foot of space to get out of bed.