Our trip started out dark & early. We had an 8:30am flight out of La Guardia airport and needed to leave upstate New York by 4:45am. The trip from upstate to the city airport was quick and uneventful. Our flight on American took off on time and arrived in Miami 15 minutes early at 11:15am. We waited about 10 minutes for the luggage and an additional 10 minutes for the taxi. $24 plus tip and we were at the pier in 10 minutes. As you can tell, we have a pattern here. This was the "everything took only 10 minutes day." It was a great way to start the vacation. The embarkation process was smooth and efficient. The lines were not really long at all and it kept moving. We had preregistered, so when we got to the counter, we just handed in our ticket, passports and credit cards. The only thing that was awkward was when they take your picture. When the women stated "look into the eye," and shoved that webcam camera in my face, the first thing I thought was how tacky and unprofessional it was. All the other cruise lines I've been on utilize the camera in the kiosk. I was hoping this one incident was not a sample of what was to come. We proceeded upstairs, received our room keys and were on the ship by 12:45pm. If you take into consideration from the time we landed to the time we boarded the ship, the whole process took 1 hr and 30 minutes. Pretty good! The ship is quite beautiful and definitely has a style of her own. The mixture of fun Caribbean colors and wood paneling was tastefully designed. It was whimsical yet appealing and contemporary. One thing I did miss was there is truly no atrium on this ship. I have become accustomed to 7 and 9 deck high atriums when I boarded other cruise lines ships and I did miss it not being here. It is one of my favorite places. Instead, there is only a 2 deck high quasi atrium with a 2 deck high big screen for the "Wi.". I really think they could have found a better place for this. It seemed so misplaced in this area and took away from that "Wow" factor when you first board. Cabins were not ready, so we headed to the Garden Cafe for lunch. A nice variety of food. The action stations are definitely a big plus in a buffet environment. I must say that the food in the Garden Cafe was consistently good to above average the entire trip. Just as we sat down to eat; the overhead announcement came to say that the cabins were ready. After lunch, we headed to the cabin and dropped off our carry-on. We were on deck 10 cabin 10602, a balcony cabin. The cabin was tastefully designed and decorated, but, yes, it was tiny and tight for 3 people. If you are travelling with more than two in your party to a cabin, pay the extra money and get a larger cabin. We've consistently booked balcony cabins on Carnival, Princess and RCI without a space issue. The Pearl's cabins are designed to utilize the tiny space very well, but with only one closet and 3 drawers, everything else was shelving and my 2 sisters had to leave most of their clothing in their suitcases. Once the sofa bed was converted to a bed, there was absolutely no room to get by to go out on the balcony. If one of the girls was standing by the vanity to dry their hair, you could not pass by them without asking them to move or climbing over the bed. The cabin came equipped with a coffeemaker (nice touch), a real full size hair dryer and flat screen television. The flat screen TV is a 15 inch cheap Philips model. The clarity and brightness of the screen was poor. If you did not watch it head-on, you only saw black shadows. A regular tube TV has a better picture and can be viewed from all angles. Now onto the bathroom. Get ready all of you that are not considered to be in the featherweight class. This bathroom is a challenge. It is quite nicely designed, but tiny. The shower has a glass door not a stick-to-you a curtain. Loved it! The toilet has a separate compartment and sliding door with frosted glass. Nice touch, but the toilet is placed on an angle and the frosted door does not provide the needed privacy for 2 people to be in the bathroom at the same time. The toilet area is so small that you actually need to step into the sink area to finish dressing yourself when you're done. I'm only 5'7" and 152lbs and this bathroom challenged me every time. Get ready to step outside if you just want to turn around and change your mind, let alone your clothes. I loved the idea and interior design, but it needs more space. O.K., it's time to go explore the ship. She really is beautiful and kept fairly clean. Hand sanitizers can be found everywhere and the crew encourages everyone to use them. I liked this idea and wish that other cruise lines would implement a widespread deployment of hand sanitizers. We went back up to deck 12, where the Garden Café, Great Outdoors and the pool are located. We know this as the Lido Deck on other cruise lines. Put on your suit of armor, because it's time to joust, fight and race for the ever coveted deck chairs. We all know we always have issues with deck chair hogs, but the size of this pool deck just encourages the hogs even more. Only 1 main pool and 1 scaled down adult pool, both in the same area. Add onto this a waterslide (not an innovative idea, just "borrowed" from Carnival) in the main pool area and this means less deck space and less deck chairs. Whoever designed the pool area should give their salary back to NCL for designing such a poorly laid out high volume area. Oh yes, the rock climbing wall, although not on the pool deck, was a nice touch. (Not innovative, just borrowed from RCI). The service at the Sky High bar was awful. 2 bar tenders and as slow as could be. It took us 20 minutes just to get 3 drinks. However, if you were in a deck chair, there was plenty of staff running around with signs in their hands pushing the drinks of the day. Note of caution…If you drink other than the standard mixed drinks, always ask for a regular glass, otherwise they automatically put every kind of drink they possibly can into the cheap plastic $3 up charged souvenir glasses. Comparing all ships I've been on, this ship was the most expensive for drinks and soda. I found later on that the up charges and additional charges became the theme for this NCL cruise. We had our drinks and immediately proceeded to wherever we could find to make the required reservations for our first 48 hours on the ship. I have to say, if it was not for the posts on the Cruise Critic NCL Boards, I would not have known what to do about reservations. We quickly headed to Mambos on deck 7 and made reservations for Summer Palace and Cagney's (Big Mistake). O.K., I'm starting to wonder about that commercial I keep seeing. Do what you want when you want, eat where you want, when you want. Images of people jumping out of deck chairs checking their watches, filing into the dining room… I think that is the NCL commercial. I finally discovered there is no such thing as Freestyle Cruising and eating when you want where you want. You have to make a reservation for every night you would like to eat dinner in other than the buffet. Otherwise, the quasi restaurants are fully booked or you have to eat at 5pm or 10 pm. If I have to make a reservation for dinner, isn't that the same thing as assigned seating? Duh! Cagney's was a $20 cover charge and quite honestly I did not see that the service in Cagney's was any better than the service we received in Summer Palace (No Cover Charge). I was horrified when we were being told; lobster or surf and turf at Cagney's was an additional $10 up charge on top of the $20 cover charge. Other cruise lines include lobster at least 1 night during the cruise in the main dining room. NCL does not. I'm sorry; a mixed fish entrée is not lobster people. I myself do not eat fish, but my 2 sisters I was travelling with love their lobster. I'm starting to hear in my head a line I hear from a video slot machine I use to play. I keep hearing repeatedly "Money, Money, Money, Money!" Yes, NCL gets you once you're onboard. That's why their prices have the appearance of being low upfront. I know all cruise lines are constantly trying to sell you something additional once onboard, but I have to say that NCL really does nickel and dime you to death. This I did not and do not like at all. Next on the list, of course, the casino. We commonly refer to this as my perch. I can always be found here at night after dinner. The casino was definitely decorated in a fun and whimsical manner; very appealing and bright. Although the casino was on the small side, they had a nice variety of slot and table games. I joined the Player's club online prior to my sailing and I was disappointed when the staff member at Customer Service told me I still had to fill out the paper form. If this is necessary, why offer online registration for the club? The casino was pretty good. I was up and down all week, but managed to take most of my money home. I have to say I think NCL does provide better payback than most cruise line casinos. My sisters explored Bliss, the bowling alley and fitness center. They enjoyed the fitness center every morning and one even took Yoga Classes for the first time. Time for the muster drill. Well run and pretty much the same as any other. We were lucky as our muster station was D2 right inside Mambos and in less than 15 minutes, it was completed. I'll speed this up a little as this review is getting much longer than I anticipated. Dinner - 1st night - Summer Palace - Excellent Service, Excellent Food. Dinner - 2nd night - Cagney's - Mediocre Service - Above Average Food. Dinner - 3rd night - Indigo Dinning Room - Mediocre Food, Mediocre Service. (The girls got caught up in their daily activities and forgot about making required reservations. We landed in Indigo at 7:30pm, much later than we like to eat, sharing a table with 3 very nice older people from England. I'm sorry; the Indigo décor is reminiscent of the flower power days of yesteryear. That purple has to go. Dinner - 4th night - Lotus Garden - Good food, horrible and disorganized service ($10 up charge for Chinese food that was not truly authentic. You gotta laugh, Chinese Food being served by a Philippine Staff.) Dinner - 5th night - Mambo's - Above average food, excellent service, no up charge.

Staff - Friendly, but guarded. If you didn't say hello first, it was rare you received a smile and hello. If not engaged by you, the staff just looked passed you. A special note: our cabin attendant was wonderful! Very friendly and warm. Provided we always used the turn style signage outside the room to let him know what to do, it worked out fine. Towel animals 2 nights only. ? Ports of call - Cozumel and Grand Cayman. We've been to them before, so we pretty much did our own thing. Cozumel - we shopped and had lunch at I think it was called Poncho's Backyard. We've eaten there before and it is on the NCL recommended in the Freestyle Daily. Very good food, a little pricey, very slow service. Grand Cayman - Again, we shopped and had lunch at the Hard Rock. Good food, everything was a little on the spicy side. Also found this to be pricey, but, hey, it's a Hard Rock. Entertainment - this is subjective, just like food. Ryan and Company - a bunch of amateurs. My sisters walked out within 5 minutes. Terrible costumes, no coordination, dancers all over the place. Definitely not well rehearsed. Second City - We avoided. The 3 English people we met were on the Back 2 Back and said they went and didn't get it. Just a note: if you do a B2B, NCL does not change out the entertainment like the other cruise lines. The people on the 9 day prior to our 5 day saw the same shows twice. Debarkation was relaxed and easy. We took the blue tags and put our luggage out the night before for pickup. We were called promptly at 8:10am and proceeded off the ship at our leisure. No long lines and no crowding in stairwells and public rooms. Customs is a little stricter these days, so be prepared to show them receipts and items purchased if they ask. We found our luggage right away and hopped into a taxi for a quick ride back to Miami airport.

In summary, my sisters and I (their older brother), had a great trip. We loved having the time to share together on vacation. We liked the Pearl and know that there is no such thing as a perfect cruise or cruise line. We learned that there really is no such thing as "Freestyle" cruising. It is just an updated phrase for not having to get dressed appropriately for dinner and NCL not having to perform on par with other cruise lines. We tried Freestyle so we could see what it is all about. Yes, Freestyle is for some, but not for all. We still prefer the traditional style of cruising and missed the formal nights and people dressing appropriately for meal time. We missed the Captain's Gala Night and as well as the Themed Night other cruise lines provide. We missed not sitting with the same people night after night and getting to know them. We missed not having the wait staff know us and always having our drinks waiting for us. Would we sail NCL again? Yes. Would it be one of our top preferences? No. Unless the deal is outstanding and the itinerary is a must, we will stick with the traditional mainstream. I'm glad we took this trip and it allowed us to yet have another learning experience at sea.