We have been cruising for years it is our favorite family vacation. I have cruised on RCCL, Carnival, Celebrity and NCL. I think this is my 14th cruise. This is our second NCL cruise, we sailed Hawaii onboard the Pride of America a few years ago. I had mixed feelings about the "freestyle" dining. After the poor customer service and mediocre food, I never planned on cruising NCL again. We recently became certified Scuba divers and NCL had the best itinerary for a spring break diving cruise. We decided to give it another chance.

We arrived a day early into New Orleans, we stayed at the Courtyard Marriott and took in the sites and flavors of a great city. When we arrived at the cruise terminal it was clean, well organized and very quick. We arrived just before 2pm and our room was ready. The explored the ship and found it easy to navigate and very family friendly. One unique spot was the spiral stairs that led down to a room where you could view the bridge.

The stateroom was nice, I love the shower door versus the clinging shower curtain. I liked that the toilet had a door also. The balcony was small and completely salt encrusted. We only got the balcony so we would have a place to dry our dive equipment between ports, so it worked for us. Our room stewards rarely made up our beds, because they didn't show up most nights until after 9pm. We were usually in for the night by then. We had a lot of early mornings. Read more