Wife and myself are early 50's. We've been on 15+ cruises, most very good to excellent, this one was near the bottom of the heap.

Embarkation was very quick, efficient and organized. We were in a penthouse suite on deck 8 below the bridge. The suite was roomy, and clean, very nice large bathroom with separate tub and shower area. Great view forward. Furnishings are getting a bit worn and the bed was among the worst I've slept in anywhere. NCL advertises butler and concierge service with the suite. The concierge saved the trip for us. Erika was her name and she was excellent. Erika checked with us multiple times daily and arranged our dinner reservations even at the last minute. She answered any questions we had quickly and efficiently. She stopped by with priority tender tickets without even asking. Our butler was pretty much a doorknob, all show and no go. All we wanted from him was to have our ice bucket kept full, thats it, no more necessary. Guess what, we still constantly had to try to find ice. We finally found one of the cabin stewards who helped us and he was not even from our area of deck 8. We tipped him very generously. We found most of the staff to be very friendly, some tried very hard to please but most seemed overworked.

Dining. I have to say I never had a wider contrast of food quality on any cruise. Unfortunately the bad far outweighed the good. The good was the duck in the French bistro. The second night in the 7 seas dining room, lobster was fair but the beef wellington served the same night was far better, maybe even excellent. East Meets West, wife had an excellent but overcooked rib-eye, I had a NY strip, it was ok, but not worth the extra charge. Now for the BAD food, Hockey puck like things served as hamburgers, dried out chicken, and about everything else in the buffets were tasteless. Pizzas were a joke, come on NCL anyone should be able to make a decent pizza. We tried the main dining room a couple times for lunch and found out they just went and picked up some buffet items to put on a plate and served them to you. We got up and left right after they served the most unappetizing looking "meatloaf" like thing. We then went to the buffet and had some tasteless pasta. About the only things edible at the buffet were some breakfast items but I have to say the bacon every day tasted old or rancid (maybe they were cooking it in old grease??) We would look at the dinner menu's for the main dining rooms and the selections were very boring and uninspired. Who wants to eat turkey and chicken every night. I would suggest that NCL could charge $5.00 per person more per day, thats $35.00 for a week and improve their food quality. I guess this is their ploy to get people to pay for the surcharge restaurants. We didn't have a problem paying extra if it was good. Of the surcharge restaurants, the Italian place was not good at all. The veal shank which some people rave about was the worst I've had anywhere. I did not gain any weight on this cruise...HMMMM???? Enough on the food. Read more