BACKGROUND: This was our family's first cruise so we really had no idea what to expect. We chose this particular cruise primarily because it left from SF (we live in the Bay area). We also liked that the kids program took 2-year-olds and thought the "freestyle" concept would work well for our family.

EMBARKATION: I hope that other people had a smoother embarkation process than we did because ours was one irritation after another.

We arrived at the pier around 1pm after an easy 60 minute drive up the 101. We dropped our luggage with a porter and DH went to park the car while the kids and I waited at the pier. We had a reservation at the CityPark garage, but they only had rooftop parking available so DH went to the Ace Parking garage where they had indoor parking and even valet parked the car for the same rate. The lines were long when we were ready to check in. We got in what we thought was the correct line, but an NCL employee shouted (rather impolitely) to us that we were in the wrong line and pointed out the correct line. After about 20 minutes of waiting we were able to see that the line we were now in was not after all the correct one because we had reserved a balcony room. We had been in the right line in the first place. Very frustrating, but the line moved quickly and we were soon at the check-in counter. Read more