This is lengthy but if you are like me, you like knowing good and bad before you go :)
We live in Jacksonville, FL so we drove down to Miami the night before, 6 hours. My husband is a teacher so the only week we can go on spring vacation is spring break, so you take the good with the bad! A LOT of teens on this ship that week. We sailed 3/14 out of Miami. This was our first cruise on NCL, many times on RC and Celebrity (1x). I didn't quite know what to expect and I will tell you there were some things that I liked better than RC and some not as much.
Embarkation - went smoothly except they make you wait in groups and assign you a number - didn't care for that too much. We only had to wait about 20 min to board. Parking at the pier is very convenient and I felt my car would be safe there rather than leaving it at hotel which I had planned on doing but after seeing there was NO security in parking lot at hotel I changed my mind.