Our first cruise, a last minute booking the result of a cruise offer combined with the Barcelona F1. Room with balcony was excellent, food (with the optional specialist restaurant package) was superb, the boat Epic (it's appropriate name) at 1000 ft long and eighteen decks. We never ate in the same place twice, entertainment was good, altogether incredible value at £1200 pp (included flights, transfers and F1!). Loved the "freestyle" approach to cruising, do what you want when you want, food available 24 hours (free), and it seemed althought the drinks were expensive we got most of them free anyway, total onboard bill excluding shop purchases was less than $200 (yes the boat runs in $, clearly targeted at US tourists who probably subsidise everyone else via the casino and art auctions......).

We booked excursions via cruising excursions.com as the NCL excursion prices were far more costly than the all inclusive cruise, some who had not done this were complaining about the excursion prices on board. Cruisers included a lot of young families, certainly not the age profile we expected, there are adult only areas as well as family areas, water slides, and over 2000 sun beds... Never noticed any boat movement the entire cruise, it's just too big, sitting in a restaurant above the bridge we appeared to be flying 100 ft above the sea. NCL who own the Epic is a very slick organisation, everyone has an ID swipe card so getting on/off the boat and on board purchases was trouble free, staff without exception, were friendly and professional. The NCL iconcierge app allows you to book restaurants, entertainment, tenders etc from your smartphone as well as getting information about what's going on, the only criticism is that it doesn't keep a record of what you've booked....so you need to write it down or ask client services, as we had to when we realised no record was kept.

Altogether a great experience, but do bear in mind with cruising that you only get to glimpse the places you visit, not the same as staying there, on the other hand no packing/unpacking of cases and travel hassle. Overriding impression is that Cruising is very easy!