After getting off our first cruise, which we absolutely loved, we were excited to see the sky. Pictures that we had seen of the sky looked incredible! We arrived at around 12:30, and had a pretty easy time with embarkation. We found it kinda odd that they handed us a paper to fill out about any illnesses we have had, which I guess is kinda good, but really, who would admit they were sick... The staff weren't overly friendly.. just seem to be there. When we boarded the ship, it was very congested throughout the deck we boarded. We were told that we couldn't get to our room until after 2pm. The champagne when we boarded was a nice touch. The ship looked old and worn. Some decks had quite a "musty" old smell. When we found our was to deck 11, the pool deck, we decided to grab some lunch, but the lineup was crazy. We just has some ice cream from the ice cream machine. The drinks were an outrageous price. $26 for 7 beer were expensive (don't forget about the gratuity on top of that). I don't drink beer, and ordered a margarita, which came in a plastic collector cup, for $9.65. The hottubs were all full of drunk college students. Our kids were scared to go in the pool. The so called kids pool in the front is meant more for very young children. I think the deepest it was was 2 feet. There was a pool table and a few ping pong tables which was great. We finally went to our room at 2, and found our floor to be the smelliest. It smelled like everything was once very wet, and dried up with a mouldy smell. We had room 0001, next to the door to the bridge. It was quiet there. No sound from above or below us. Our room didn't have much for storage. Yeah, our suitcases fit under the bed, and there was a closet with some drawers in it, but it still wasn't that great. The bathroom had very poor storage too. The body wash in the shower smelled like mint mouthwash. Different. The bed was very comfortable, and the pillows nice and fluffy. The windows thru out the ship were always dirty. We had ordered a birthday package and anniversary package, and everything was there when we arrived. Our room stewards were the friendliest on the ship for us. The television in our room looked like a computer monitor. The safe was in the closet. There was rust around the door in the bathroom, as well as rust around the light. The kids club was in an odd place. Had to walk down some hallways with pax cabins, until you finally found it. Our girls seemed to enjoy it, which was great. Some other areas of the ship were hidden well. I looked for some just from reviews on cruise critic. We finally found longboard bar, since I heard they had wings. The hot wings were very nasty. Had an odd taste to them. Hard to find that place, because you have to walk thru the buffet etc. to find it. The live entertainment was nice, but incredibly loud. We love to party, but the music was soooo loud, you really couldn't even enjoy it. We couldn't even talk to eachother. The wait staff by the pool were so pushy at times, it was beginning to upset us. We ate at the buffet most of the time, and had one dinner at Le Bistro one evening. (We bought the anniversary package, so this was part of it). It was good, but we aren't fans of having to pay. My hubby bought a watch on the cruise before this, and the exact same watch on this cruise was $40 more. The coffee, oh the coffee. It was so awful. The first day it was incredibly strong, where all the cream and water in the world wouldn't make it better. The next 3 days, it was like water. You could see the bottom of the cup. Very very weak. Not to consistent. French fries were good though! Juice machines seemed to be out of order a lot! Freeport and Nassau were nice. We were supposed to go to the private island, but were informed that morning the water was too choppy, so they pretty much dropped anchor, and we floated in the middle of the sea all day. There was a lot of unhappy passengers including us. We were told they usually go to Nassau an extra day, but since NCL is losing money, they chose to just float and make some money. We booked our excursions privately, which is the way to go! The casino was always busy. We won $140 in a nickle slot machine one night. The highlight of our trip! We did like the disembarkation of NCL. We chose to carry our luggage off ourselves. We could leave anytime before 10 am. Worked out great.