First time on Norwegian. Previously with Carnival. Only reason to try Norwegian was to get to Costa Maya. First, a fire after a couple of days - code Bravo going over the intercom with instructions for fire crew to man their stations, was a little unnerving for those who knew what this meant. Seems a dishwasher caught on fire and smoke filled a part of the floor it was on.

Then, the tender issue was a mess. The ship used its own life boats (?) as tenders on Cozumel. They held us on the ship for a couple of hours before the tendering started. Then, only folks buying excursions from the cruise line could leave. It was two hours after tendering finally started, that those who had not bought excursions, could depart. This drastically cut down our time on the two places where tendering was required. Been here four times with Carnival and we didn't have to be second-class citizens to those paying almost double excursion fees that Norwegian was charging for same tours and those cruisers could get from same vendors once actually in the port.

I really like knowing when I am supposed to eat, otherwise, we were in line for 30 minutes, to get a table. I can do this at home, so I prefer not to do it while on vacation. Read more