This was my first time ever on a cruise - apart from the few reviews I read online beforehand, I didn't really know what to expect. I travelled in a group of 4 and we booked 2 balcony rooms (2 persons per room). As early as my second day in I was already thinking about when next I was going to cruise with NCL! Here are some details.

We showed up at our assigned check-in time for embarkation from Miami Port and there was no line; the entire process took around 20 minutes from the time we dropped our bags off for the curbside porter, to the point where we were walking onto the ship room-key in hand. For disembarkation, however, because we opted to roll our suitcases off the ship instead of having our luggage transported and getting an assigned time to disembark, the process was a lot longer than expected, but not too tiring.

After reading about how tiny cruise ship rooms usually are, I was very much impressed at how spacious our balcony room was (I even had enough space to do an aerobics workout). Rooms were cleaned and re-stocked twice a day by our personal host, and amenities included in-shower body wash and shampoo dispensers, soap dispensers at the sink, lotion, a first-aid kit, a safe, a hairdryer, an ice bucket, a mini-bar, complimentary coffee/coffee-maker, a TV and a sofa. There were enough plugs in the room, including bed-side USB charging ports on both sides of the bed (keep in mind, though, that electricity in the room is automatically turned off unless you keep a key-card inserted into the slot next to the door). Read more