We chose Norwegian Star as it was going to northern Norway and one of our group was particularly keen to visit the North Cape. Whilst my wife and I are regular cruisers (we average 2 a year) the reminder of our group were either novices or had cruised once before.
There were 6 of us in total and we joined the ship in Copenhagen, embarkation was relatively painless and despite the check in area being very full from arrival to actually getting onboard took approximately 30 mins. Whilst our cabins were not available we had been informed of this during check in so we took the opportunity to explore the ship.
Norwegian Star is a small ship in comparison to newer ships (she is 15 years old) but for this cruise she was completely full; passengers were a mix of Germans, American, South Koreans, Australians with small contingents of Spainish, French and British.