My family has been on many cruises including Disney, Princess, Carnival, NCL, and our favorite RCL. My kids are 17 and 19. We were looking for a lower cost cruise chose the NCL Gem. We booked it 3 weeks before the sail date and decided to book a Guaranty Balcony. We did a lot of research and found that there were no Bad balcony rooms on the Gem. More about that later. The ship was overall clean and i saw no signs of aging.

Arrived at 11:30 and parking went OK. It is right next to the ship. the lines were long and we estimated it would have taken approx 1 hour to get on the ship, but we got lucky they sent us to a Haven check in line. Overall it took 1/2 hour to get on board.

We knew this was not the newest or larger ship so we set our expectations. Two weeks before the cruise we were assigned rooms 9012(enclosed Balcony - See picture) & 9016 (full balcony). The cabins we very nice with comparable space as other cruises. The bath room was nice with separate toilet, shower and sink. The toilet area was tight, My legs would hit the wall in front (6 foot tall). Read more