HiThis is a first for me and my husband on an NCL ship - we decided to do this as we were celebrating our anniversary and our friends had been on the ship previously.Embarkation at Southampton seemed strange - the baggage handling was not great - turns out we would have been better to have just walked it on ourselves.I did not once meet our room attendant - so I have no clue who he or she was.The room only got turned down once - probably because there are no set seating times for food - the concept of freestyle has its downsides!I used the French Bistro on the first night and was pleasantly surpised both by the service and the lack of people in the room - but not happy that they wanted to seat us near the doors to the kitchens - constantly opening!! Why?? Space was everywhere!! (we did ask and were moved)I found the food intolerably bland in the freestyle dining room - used on the second night - and then decided that the plan had worked and they wanted you to pay for the other options - make the food bland enough and people would have to pay to eat.I used the Japanese restaurant on the last night - very early - as unknown to me we could have booked two days ahead to get a reasonable sit down time - and I caused an upset when I was trying to book for two couples!! Would have thought that was not the first time - but of course it has limited space - be prepared to love soy sauce for this meal...I am perplexed that I was paying 12 dollars per day for service - on a normal cruise that would be for the wait staff that I have used regularly - as I paid I had already covered that issue - and when you order drinks with meals you automatically paid the extra "tip". I do not have a problem paying for the room staff and would probably stop automatic tipping and do it myself - however I can honestly say I do not want to go back - the bar menus also showed that they would be charging 17% on top for service - so be warned that they are going to start charging even more for drink service - so as the last cruise charged 10 dollars per person per day I think that the increases make this a costly holiday for what I deem as a budget style ship/crew/cruise.