We arrived 3 days before the cruise so we could take our 3 year old to Disney and Sea World. We also took in the Midway. Three jam packed days but all worth it. Stayed at the Omni downtown and it was great for the $105 per night deal we got through expedia. If we had paid the #300+ original price, I would have been upset. Embarkation: Decided to wait until the rush was over on embarkation day, so we visited the Midway Museum until 2 pm then headed to the ship. Embarkation at that time was simply walk right up to an officer who checked you through and you went right to the ship. There was no one around, no congestion etc, so we didn't have to wait in line with our 3 year old. It was perfect. The workers were super nice and very welcoming. As soon as we walked on board, we were greeted by two employees from the Kids Club (Ocean Adventures). They were so happy to see our son, Luke, as they said there was only a total of 14 kids on the ship. That was disappointing to hear. The year before we had cruised with Norwegian and Luke LOVED the kids, the more the merrier, so we were worried he wouldn't be as happy with the club. That proved to be the case some days, but I'll talk about that in a second. We were able to go right to our room which was great. This was our 4th cruise and we have always rushed to get on the ship, waited in 3 or 4 lines for 1-2 hours, then waited on the ship for the room to be ready. But not today...just walked right on, then right to our room. It was MUCH more relaxing this way. I would recommend anyone with young kids do it this way.

Room: Our room was a balcony with the pull-man bed overhead of our bed.. It was a great set up. We had never had a balcony before. It was really nice. We did splurge this time to have the balcony and it was well worth it. Just being able to wake up in the morning and look out at the ocean, see what the weather was like...I loved it. We were port side and so on the way back, heading north, we got afternoon sun. The last 2 days were chilly, but the balcony shaded any wind, so I stayed on the balcony and tanned. It was awesome. The bathroom was tiny, which I remembered from cruising with RCI in the past. The shower curtain really does stick to you, no matter what. But I did remember someone telling me before to bring one of those heavy black paper clips and put it on the bottom of the curtain, so that helps. Again, the Norwegian ships have large bathrooms with shower doors, so it was quite a difference. We had heard a lot about plumbing problems from reviews we read before we left, but the most problem we had was the toilet wouldn't flush one time. It fixed itself and that was the end of our troubles. Unfortunately we heard MANY people who didn't only have problems, but actually had to go up two decks to use the bathroom for 3 days straight!! And that was more than one couple. It sounded horrendous, but it seemed to be rooms on the 9th deck that were mainly affected.

Cabin crawl with cruise critic - We signed up for the meet and mingle with cruise critic but wasn't sure if we would go. We hadn't done anything like this before and didn't know how well Luke would do. In the end, it was great. One of the members on cruise critic had organized a cabin crawl. For those unfamiliar with this, it's like a pub crawl, but you go around looking at the different categories of cabins. It was FANTASTIC!!! We got to see inside cabins right up to the owners suite, which is just a tad bit swanky. Holy! It was nice. Great job Kevin! Read more