My husband and I are former NCL customers, having cruised on the Gem out of Barcelona in 2008 on our honeymoon. We enjoyed the experience so much, we booked another cruise on the Spirit for New Year's last year. We cruised out of New Orleans in December 2009 over New Year's. We recognize that it is an older and smaller ship than the Gem but there were a number of things wrong with our accommodations.
The bathroom had mildew and the balcony was filthy. We did not use the latter even though we paid extra for this feature. I had placed a cloth makeup bag on the shelf under the sink only to find it drenched due to a leaky sink. To be fair, the leak was eventually fixed and we received TWO servings of chocolate covered strawberries by way of apology.
We found the layout of the ship to be very confusing and I was constantly going in the wrong direction. We did not have this problem on the Gem. Maybe I had the Gem's layout stuck in my head and was trying to apply that to this ship but I heard other people making the same comment while we were onboard.
Very small room (the ship was built for the Asian market), chipped tiles and mildew in the bathroom, dirt in the shower stall tracks and balcony door tracks, sticky and dirty floor/carpet on the balcony (we rarely went out there even though we paid more for it), leaking sink in the bathroom, too little storage space in the bathroom, holes and stains on some of the linens/towels. :(