The cruise I recently took on the Norwegian Gem is by far and away the worst vacation I have ever taken in my life. The food and the entertainment were a complete and total embarrassment. It seems that every way Norwegian could cut corners they did. I'll start with the food. All of the food that NCL includes with the price of the cruise is terrible. It's not even as good as Mc Donalds or TGI Fridays or Applebees. It's high school cafeteria bad. I haven't had food this bad in years and years. Not only is it bad but the dishes are severely limited. You see the same awful choices every day of your trip. Expect to see burgers, fries, powdered fake eggs, week old looking pasta and cheap ingredient pizza every day. Outside on the deck you can expect them wok up some chicken and rice every single day. Different day, slightly different rice.To add insult to injury it's very difficult to find a seat in the buffet area and even if you do you usually end up eating with someone else's dirty dishes on your table. It seems like other people's dirty dishes are all over this ship and they can never be cleaned fast enough. It's a horrible thing to have to put up with just to sit down to eat. It seems that they make the included food terrible so that people will feel forced to eat at the specialty restaurants. The funny thing about that is that two of those were abysmal as well. We tried the so called Italian restaurant (La Cucina). I'm 100 percent Italian and born and raised in New York City so I know what real Italian food is and this is far from it. This is even further from real Italian food than what you find in the freezer section of your local supermarket. The carbonara sauce had no cream or peas but instead was essentially pasta in bacon grease. To add insult to injury the calamari looked like small limp onion rings. The asian fusion place (Orchid Garden) was also embarrassing. We ordered several entrees just to find the same level of mediocrity throughout. You can find better tasting Chinese food in the freezer section of your supermarket. The sushi there was an embarrassment too. The specialty restaurants that we enjoyed were Cagneys (steakhouse), Le Bistro (French food) and Teppanyaki (Hibachi). It's just sad that you absolutely have to pay extra to get edible food on this ship and even then it's a bust sometimes.

Now lets get to the entertainment. Well at times it certainly felt like there wasn't any. There was a Jamaican band that only played once in a while and only played like 2 well known songs. There was only one time where people were dancing to this band and they were being led as to what dances to do as the band would play such lame songs like the Electric Slide. All in all it felt like I was at a Bar Mitzvah. There was also a top 40 band that was ok but they didn't play that often at all and they sometimes played very outdated music. There was a dj that was almost impossible to find. He hardly spun at all on the trip. My spouse was dying to dance to modern music and there was no opportunity to do that on the trip. The ship has two clubs the Spinnaker and Bliss. Spinnaker is where they make the guests essentially entertain each other with cheesy stuff like karaoke and the newlywed game. Bliss was a total embarrassment. It's made to look like a club but every time we went it had some ridiculous video on showing very outdated music videos. The Commodores?? Really?? Let's see what songs I can remember from that lame video ok here we go.. Let The Music Play (wtf), Can't Touch This (really?), Night Shift (The commodores? seriously?), Pump up the Jam, Let's Hear it For the Boy, etc.. It was as nightmare. Bliss staff was attentive trying to get people drinks all the time but who in their right mind would stay and drink in a club playing that crap?

On to the excursions. They're mostly severely overpriced considering NCL cuts your time on all of them severely. Who would want to go to Universal or Disney if you get there at 2 and have to leave at 5:30? Seriously. Atlantis was 150 pp and the last shuttle bus back was 4:30. Truly insane! Atlantis is pretty but it was way overpriced, the food was garbage and there weren't many water rides at all. They place a lot of pools in between to make you feel like there's a lot going on there. The Great Stirrup Cay excursion was ok and reasonable. We snorkeled and enjoyed it. NCL brings the same lame food to the island so be prepared for that. We tried the fun in the sun day at Orlando and it was severely overpriced. It was 80 dollars for a couple to do next to nothing. It's phrased like it's a resort but it's just a regular hotel with an outdoor pool. The food there is better than on the ship so at least you can eat a little better but all in all it was way overpriced. We could have just stayed on the ship if we knew all they had was a pool. They had an outdoor hot tub but it was broken. Avoid the fun in the sun day at all costs. Read more