Just a brief comment on the Norwegian Star. We had some amount of question on what to expect before our 12/15/04 cruise based on the varied reviews that we had read. We have been on 30 some cruises, mostly Royal Caribbean and Celebrity with a mix of other lines. If you removed all the NCL "logo," you wouldn't have known which line you were on. It was a beautiful ship with super activities going on all the time!
The gym had a nice schedule of classes at various times during the day, (with a separate room for the classes), and many of them were free of charge.
We were a large number (12 of us) and the staff at the Versailles Dining Room gave us a standing dinner reservation so that we could all sit together without a wait. This was arranged, by the way, at the restaurant upon boarding. We cancelled it a couple of nights to try other restaurants with no problem. We found the food to be varied and good, much the same as the main dining room on most of our other cruises. We were traveling with 2 two-year-olds and the staff was excellent, beyond the call of duty, in helping us out at every turn, also in meeting our specific needs. The fact that we had different waiters serving us, rather than one for the entire trip, did not seem to make a difference in their level of attentiveness.