I recently returned from a very enjoyable week long cruise on the Norwegian Gem. This was my first ever cruise, as it was for everyone travelling with me except my aunt who has cruised on Carnival and Royal Caribbean in the past. Overall, we had a lovely vacation. I guess I'll start this review at the beginning...Embarkation was fantastic. It was very easy to find the port, parking was a breeze, no problems. We drove down from Maine, left at midnight just to be sure we had plenty of time in case of car problems, etc., so some of us were less than rested when we arrived. All of us agreed, we'll take a bus or train next time. Anyway, the staff at the port were wonderful, very helpful, friendly and funny. The guy who checked us in was especially great, so upbeat and energetic, really gave us an excellent first impression of the cruise line. We were there very early, around 10am, waited about an hour for check in to begin, then about an hour after we checked in for them to begin letting people come aboard. Our first impression of the ship made us very excited for the rest of the trip. It was gigantic, clean, modern, colorful, and just exuded good vibes. We went to the buffet first thing and I have to say I was impressed with the food. Maybe I went into it with low expectations due to all the mediocre and negative reviews I read about the food before hand, but I really didn't have a bad meal on board. Loved the selection and quality at the buffet, especially the omelet stations at breakfast. The hash browns were also particularly good as well as the pastries. We ate at The Great Outdoors whenever it was warm enough to do so and it was always less crowded than inside The Garden Cafe. We ate at the Grand Pacific for lunch one day and Magenta for dinner 2 nights. I was impressed with the food quality, although I enjoyed the buffet set up and selection better so we mostly stuck to that. Did have one excellent meal at Magenta. The only meal I wasn't particularly impressed with was the night we ate at La Cucina. Mostly due to indecisiveness of members of our party, we were never able to decide when to try out the specialty restaurants or which to try. We made a reservation for our whole group at La Cucina and were so disappointed that we decided to avoid specialty restaurants all together for the rest of the trip, although on the very last day I heard very positive things about Cagney's, Le Bistro, and Teppanyaki so I wish we had given it another go. The issues we had with La Cucina were that the food quality was definitely no better than what you could get at the buffet or dining rooms and the service was painfully slow. We had great weather for the cruise, it was chilly when we left NYC (and downright cold on our return Friday and Saturday) but the sun was always shining and it was gorgeous on our port days. I highly recommend bringing a warm coat and wearing long pants for embarkation day. I brainlessly decided to wear a springy dress with a blazer and was absolutely freezing, but I didn't want to miss the NYC views as we sailed away so I toughed it out as best I could. The wind was pretty crazy that day too and I'm pretty sure everyone on the same vieiwing deck with me got a great view of my backside as the wind blew my dress up repeatedly as I tried to take pictures. Being a first time cruiser, I wasn't sure what to expect as far as the room goes. It ended up being perfectly adequate. Small, but we were prepared for that. The bed was comfy although it was just 2 twin beds pushed together and I ended up in the crack several times. It really felt like sleeping in separate beds. My husband says that was a bonus for him because he didn't have to contend with my tendency to thrash around and steal blankets all night. The bathroom was small but very nice (although the shower controls were a bit confusing). The endless supply of hot water and excellent water pressure were awesome. I think that's what I missed most when I got home. :) The closet and shelves provided a good amount of storage, and the balcony was awesome. I would definitely recommend a balcony room. We saw dolphins off the coast of Florida on our first day at sea and a shark swimming under our balcony the day we visited Great Stirrup Cay. That was awesome. :) Our room stewards were wonderful. Very thorough, and they always made conversation with us when we ran into them in the hallways. The towel art they did was awesome. We got an elephant, a penguin, a dinosaur, a pig, a monkey, and something we couldn't identify which to be honest looked like a certain part of the female anatomy. LOLThe bars were plentiful and the drinks were good in my opinion. They were a little on the expensive side, but we expected that. We had a great time in the casino and although we didn't win big, we didn't lose too much money either. We didn't take in a ton of the entertainment offerings, but we played name that tune and trivia several times. We even won trivia one night, which was pretty exciting for us. :) We went to one show in The Stardust Theater, called Man from Mars. It was really awesome. Funny and impressive. My one complaint is that they really should have stopped letting people in once the show started. For a good half hour after the performance began, people kept entering and they always walked right in front of where we were sitting. It became something of a joke for us and those around us, where do all these people keep coming from? Eventually it just got annoying. Really took away from the impressive show going on. I didn't attend the other performances but I heard the comedian was ok, and the first Second City improv show was pretty mediocre. We went to The Perfect Couple Game show in Spinnaker which was hilarious, the host Sydney was fantastic and he really made the show. We laughed a lot. We played The Kwest or Quest game show on the last night and that was definitely entertaining. Sinan, the cruise director, hosted it and he was hilarious. The ports we visited were nice, but nothing amazing. We didn't book any excursions through NCL because we could never decide exactly what we wanted to do and had heard you can do things a lot more affordably on your own. For the most part, we found that to be true. I've put reviews of Port Canaveral and Nassau in the Port Reviews section, but since they don't have a Great Stirrup Cay option, I'll include that in here.Great Stirrup Cay was very nice. It was a gloriously hot, sunny day and the water was wonderful. We had a little glitch with this visit. We had decided the day before we arrived that we wanted to do the snorkeling excursion offered by the cruise line and attempted to book it through the tv. It looked like everything went thru ok, but our tickets were never delivered to our room like the tv said they would be. We went to the shore excursion desk to get them the morning of the island visit and were told that our purchase had not gone through on the tv and it was too late to book the snorkeling excursion on board, we'd have to do it once we got to the island. The problem? Well, if you are not doing an excursion through NCL, you have to get a "tender ticket" for the small tender boats which take you to the island. They are numbered 1 thru about 20 and you have to get up quite early to get a ticket for the earliest tenders. If you have booked an excursion thru NCL, you get to go straight to the front of the line and they put you on the first available tender boat. We did not get tender tickets since we thought we were going to have excursion tickets and by the time we found out that our excursion purchase didn't work, we ended up with tickets for tender 18. We waited about 2.5 hours for our tender number to be called and then when we finally got to the island, they were out of snorkel gear and we had to wait another hour and hope some would be returned. We did eventually get the gear and had a great time snorkeling, saw lots of cool fish and got some awesome pictures, but we lost a lot of time due to the error. We heard several other people had the same problem as well, so I don't advise booking shore excursions through your tv.We never got around to using the spa, fitness facilities, or library. The pool was pretty cold, but my brother and his gf used it one day and said they had a blast. They tried to use the slide, but my brother got stuck half way down. Definitely meant for kids. The hottubs were almost always full, but there seemed to be plenty of other things to do so that wasn't a huge disappointment. We managed to get one to ourselves twice during the week. A few other random observations... the photographers are a little pushy and the picture quality isn't great. The chai latte at the Java Cafe was amazing. The big sun loungers on deck 13 were really nice, there is a "clothing optional" sundeck on deck 14 but it was closed off for most of the cruise. Once it was accessible, there were never any loungers set up, so I never saw anyone using it. We really enjoyed The Spinnaker Lounge and spent quite a bit of time there. Bliss Lounge was some of the most amazing decor on the ship, definitely a fun place to visit. People who sang karaoke were almost universally terrible. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot, but this has already turned into a very very long review. In conclusion, I will definitely cruise with Norwegian again, and I hope this review has helped someone.