My husband and I took our first cruise this past week. We sailed on the Norwegian Gem on April 30, 2011 from New York to Port Canaveral, Great Stirrup Cay, and Nassau, Bahamas. It was a seven night cruise, and we booked a mini-suite with a balcony, deck 11. We did enjoy our vacation, but we're not completely sold on cruising.PROS: We liked our stateroom. It was a good size for two people, and we really enjoyed the balcony. The bathroom setup with a separate toilet nook and a bathtub was also a great perk. There were lots of fun activities for us on the ship, and we enjoyed the great variety of public spaces available for our use. (My husband was a fan of the Spinnacker Lounge and the library. I liked the Great Outdoors and Magnums.) The nightly entertainment was very good, and we especially enjoyed The Second City shows and the crew-hosted "game shows."CONS: We may have overwhelmed ourselves the first couple of days on the ship with activities. There was tons to do all week, and we finally figured out that we needed to pace ourselves! We sailed with a full ship, and we really felt the 2,000 + people. The worst crowding times were, of course, embarkation and disembarkation and the chocolate buffet. As we expected from reading Cruise Critic, it was also difficult to find lounge chairs near the pool. (We had much better luck on port days.) If you like to watch TV before you go to sleep as we do, be aware that there are only a couple of TV channels.Food and Dining: We decided that we wanted to take advantage of the dining options included in our fare and save our on board credit for other things. So we stuck to the Blue Lagoon, the Great Outdoors, the Garden Cafe, Topsiders, the Grand Pacific, and Magenta. We found the food overall to be quite good. There were some great dishes (prime rib, roasted pork loin, banana custard with caramel sauce), and there were some bad dishes (pretty much the entire chocolate buffet, coconut pie, some of the soups.) But most things were good (burgers fresh off the grill!), and we were fine with our "free" dining options.Gem Tips: We felt the motion of the ship much more than we expected, so be prepared. There is an afternoon tea each afternoon in the Great Outdoors. I am generally good with directions, but it was very easy to get turned around on the ship. One thing that did help find our way around was that the dolphins on the carpets swim forward. If you are looking for a seat in the Garden Cafe, walk aft. There are a lot of seats toward the back, and we never had a problem finding a table back there. The reservations desk may tell you that you don't need to make reservations for the main dining rooms, especially if you are a party of two. Don't listen to them! If you have a reservation, they seat you immediately. If you don't, you get a pager and a 30 minute wait.Our Lessons Learned: We think that we would be better suited to a shorter cruise. On day 6 we both were very ready to go home. (I think a lot of people were feeling something similar-- there were so many more people in the library and card room the last couple of days!) I think we would also be better suited to a smaller ship with fewer passengers. (My husband thinks we'd be well suited to a courtyard villa with their private courtyard and pool. LOL!)