This was our second cruise, so I have only the Carnival to compare to. Brought the whole family with us and were totally Amazed and Disappointed.Pros: - Entertainment: Simply Fantastic, Excellent, Over the Top, what more can I say- Food: WOW, unbelievably scrumptious. The specialty restaurants were quite simply amazing. The Brazilian Restaurant I could go back to again and again!!!!- Rooms: Very clean, outstanding attendant, absolutely no problem.- Excursion - Miami: We started out on an Airboat and Alligator Show. It was one of the best highlights of our trip! The show was entertaining, the ride on the Airboat was fun, funny, educational,on and on...Cons, where to start:- Smoking Areas, yuck. Essentially the Casino occupies the middle 3 main floors and you couldn't get away from the smell of smoke. Since I quit smoking, I really didn't need to smell like an ashtray by the nights end.- Line ups for Entertainment: If you didn't reserve your seat, your toast. Even with reservations, there were still lineups.- Quiet Areas: None. Carnival, had areas where you could get away and relax. NCL, you had your room.- Missed a Port: Apparently, the Flagship of the NCL Cruiseline was 'bumped' from the last port, Bahamas, cause they couldn't fit us in. Come on, really???- Seats on deck: Come on, if you're going to use the deck chair, great. If you are just putting your towel on to hold the seat, I have some really nasty words that'll get me thrown off this site to say to you. You couldn't get a good seat unless you got up realllly early to beat these dead-beats from their towel reservations. - Excursion: While most excursions are excellent, well timed and make a trip outstanding, they forgot to pick us up for our trip to Snorkeling and Kayaking, then had to rush to get us back before sailing - no shopping in this port as a result. - Disembarkation, simply a Nightmare. Left a very bad memory trying to get off the boat. No organization what-so-ever. We had to catch an early flight, apparently 4,000 others had the same.Hope this helps. Personally, although Carnival has had some pretty disastrous headlines, I'd go back to them before going to NCL again. If you have a chance to book the Haven area, do it. Couldn't get up there, but I heard there were seats and quiet areas there.