My boyfriend and I sailed on the Norwegian Gem Thanksgiving cruise to the Eastern Caribbean November 25 - December 4. We traveled with my mom and her good friend. Overall I would rate our experience as above average, with a few places for improvement. Below is my (very detailed) review of the hits and misses of our trip.

As background, for my boyfriend and I this was our sixth cruise in the past seven years, all on NCL and all departing from NYC. In other words, we're pretty familiar with the line and the embarkation port. This was my mother's first cruise. My mother and her friend were traveling via NCL bus shuttle from Rhode Island to the port, while we traveled by train from our home in New Jersey. We had planned on being at the boat around noontime, however received a text from my mother around 10:30 am that she was told by the bus driver that the Gem had just arrived in port and would be late disembarking the current passengers. I checked the Cruise Critic boards and sure enough this was confirmed. The issue here was that we were not notified by NCL that the boat would have a delayed boarding. NCL has both of our emails and cell phone numbers and we received nothing. In fact, some Cruise Critic members called NCL customer service for a status update and were told the boat was on time. There seems to be a communication issue where NCL corporate is not notified in a timely manner of these delays so they can turn the message around to the customers. If customers were appropriately notified it would save them a crowded terminal of angry passengers that arrived on time only to be told they could not board for hours.

Since we were one of the lucky ones to get the message about the late boat, we didn't arrive at the port until around 1:30 pm. The Gem would not be begin the boarding process until about 2 pm due to the late arrival plus enhanced sanitation of the boat due to the dreaded Norovirus which was on board the previous cruise (more on this later). NCL provided a letter to every passenger in the terminal informing them of the virus as well as giving them the option of opting out of this cruise and taking a future cruise credit for a later date. Due to the late boarding lines were horrendous but lucky for us we were sailing in an aft penthouse suite, which allowed us priority boarding. Therefore we skipped the lines and went straight to priority check in and were escorted on board promptly. There was an issue with our key cards not working properly that had to be resolved at the customer service desk in the atrium upon boarding, but the matter was handled quickly. Half an hour after our arrival at the port we were on board in Cagney's with our fellow suite guests eating lunch. My mom and her friend, traveling in a standard balcony cabin, were not so lucky. They waited in lines for close to two hours before boarding. We felt very fortunate to have the suite benefits for this cruise. Read more