My wife and I are in our late fifties and this was our 9th cruise and first on Norwegian. We have taken 5 on Princess and that remains our favorite cruise line. Overall we enjoyed this cruise a lot and the Panama Canal is great and definitely worth the trip, but there was room for improvement.

Embarkation was slow, we waited about 2 1/2 hours. The prior cruise had norovirus so they were sanitizing the ship. I get that. What I don't get is they didn't seem to have an orderly plan to embark. As the terminal was filling up and there weren't enough seats, I said to my wife that it would be chaos when we finally are able to board. Then we noticed some passengers had cards with numbers on them, which we hadn't seen and nobody had mentioned to us. So my wife asked a staffer about it and he said to just board when the first group was called. So we did, and we probably got onboard ahead of people who were there before us. Just before boarding we came down an escalator into a relatively small area and the line stopped for several minutes. But people kept streaming down the escalator with no room to get off at the bottom. Finally people at the bottom yelled up to the top to tell them to stop coming down. Nobody from Norwegian directing traffic. You would think they would have this whole process down to a little better science.

Our interior cabin was fine. Comfortable enough and roomy enough as interiors go and everything worked fine and service was excellent. Entertainment was great, probably the best we've ever had on a cruise. The show in the main theatre every night was excellent to outstanding, with a lot of variety. They had an illusionist, hypnotist, acrobatic team, a Jersey Boys knockoff group, Second City comedy troupe, several other musical acts, and Elements, a Cirque du Soleil type show that was amazing. Some of these performers stayed on the ship the whole 2 weeks and gave other shows and presentations in other venues throughout the cruise. I was concerned about getting bored on a 2 week cruise with 6 sea days, but there was always something to keep me entertained. Read more