Embarkation, Norwegian could take a leaf out of Carnival's book and stagger embarkation times to reduce the huge amount of people waiting around to board.

we figured since boarding could be as early as 11:30am, that arriving at 1:30pm the lines would be reduced, alas even with a delay in transport to the pier and not arriving until 2pm, the lines were enormous... it took about 20-30 minutes to get through baggage check and security check-ins... then once inside the terminal awaiting to get issued room cards etc. were hundreds and hundreds of people... easily another hour of queuing, luckily our booking included two adjoining rooms, one of which was a suite on deck 7, so we were all eligible for priority boarding, we 'jumped the queue' to a small room off the main terminal and waited with about 10 other people going through their check-in... we had a few snacks from the provided food table and a cup of coffee and within 15 minutes we were ready to board. up the escalators and onto the ship for a quick briefing and then we were ushered into the Steak House for a complimentary lunch on account of being suite guests.

The service was good, we all ordered medium rare steaks... however 3 came out medium-well and only one medium-rare, the waiter had no explanation, then after we'd eaten most of our meals our starters arrived... I'm not one to hold a grudge and it was towards the tail end of the lunch window anyway, so I'm not going to judge the experience based off the first minutes on-board, however, whilst not a conscious decision at the time, it was to be the last meal we'd eat in the steak house on account of timings, we tried twice more during the day and always missed the cut-off... alas, it wasn't the end of the world Read more