We went on the Christmas cruise 2014 with extended family. Embarkation was a nightmare. The worst experience being when we turned over our luggage to be organized and taken on the ship. The man scoffed at our $10 tip for our bags. He actually said that if we wanted our bags safely on board it wasn't much of a tip! We gave him more to make sure our bags got onboard... After proceeding through the chaos of the line of cattle we finally got to our rooms. The rooms were fine. The were clean, the room steward was great. Food was great. We chose to eat most of our meals in the garden cafe (the buffet). We did eat in the Venetian 3 nights, which turned out to be a 3 hour event. Not our cup of tea, but I'm sure some people love waiting for tiny servings. At least we did have another option. Entertainment. Wow. I felt like I was at our home town high school musicals. The second city comedy show was dumb, some people did seem to enjoy it though. And we were PACKED in a bar to watch this show, I'm sure some fire codes were broken there. Most of the other entertainment was not free, and it was to make NCL money, for example, bingo, raffles, casino, and the like. The booze is pushed from early morning on. Since this was a Christmas cruise, I fully expected beautiful decorations. Nope. A few cheesy cardboard wall cut outs, some gingerbread houses, one christmas tree. Not too festive