This was my 6th cruise, my first with NCL. We sailed on Pride of Aloha with 3 young children. After reading all the reviews, we were a bit nervous about traveling with NCL. The check-in process was great!! From the time we arrived at the pier, to the time we got on the boat was only about 15 minutes. From that, it went downhill.

We spent almost 2 hours waiting for our room to be ready. Fortunately, the children's pool was open, and we had packed the kids suits in our carry-on, so they happily played in the pool while we relaxed in the lounge chairs nearby. Finally, our room was ready, and we piled in.

We had 2 balcony rooms. One for the two of us and our youngest. One for Grandma and our older two. To say the rooms were small, was an understatement. When the pull-out couch was out for our youngest, there was absolutely no space to move. Thankfully, we had a balcony, and that saved us. Our beds were set up as singles, even though we requested a double. We finally just slid them together ourselves, which let us find out they weren't even beds just cots, and a few left overs from our rooms previous occupants. They were hard as a rock. We requested egg crates and extra bedspreads for 4 days, but finally gave up. The housekeeping was one of the worst parts of our trip. Most nights, it was 9:30 or 10:00 before she came to make up our room. By then, the kids were asleep. We requested extra towels almost every day, but never got any (we had 3 people in our room, but only 2 towels). We finally gave up and just got beach towels from the pool to use. One day we requested new sheets and vacuuming (we had sand everywhere from the beach). That was the only day we got new sheets or the floor vacuumed! Read more