We live in Southern California and visit Baja Mexico, often. I have been on a 4 day cruise to Ensenada before; my hubby had not been on a cruise before. Our adventures in Baja usually consist of dirt roads, local food, fishing and camping. This trip, of course would be a little more upscale.
Embarkation: the process was painless for us. We had arrived about an hour after they had opened for boarding. We drove up, unloaded baggage with a porter, parked the car. We stood in line for maybe 20 minutes and boarded the ship. We went directly to our room, it was ready for us. I had heard before of people having to wait to go to the room, we had no wait.
We picked Norwegian Cruise Lines because of the "freestyle cruising". We didn't want to be confined to eating in one place and one time and having to dress up a lot. The ship itself was beautiful.