We were 13 people (from the US and England) on our second family cruise. We spent four fabulous days in Barcelona touring and exploring on our own. Our accommodations at the Villa Emilia in Barcelona were terrific and the staff there went out of their way to ensure us a good time.

Our group was so excited to board the Norwegian Gem and travel the great itinerary through Italy and onto Villefranche. I planned this trip in September and our wonderful travel agent booked it. We had 1 penthouse suite, 1 mini suite (my hubby and I) and 4 outside balcony cabins. The accommodations were lovely and the food good but that is where it stops. Let's just say the service was lousy and the staff that we encountered fairly incompetent. First and very importantly, NCL does not receive closed captioning on the Gem (didn't bode well with the 2 cabins that have hearing impaired people). Our TV set worked for a total of 1 1/2 days. Now I know TV is not an important component, however, when you are in your stateroom and have 1/2 hour or so of downtime it is a good thing!!! We had "technicians" in our cabin on 2 different nights at 11:15pm. Since we were getting up to enjoy the wonderful ports we were really not happy about these "late night" intrusions. Out of the six cabins booked my husband and I paid for three. The other two did not have TV for 3 days. Our cousins in the penthouse suite did have TV but never had sunlight on their balcony due to the overhang. Their concierge took them to a "private" deck area and ensured them they would have a key for this area so they could enjoy the sunshine. Our cousins were pleased with this compromise until they never received a key and every time they wanted to sit in the sun they had to call the concierge who in turn would have to call someone else to let them onto this "private" deck area.

We did eat in one of the two main dining rooms, the Magenta Room as the other, the Grand Pacific had a stringent dress code. We didn't have the necessary "dress up clothes" as all the information sent prior said it's "freestyle" with no worries!! There are several restaurants that charge per person on board. The first night was buy one get one free so we dined at Cagney's. It was very good. We were 4 non-meat eaters in the group and the food was perfect. The next night we dined at Teppanyaki at a cost of $25 per person. The food, prepared at the table, was very good. However, we were asked to move to the main part of the Asian restaurant for dessert so they could sit another group. There was no set up for 13 people in this part so it was confusing and to be frank rather rude to uproot us for dessert especially since we were paying $25 per person. That was it for our group. We decided our "freestyle" from that point on would be what was include!!! The food in the Magenta Room was quite good as was the service. As far as the spa goes, the manager at the spa was quite unfriendly but at least those of us that used the facilities managed to put that out of our minds. Our cousins paid for use of the spa for the week and even they were wondering why there was an air of unpleasantness. There were empty wine glasses around the spa area that were not picked up, so they had to be careful of where they stepped. Read more