We booked this one night cruise to nowhere for my mother's birthday celebration. We were 3 families with one teenager and one 10 year old. The unpleasantness began in the cruise terminal, the lines are long and take forever. We have cruised before on RCCL and never had this problem. My nephew was not allowed to board since they did not bring photo ID with them or a birth certificate. This meant that they had to get someone to go their home and send a fax. It took hours and the poor kid had was so bereft in the terminal. They were inflexible about it, but the cruise goes nowhere so we did not understand why the cruise line was being so difficult. They had other ID for him but they were adamant. US Customs did not take issue with it and it is their discretion. Well, eventually they got the fax and were permitted to board. The scene at the main pool was a bit crazy. People had buckets of beer and there was a lot of smoke from all the cigarettes and outdoor BBQ. The music was blasting. It felt like a booze cruise with a bunch of very drunk partiers. My parents who were in their 70s were appalled. The furniture was tacky. People were very loud and rude. There were many bachelor and bachelorette parties. So if you take one of these cruises, know about the noisy, drunk party atmosphere. I realize that may appeal to some of you. We finally found a quieter area in the back of the ship. The casino is like that also, crowded, smoky and full of drunk, loud people. What won't appeal to any of you is the really awful food, at Raffles, at the BBQ and in Windows. Three of us ordered steak at dinner and it was raw. The waiter, who did not understand English well enough, kept thinking we were saying rare. The salmon was raw too. You needed a magnifying glass to see the scallops in the appetizer. And when they say baby shrimp cocktail, they mean 1/4" miniature shrimp. The food was obviously cheap. It was all oversalted and mostly inedible. We left the table hungry after trying to get edible food in Windows for 2 hours. Turns out the waiter was brand new and they had sent him without any help. There was no captain. This poor man who barely knew English was on his own and he just kept messing up the orders. Dishes never came, dishes were wrong. This caused us to miss the show. And we did have to wait 20 minutes for a table. If that is freestyle, give me a seating any day. The Raffles buffet was just terrible. We tried it at 3 different times, breakfast, lunch and late night. The atmosphere inside Raffles is like a noisy tacky cafeteria. Keep walking to the back and outside where it is quite a pleasant place to sit. Unfortunately you aren't eating anything worth eating, but the tables out back are nice wicker bistro tables. The balcony rooms are small (and the balcony is small) and the beds were very uncomfortable. When we awoke the next morning there were new mattresses in the hallways. When we saw them removing some of the old mattresses after breakfast, we realized we had been sleeping on junk that was being tossed in the garbage. Old, stained, cheap mattresses. A noisy kid who was out on the balcony at all hours of the night kept all of our cabins awake. Even if this kid wasn't up for hours, the rooms creak very badly, also making it noisy. We had nice quiet rooms on Royal Carib. These were awful. We came off the boat the next morning as zombies. It's a good thing this was just for one night or we would have been really miserable. The cabin steward tips and dining tips are added automatically to your bill. No wonder they give terrible service, they all pool the automatic tips. There is no incentive to do a good job. A terrible system. If this had been our first cruise, we would never go on a cruise ship again. I know my parents will never cruise again. Thank goodness we have sailed with Royal Caribbean and know what a nice cruise is all about. We will never sail Norwegian Cruise Lines again.