My wife and I have cruised with Carnival several times, RCL once and this was our first experience with NCL. We drove from west central florida and arrived at the port about 1:45pm, dropped off the luggage, and parked the car in the garage with some reservation - the last time we cruised from Miami, I set the security alarm on the car and when we got back to port the battery was dead. Apparently, the garage tends to rumble as vehicles drive through, which set the alarm off, which drained the battery. Well I wasn't going to let that happen again and manually locked the doors. More on that later...

We entered the terminal and were onboard within 15 minutes. We each received a glass of bubbly and were escorted to our cabin by one of the staff. The cabin was ready, and while it is smaller than Carnival cabins, there was plenty of room for two. Not much in the way of storage though. Our cabin was on the back side of the ship, deck ten, which put us just under the outdoor cafe. While it wasn't a problem most of the time, we continually heard tables being moved around on the deck above us, especially late at nite when they were repositioning the tables and chairs. We really liked the the aft balcony though, and if we were to book again I would request a cabin without a public area above. The Freestyle cruising is something you need to get used to. On prior cruises, we were used to set dinner times, getting to know the servers and the staff, and they getting to know us. While everyone was friendly, and we enjoyed having a table for two most of the time, we missed having the server know our names, regular or decaf, deserts, drinks we prefer, etc...

Not that I missed them, but there was no bellyflop or hairy chest contests, no ice carving, and very few onboard activities other than bingo, and the shows. Relaxing yes, but it took a couple of days to get used to. Read more