I am a 31 year old professional who sailed on this cruise with a friend of mine I met in college. We are both very active and do as many of the ship's activities as possible and try to keep active on shore as well. We have both sailed a number of times recently. I have now sailed on NCL, RCCL, Carnival, Costa, and Princess.My friend and I both arrived on Saturday to spend the day in New Orleans. I was in N.O. a couple of times in 2000, and the French Quarter area is as I remember it. I am not a big fan of the city, as I feel it is kind of dirty and that Bourbon Street is a cheap imitation of Las Vegas. When I'm looking for a place to eat, a guy shoving a menu in my face and telling me to come in to eat reeks of desperation. We did find a pretty good lunch spot there, but the name escapes me. I highly recommend staying at the Drury Inn. It is a short walk to the French Quarter and probably just over a mile to the cruise ship terminal. We did the walk the morning of embarkation in about 15-20 minutes. The Drury Inn is clean and comfortable, supplies you with a happy hour and pretty good breakfast in the morning, and most importantly, will let you park your car there for the duration of your cruise all for about one Benjamin. Parking at the terminal alone will set you back that much. For a list of other hotels that have park and sail packages, look at the New Orleans Visitors and Convention Center website. Oh - we spent part of the day looking at the devastation of hurricane Katrina in the Lower 9th Ward. Ask for directions to the Lower 9th Ward Bridge (maybe 10 minutes by car from the French Quarter). Once you cross the bridge you can drive through the neighborhoods and still see houses boarded up and with spray painted messages from rescuers. We felt fairly safe in the neighborhood, but would not recommend going there after dark.

We were very excited to get to the cruise terminal for this cruise. NCL had graciously upgraded us from an interior cabin to a balcony. This was a nice bonus which we felt we deserved since we booked just before prices dropped significantly. Your research may have already showed you that this is a 10 year old ship, but it is fresh off a dry dock. The ship looks very clean and there were only very minor details (a few windows with water damage, a worn out foosball table, etc) that were lacking. I did not like a couple of the layout features. For one, the disco is at the end of the ship behind the casino. I prefer ships that put the disco in the center of the ship so it can attract bigger crowds. I went by on a couple of nights around midnight and it was dead. I'm also not sure why the photo gallery is at the end of one deck either. You'd think they would want that more centrally located. As a result, I didn't bother to seek it out and thus didn't buy any photos. Most of the ships features were great. You could tell they intentionally saved some space on the ship. For example, part of the gym is located in an area where on other ships it would be a walkway. On this ship you can only pass through on one side of the ship in this section, but it is a minor inconvenience. We both agreed that the ship was a very manageable size and there was very little waiting ever. We were a little worried going in that we would have less to do on a ship of this size as opposed to a 3,000 passenger ship, but found that not to be the case.

The social staff provided a great range of activities on this ship. There were things on this ship that I had never seen offered before such as dodge ball and darts. Fortunately, they didn't combine the two. ;) They also offered Nintendo Wii, but would have liked to have seen it on a larger screen (I think the one they used was only about 25 inches). They have the old standards of shuffleboard, basketball, ping pong (4 tables), golf driving nets (4 spots), two endless pools, and one large central pool. The center pool was so large that you could swim laps if there were no kids (possible early in the am or evening). We both liked having one large pool as opposed to two small ones. They also have a kids pool area that is like a mini water park. This is helpful to those of us without kids because it keeps them entertained and away from the center pool and hot tubs. It is noteworthy that there were no pool activities (i.e. pool games, volleyball, hairy chest type contests, etc.). We had fun doing or watching these sorts of things on other ships, but for some reason we didn't have them. Even so, there were a myriad of different activities on the ship, and anyone who says there is nothing to do is not bothering to look at the daily schedule. Read more