My mother, my brother and his friend and I cruised on the 5 night Christmas cruise. I have been on 5 cruises (Celebrity to Russia and Baltic, Caribbean, Western Med and Oceania to South America, plus a river cruise to Eastern Europe). My mother has also cruised on Crystal and Seabourn. We have never cruised for shorter than 10 days. This was my brother's first cruise.

We decided to try NCL because of the "Freestyle" dining where we could eat when and where we wanted. The number of specialty restaurants was also very appealing. In addition, the abundance of Asian food, including Shabu Shabu is hard to come by or non-existent on most lines. My brother likes to dress casually and we decided Celebrity would probably not work for him. We thought considering everything NCL was our best option.

Embarkation: This was a nightmare. It took a least an hour just to get to the check in desk. We had all our paperwork and quickly got our SeaPass. Not sure why the lines moved so slowly. It was the most unorganized embarkation I have experienced. Once onboard we went up to the Garden Cafe (Tsar's was already closed) because the cabins were not ready. As soon as we sat down the announcement came that the cabins were now ready. We were not impressed with the choices in the cafe. I chose a bunch of different items but it was all unappealing. Read more