This was our 15th cruise and 3rd with NCL. We had a large extended family group on board. We have sailed all of the major lines and decided to come back to NCL after a long layoff. Big mistake. The thing about NCL that you have to understand is that it is now a corporate machine. They built these new ships to compete with RCL but they have decided to nickel and dime everything. The service is poor, not because the employees are lazy but because their hands are tied. Everything is a corporate policy and so the employees are like robots reading from scripts. Nobody has authority to do anything. This is not condusive to a luxury environment. We are used to being pampered on Princess and treated warmly and the service on NCL was cold and uncaring. I got the sense if any of the employees did anything to try to accomodate a passenger their might lose their jobs.

Let's get into specifics. First, the good. The ship is new and clean and there were a lot of fun activities like the ropes course and water slides. The shows -- Million Dollar Quartet and Burn the Floor -- were excellent. The Tropicana Room is a great dinner venue. OK, that's about it for the positives.

The negatives are overwhelming. The ship is large but the actual public space is not. Unless you pay extra, you are crammed into pools and hot tubs like sardines. The prime space on the ship -- the Waterfront -- consists entirely of pay venues. Many other areas (e.g., Haven) are off limits unless you pay extra. So the actual space for paying customers who are not the *extra* paying customers is limited. The regular customer is a second-class citizen. Read more