Great departure date allowed us to spend a couple of days enjoying the music festival in New Orleans which started on Friday and ship left Sunday. Embarkation was very smooth and fast.Glad to see that the Asian art was kept after the ship's overall last Fall. Stateroom ( balcony ) was comfortable....mattresses were new ! Food : Raffles ( self serve) had quite a variety from fish to pasta and meat. Something new everyday and if one didn't like fish there was plenty of meat & pasta etc.. Dessert at Raffles was boring....not much change from one day to the next and it would be nice to have a few more cookies available there instead as having to go to the area near the Raffles bar ( aft ). Mostly we had fruit for dessert. Also there were never any cookies at the Blue Lagoon 24 hour restaurant, just slices of cake.We had dinner at the Bistro..very nice dinner; also at the Garden & the Windows restaurants. Except for one night when we asked for medium well cooked meat and we were given what I would call rare ( a lot of blood ) all other meals were good. The waiter asked if we would like to order something else but we declined. Just couldn't be bother waiting for another entree because we wanted to make it to the show. "Open areas "We particularly like the aft part of the ship as it has three levels ( from deck 12 to deck 9 ) where one can sit under the sun or in the shade and it is quite there. The only activities going on there are ping pong ( deck 11 aft ), the children's pool ( really not that noisy except perhaps for a couple of hours a day when the kids come ). In deck 9, besides the kids' pool there is a whirlpool so we used that one several times. Staff was great. Literally we did not find anyone who wasn't pleasant. Several of the ship's officers came to our meet & greet meeting. From that day on, every time they passed us they stopped to say hello. Actually a couple of times they actually sat down with us and just chatted. Entertainment : Shows were good. We went to every one except one night when they had Second City.Games: it would be nice if they could come up with at least one new game. It seems that every cruise line has the Newlywed not so newlywed show. It was actually quite hilarious because some of the participants did not quite understand the Cruise Director Paul who has quite a "thick" British accent. The audience ended up "translating" some of the questions which made the game show a lot funnier.  Disembarkation : Due to 5 non US people not clearing US Immigration on time, ( they were paged so many times we lost count !!!) the disembarkation was held for quite a while as no one was allowed off the ship by US Immigration/Customs until they were cleared. Some people who had early flight departures did not make it on time and it caused quite a bit of chaos when finally everyone was able to disembark. Although the disembarkation was by color, I was a bit messy. We were supposed to disembark at 09:15 and we didn't until 10:30. By the time we got our bags was almost 11:00. Must say I was impressed by everyone's Customer Service on both this vessel. On previous cruises ( NCL or other cruise lines we always seem to "find" one or two members of staff who aren't as friendly. On this cruise we did not encounter that !  We enjoyed the cruise and itinerary and are looking of doing this same repo cruise next year ( they are changing the itinerary a bit).