This cruise consisted of myself and my husband (52 years), our 26-year-old son, 24-year-old daughter, and 20-year-old son. This was our 4th trip to Europe, each trip lasting 3 to 4 weeks. We have very reasonable expectations about cruising and travel in general, but this cruise was a great disappointment.

We first spent 3 days in Copenhagen exploring on our own, then spent 9 days on the cruise, and finished up by independently exploring Norway for 5 days. We chose this cruise because we believed it would be the overall best way to see Estonia, St. Petersburg, Finland, and Sweden (we had no expectations about Germany). We were very wrong. We do not blame NCL, of course, for the fact that the seas were too rough to dock at Warnemunde (Germany) for an extra day. However, we do regret taking a cruise that picked up passengers at 2 ports. Because we were picking up passengers at Warnemunde, there was no option to simply skip it due to rough seas. Instead, we had to waste an entire day waiting for the seas to calm down so we could pick those travelers up. This meant we had to skip Tallinn, a port we were very excited to see. I guess if the seas had stayed rough another 5 days, we would have skipped St. Petersburg, Sweden, and Finland too since NCL did not have the flexibility to simply skip the troublesome port (Warnemunde). Next time, we will not take a cruise that picks up passengers at 2 ports.

We ate at 3 specialty restaurants (Moderno, Cagney's, and Teppanyaki). We ate at Savor one day and O'Sheehan's one day. The rest of the meals we had at the Garden Café buffet. Again, we do not have unrealistic expectations about food quality in a ship that has to feed 4,000 guests multiple meals and snacks daily. However, none of us were pleased with the food (and I came home weighing 2 pounds less than when I went). Teppanyaki was by far the best restaurant and is the only restaurant I would go to again. The buffet claims to have "Asian day" and "seafood day", but it is really just the same food served every night. There's always an Asian food section, so "Asian day" wasn't anything different or special. And as for "seafood day", don't expect lobster or crab or even the nice big shrimp cocktail that you get in the specialty restaurants. There are dry fishcakes, fried catfish, and the kind of fried shrimp you get at Golden Corral. There is one crepe station that is perpetually crowded and a grill station that offers slices of beef one night, chicken another night, pork a third, etc. It was very cafeteria quality. Teppanyaki was excellent though...fun to watch and very delicious rice and seafood. Cagney's and Moderno were steakhouse quality food except for the shrimp cocktail appetizer at Cagney's which was excellent. Savor and Taste have the same menus and we checked them every day and were just never tempted to go there. We went once and the server was a cranky, overworked sweaty mess. It was loud, chaotic, and everyone was in a hurry. It was a very stressful environment and we didn't go there again. Read more