To give you a bit of background, we have completed many cruises aboard a variety of cruise lines, including Celebrity, P and O, Thomson and Royal Caribbean. What appealed to us was the itinerary of the trip and the drinks packages was included, which helps offset the bar bill at the end!

The trip started well with the flight from London to Venice leaving on time and arriving early. From Venice airport to the cruise terminal was pleasant with a short transfer time. You can do this yourself via water taxi although the transfers were in with our deal.

I have to honestly say that the NCL checking was the worst and most chaotic that we have ever experienced. It might be an idea for the staff of NCL to go and have a look at how others embark the ship. Once we collected our luggage from the bus we would then deposit it through a small building next to the cruise terminal. We were made to stand in a queue for 45 mins in the blazing heat, and keep in mind we had just arrived from the UK, therefore we were not in shorts and T-shirts. Quite what the purpose of this was I have absolutely no idea. It would have been much better for the luggage to be left inside the terminal and packaged up by the ship’s staff. Nevertheless, we entered the cruise thermal where we were offered everything form excursions, spar facilities to speciality dining. We were then greeted by a very long queue which took well over an hour to get through. Although this was in doors, it seemed to be absolutely chaotic with very little order. Some people were complaining to staff and were moved to a shorter queue, simply put this was unfair. If shorter queues were available then why wasn’t everyone offered this service? Read more