We have been a big fan of cruising and have been on more than twenty. Our Family wanted to do a Holiday Cruise and this one was available for the Thanksgiving Holiday. While enroute to the port we received a message from NCL not to arrive before 2:00 PM. Pretty hard to change your flights and travel arrangements to the port at that time so arriving at 10:00 we were processed in. We were then told that since it would be a few hours until we could board that they had arranged a shuttle to take us to a nearby shopping area with restaurants and such and that upon returning we could just board the ship. That turned out to be not the case! No way was anyone going to let us even enter the terminal even with our #3 boarding card. We had to stand in line in the hot sun for another couple of hours and go through the process again. Then when I got to last security check point the agent sent me back to the terminal as he said my card was not operating. Was a bad start and it only got worse. The ship was totally overloaded. Lines for everything including the elevators and up charges that we had never heard of before. We were only able to use the dinning room twice as it had previously been booked and only able to see one show and had to stand for that one as all had been booked prior to embarkation. Coffee was not served in the dinning room or even asked if it was desired however alcoholic drinks were. Had to ask for bread. The poor food service personnel were totally overloaded and spread way too thin. Tendering was another matter. Our group had a 9:00 AM reservation. While part of us made it the other half were asked to stand by in the dinning room until called. They waited three hours and thus only had a couple hours to enjoy the island. We were charged the full gratuity for the embarkation day even though we only were on board a small portion of the day and no full meals and on-board credit cannot be used for your gratuities. We have been on more than 20 cruises including NCL but this by far was our worst experience and it is very unlikely that we would choose NCL again. The weather was great and being with family was great but other choices would have been much better