The ship is large and when at capacity like the winter holidays the service really suffers. Some may like the "Freestyle" approach of NCL, but beware that all of the a la carte activities and the automatic gratuity of $13.99 per person per day can really add up. The only specialty dining that was worth it was Tapanyaki (hibachi) because the food is prepared right in front of you and very fresh. The other restaurants food was just average (at best) and the service was incredibly slow. In the Italian restaurant, it took 1.5 hours before we received our salads which was long after the children lost their patience and sought food else where. The incredibly slow service also makes it very difficult to make it to a show. Speaking of shows, they sell out quickly, but you can usually get in through the standby lines since it seemed many people don't show up even though they made a reservation. The excursions desk and guest services often had long lines.

There is also very poor communications while on board. It is hard to get a good answer about many excursion details. They encourage you to use the in room TV to reserve tender times, but they fail to tell you that even though the times all show as 12am, they are actually separate slots.

The Bingo is also a joke. You will pay $39-$69 to play just 3 games, but they only pay out about 10 (if even that much). The 3rd game is a progressive black-out with a payout of a few thousand dollars, but if no one wins in the first 47 balls (very rare) then it reverts back to a "consolation" prize of only a few hundred dollars. As if NCL hasn't taken enough of your money already. Read more