We were looking forward to the cruise from Miami to Los Angeles as a luxurious couple of weeks visiting some exotic ports in Central America as well as going through the Panama Canal.

Boarding was relatively quick and easy, taking less than an hour. We ate in the buffet while the rooms were being prepared and then wandered around looking at the facilities that seemed quite good. We could get into the cabins at around 2pm and the room was large with a decent size window. The cabin was near the end of a dead-end corridor so that it was very quiet for most of the time although there was sometime a little scraping noise from the restaurant above.

The emergency evacuation drill was straightforward, but then I encountered the first problem with bar staff who had no idea how to serve people in the order they arrived. It was like I was invisible as they ignored me and served people who had just arrived. This was a problem with most of the bars throughout the cruise. The only bar which had bartenders that were efficient was at the back of Deck 11. I would say that the bartenders in the Dazzles Bar were particularly surly. Surliness seemed to be a trait of many of the staff on the Norwegian Sun. Read more