Overall, I had an amazing time so don't get me wrong when I say it wasn't the best. I have only been on four cruisers so my opinion may not hold much weight but I have found myself agreeing with others on the same aspects that have cruised much, much more. Three of my four cruises have been with NCL and I absolutely love them! The Dawn is a smaller ship, absolutely beautiful, had the best staff I've encountered, and I loved the layout. So far this is my favorite ship. Next, I have been on the Breakaway. Now this mega ship, having a lot of bells and whistles was absolutely gorgeous with amazing, large, restaurants and activity spaces. Although it was a spectacular ship, it lost the friendly feel that I absolutely love on the smaller ships. I love to see familiar faces throughout the cruise and make friends to eat dinner with and hang out with etc. which the mega ships seem to lose. So two days ago, I got off the Norwegian Gem and while it had that small ship feel, the layout was awful. Certain decks you couldn't go all the way around both sides of the ships, at the back the elevators only hit floors 12-7, the restaurants (including the specialty dining options) were small, one even had a public bar in it (Moderrno) which I felt ruined my dining experience that I had paid extra for, the buffet lines and seating needed to be about four times the size for the amount of people (they even opened a specialty restaurant for seating during breakfast and lunch), lines for restaurants were always busy, and probably one of the worst things was the fact that there was very little fun things planned to do...I could go on but you get the point. If this was my first cruise, I probably wouldn't notice so much and took it for what it was. I still partied hard, had an amazing birthday, was in gorgeous weather, and didn't have to work! I can't complain but I felt my review could maybe help people make a decision about taking the Gem.