Our group consisted of my mother, who was just shy of 85, and myself in Owner’s suite cabin 9504, and my brother and his wife in the connecting balcony stateroom, 9506. Here are some general observations of the ship, itinerary, dining, etc.

The first point to mention is that prior to boarding, we took the NCL shuttle from Gatwick airport to the ship. NCL needs to update the information available online. The information states that the pickup point for the shuttle is at Gatwick’s North terminal only. We stayed over the night before at the Hilton connected to South terminal, so dutifully schlepped our luggage up to North terminal, only to find out that there is a pickup point at South terminal too. Mom was not happy.

My brother and his wife went out of Heathrow airport which had multiple shuttle buses running, however there was only one for Gatwick, which meant we had to wait until all passengers had arrived. Two of the incoming flights were slightly delayed, so it was more like 1:30 PM before we arrived at the ship. Our stateroom just became available as we were boarding. We received a personal escort to O’Sheehan’s where we met my brother and his wife. Read more