I worked a summer in the print shop aboard the QE2 back in college and while we didn’t get to experience the passenger food much, we got to see the shows and bars. Then some 13 years ago, I did a photography cruise to Alaska on HA which was very nice. There were classes during sea days, a group to eat with at dinner, the food was spectacular in their MDR. It was scheduled dining and by the 2nd day, our server knew what I wanted to drink. There was a bit of fanfare surrounding the initial departure, one night was an amazing dessert offering where the chefs got to show off with ice sculptures and sugar art we normally only see on cooking shows, and the final night they served baked Alaska in the MDR complete with staff presentation.

So perhaps I went into my NCL cruise with unreasonable expectations that all cruises were like this. I knew some lines had a reputation for being party cruises, and I'm definitely not a partier, but this seemed a good option. It was a similar itinerary to my last cruise, but I was going with friends, so liked the idea of going again.

Embarkation was surprisingly smooth. We arrived around 1pm. Unlike my last cruise that provided physical luggage tags in advance, we were somehow expected to print our own. Not that printing is a problem, but protecting those tags through the abuse of bag handling seemed tricky. We didn't print our tags mostly due to oversight, but the porter grabbed our bags from the car, took them to a tent where they gave us proper tags, wrote our room number on it and added them to a truck. Then it was a long walk through the building to a short line before the check in desk. Read more