The cruise to Canada and New England was considered a "distinctive voyage". It was okay, but there are a lot of caveats. It's not like Norwegian had anything disastrous happen on this cruise (and I hate people who complain excessively about vacation), it's just that it was... well, a boring itinerary and a boring ship. Additionally, it's important to know that the Canada cruises skew a lot older than other ships (not that NCL can change that). We did this as our honeymoon and oftentimes, by midnight we were the ONLY people out in public areas. If you like nightlife at all, this ship has none. There was never anybody in Bliss, the nightclub. There were almost NO children on our ship. It was pretty much only older folks.

First, the ship. The Gem has a sort of confusing layout. It's not intuitive. Our cabin was aft and many of the activities we enjoyed were in Spinnaker Lounge, on deck 13 Forward. The problem is, to get there oftentimes you have to go up or down a deck to get across the ship. The flow of getting around takes a lot to get used to on the Gem. I hit a lot of dead ends trying to get to an attraction. The Gem also clearly is in need of an update in terms of its attractions and restaurants/bars. A lot of the "theming" is blatantly dated, like the martini bar.

Our cabin was great, no complaints, a lot of storage space. In fact, I had more closet space in an oceanview than I had on my last cruise in a balcony! Only complaint is that NCL televisions are tiny, but that's true across the line and not just on the Gem. Read more