I must say I spent a lot of time looking at the "boards" here and at other sites before taking this cruise. I had decided that we were going to cruise either the Mediterranean or Egypt for our next trip and it was just a matter of getting "Picky Wife's" buy in. At her surprise birthday party, some friends asked her and she said Mediterranean, so I started doing research. I found that this trip would do both! So now that I had the buy in, I started the research and booking process in earnest.
Being a first time cruiser with a "picky wife", I new I had to this right, or it would be the most miserable 12 days of my life, (cooped up in a room with a miserable wife that doesn't even pretend to like something she hates). I began looking and reading everything I could find on "first time cruiser" and "what I wish I would have known" message boards. Most information was very valuable but I may have over done it. But again in my defense, this has to go off great or I will never get "picky wife" on another ship ever.
The process through NCL was very simple and straight forward, (I booked all air and shore excursions through them), I may do it a bit differently next time though as far as air and pre/post tour hotels. My choice of hotel was less than stellar (but again, picky wife/dollar cutting) and we could have done better, but it was not terrible either.
We had originally booked a balcony room, but got upgrade to a mini-suite (at minimal cost) at the last minute. We really had a great cabin and our room stewardess & steward were great. The room itself was terrific! Lots of room for storage, a great balcony and we have actually had smaller hotel rooms. We had way more storage than we needed. We had a closet with about 10 hangers, a 4 drawer & 2 shelf set up by the bathroom, and 3 drawers at the desk (we kept our chargers and hair dryer, hair straightener etc, here). Luggage slipped neatly under the bed. We had adequate desk space for my laptop and other misc. stuff. Counter space in the bathroom was small but manageable.