I have sailed over 20 times but never tried NCL. Since I live within driving distance of MIAMI I thought i would give them a try. This particular itinerary was familiar to me and i enjoyed it. I chose a balcony room, midship ,13 deck. The room was a standard balcony room as you would expect, no complaints. When I and my wife boarded there was no one to greet us a map of the ship or direct us to the easiest route to our cabin. After exploring the ship we had our lunch at the cafe. Overall the food was lacking in taste and not hot. It did not get any better the rest of the trip. The food in the dinning rooms ( we did not do any specialty restaurants ) was nothing special. The waitstaff were not very good, not attentive to our needs (not refilling water glass, not offering to add fresh ground pepper to our foods, too much time in-between courses, not offering menus for dessert until asked).
The cruise lines wants you to purchase their drink package at $831 p/p. That is $99 a day plus 20% tip. You have to drink 11 drinks a day to break even. Since they do not have any waitstaff going around offering bar drinks you have top go to the bars which are over packed with others resulting in a wait time of between 20 to 30 minutes. They are making money off you because they are not serving you.
The shows onboard were not very good. To me they were amateurish and boring. The shows on the television in the stateroom were old and repeated themselves many times over. You could rent a movie for $9.99 that on other cruise lines were free to watch. They seem to want to nickel and dime you.
Standard Balcony room