My husband and I sailed on 9/12/04 and this is only our second cruise, may be our last. (Our first was Carnival Ecstasy 4 nights and it was great). We were offered a full cruise refund up until the day we sailed, but we had already made so many other plans for this vacation, and were promised that NCL was working very hard to improve this cruise, that we decided to go anyway. We booked 4 days pre-cruise at the Marriott with NCL, and this was probably the best decision we made. Because the hotel is terrific and we were on the 33rd floor with a partial ocean/city view and it was breathtaking. We also had VIP embarkation via Marriott through NCL and this went very well. We left the hotel at 1:00 p.m. and were on board by 1:45 p.m. and our room was ready with a bottle of champaign on ice. Disembarkation was also very smooth and fast, as we had a 1:20 p.m. flight to Sacramento, California.

The cruise was okay, but no better than just okay. The food was terrible in the buffet, and fair to good in the dinning rooms. We did not have a hot meal the entire seven days on ship. I ate cream of wheat with a bagel every morning (my doctor should be very happy about that), because the eggs were awful and the bacon and hashbrowns tasted like stale fish oil. Speaking of fish, the second night we ate in the buffet they offered a good looking fish filet, so several of us put some on our plate. Well just let me tell you none of us took a second bite it was so bad, stale, dry, old, bad taste. And even today I hesitate to have fish for dinner the memory of that bite still lingers with me.

Our state room was very nice, it was an aft balcony on the 8th deck and was spotless every day, towels ready, ice in the bucket we just cannot complain about our room steward Jose, he was exceptional. We asked for an egg carton foam pad and he had it on our bed the first night by the time we came back from "sail away". The only complaint about the stateroom is that it was directly above the Stardust Theater and we heard every sound like the show was being put on in our room. And I had been promised that we would not hear a sound from the theater before we sailed by NCL. Read more