With a name like Cruise Critic I think we can too easily get in the habit of finding problems with sailing. As with all things in life to find a problem is pretty easy but to recognize the good is something that too often can be a struggle. We boarded this cruise with hesitation after a terrible NCL Epic experience 4 years ago. We have resisted sailing NCL during the last 4 years and discovered our love for Celebrity in that time. Anyway we went into this sailing with a lot of concern.

This cruise started with a change to our ports which was not a last minute change but something NCL knew about and would have been nice to know before making final payment. I do believe this pre-sailing communication is something NCL could afford to invest some serious attention to. At the port we were greeted by a challenging boarding process that we later found out was a compounding of a disembarkation computer failure. It was long, certainly not the best organized and surely not the most transparent. That being said when we arrived around 1pm it took us nearly 90 minutes to make it through security and get our keycards. On a 16 day cruise I think I can give it a wash.

The ship is beautiful, clean and amazing art pieces on every deck. The layout is easy to learn though I'll say now on the last day I still struggle to remember which way is fwd and which is aft. All floors pass from fwd to aft which makes the layout very easy. Unlike many ships the Buffet is FWD so I think that continued to throw me off. Read more