The actual beginning of my wife, 14 y/o son and my cruise began four days before we left Alaska for the trip. I was sitting at my computer at 6:50 am when the phone rang and it was the upgrade fairy for NCL. I was being offered an upgrade from my BA balcony to an AA owner's suite for a small additional sum of money. I had to run upstairs and wake my wife to see if she wanted to do it and of course she said yes. Due to our flying out of Alaska we had to leave Sunday afternoon and arrived in Miami at 7:15 am on Monday. We hung around the airport until about 9:15 and then took a cab to the cruise terminal to become literally the first people in line. The doors opened about 10:30 and we headed upstairs and sat and waited for about 20 minutes before we were let in to begin check in. Since we were now VIPs we had a separate check in area and after that was accomplished we were personally escorted to the VIP waiting room where there was pastries, cheeses, small sandwiches, fruits, coffee, ice water and tea waiting for us. At around 11:30 all waiting VIPs were then escorted to the plantation lounge on the 12th deck to await the opening of Cagney's restaurant where we would have lunch. We were all told that our cabins would be available at 2 pm.

CABIN Our suite was wonderful to say the least. We had a separate bedroom with a queen bed, bathroom with separate tub and shower, small (skinny) walk-in closet with safe. The main part of the cabin had a separate living area and a dining area as well as a bar. There was also another bathroom that just had a stool/toilet and sink in it. The balcony was huge with a dining table, two chairs, two lounges and a four person hot tub. The hot tub's water temperature was only controlled by the hot water that was put in with the hot and cold water taps. Our butler name was Jeffrey and he arrived shortly after we entered the room. He told me to indicate the three bottles of liquor I would like him to get for me for our bar and also pointed out the bottle of imported champagne that was chilling for our bon voyage. Jeffrey would arrive every afternoon with a small tray of either cheeses, hors d'oeuvres, or pastries. Jeffrey was very good at making sure we always had fresh ice in our ice bucket. Our first morning on board ship we ordered room service for breakfast, and we were very happily surprised to have Jeffrey arrive, set up our table on the balcony and serve us our breakfast. We had assumed the food would arrive at the requested time and we would take care of it ourselves. We really took full advantage of the hot tub during the cruise. It was so nice to return to the suite at the end of the day and just jump in for a quiet soak with a rum and pepsi (no coke products on board) in my hand.

RESTAURANTS There are three specialty restaurants on board and we tried all three. Il Adagio was an Italian restaurant that had a cover of $10.00. We had no complaints about the meal. The service was good and the food was wonderful. Le Bistro was a French restaurant that we were very unhappy with. The cover charge was $20.00 and we had reservations for 8:00. We arrived at 7:45, intentionally a little early because we wanted to eat and make it to the 9:00 pm show. We were seated immediately and the restaurant was only about 25% full. With exception of my son's duck, the rest of the meal was not to our liking and took almost two hours to finish due to some reason that we were never made aware of. Our waitress and the maitre de both apologized a couple of times for the slowness of the meals but it didn't really matter because we missed the show anyway. The other restaurant was Cagney's steakhouse and we were very pleased with that. Cagney's has a cover charge of $25.00. My wife and I love our rib steaks and Cagney's rib steaks were very good but I wouldn't say they were any better quality than what we buy in our local Safeway stores. The shrimp cocktail was wonderful with three jumbo shrimp that were what I would call "three biters". There are two main dining rooms and we ate in only one during this four day cruise. The only real comment I could make on our meal in the main dining room would be that there shrimp cocktail consisted of a large tablespoon of very tiny micro shrimp that had been dredged through some cocktail sauce. You had to eat them with a spoon because you couldn't pick them up in your fingers. Because we were in a suite we had the privilege of eating all breakfasts and lunches in Cagney's restaurant. We did not eat any lunches there with the exception of embarkation day but did eat three breakfasts. You ordered your hot items off of a menu and all cold items were set up on an open buffet. The food and service was always good and they had a great selection. We never ate in the buffet but we walked by it a number of times and everything always looked great. Read more