Just got off the Gem today. What a wonderful cruise! In no particular order, here are my observations after a very satisfying week! Let me preface this by saying we were in The Haven and so were able to skip many of the usual lines and were escorted to our dinners and excursions. Let me tell you, that once you go Haven, you will never want to go back. But enough of that...

1) Pre-board testing. This is the one part of the process that being a high level Latitudes member or Haven doesn't help you. Basically you start with a security sweep (which I think is for the benefit of the 3rd party CVS crew running the testing); Next stop is to show your passport and vaccine card. Fair warning that if you have a WHO vaccine card (my daughter lives in Austria ) the entry-level folks doing the scanning didn't have all the information they needed; no worries, the senior staff were there to straighten things out. Finally, you self swab for the antigen test and are then sent to a waiting area until they call your test number (you might also get a txt/email if you pre-registered with CVS). Once your number is called, they put a wristband on you which you will need to gain access to the actual port where you can check-in. Not a bad process, but I think NCL will smooth out some of this process over time. I'd say the whole testing scenario took about 45 minutes.

2) All of the crew we interacted with were so happy to be sailing again. Many of them have been "on vacation" for over a year. Service was awesome. I especially like the effort they put in to remember your name, even if they've only interacted with you once. Shout out to my friend Yad-Z from "South Philly" at Maltings! Read more