We wanted an easy cruise and only booked 3 weeks before departure. We sailed out of Manhattan, which we live close to. Embarkation was extremely easy. We were on the boat, our room was ready and had our bags by 10:00 in the morning! We had reserved our restaurants as soon as we had booked. We were unhappy that you couldn’t book the shows until you were onboard. We ate at 3 specialty restaurants. We ate at the Brazilian steakhouse, the French Restaurant and the fish restaurant. They were all excellent! The entertainment on Norwegian was wonderful. The first night we saw a wonderful Broadway review. It had all of the actors from Million Dollar Quartet. Million Dollar Quartet was broadway quality! Don’t miss it! We also saw a fabulous band that did the entire Fleetwood Mac album at Pour Richard’s. It was like being at a rock concert! The pool was very crowded and noisy. We looked into buying the additional quiet area (Vibe) but it only had a hot tub and we didn’t feel it was worth it. On the 16th floor in the very back of the ship, there is a similar free area that had 2 hot tubs and a water area. The staff was very pleasant and attentive all over the ship. The ship was immaculate. This was our 18th cruise. We have been on Royal Caribbean, Disney, Celebrity, Carnival, and Norwegian. We feel that the food and entertainment are best on Norwegian but we like the physical boat better on Royal Caribbean. My only negative experience on this cruise is that I am very sensitive to smells and the boat smelled of exhaust in many areas. Otherwise, we had a wonderful cruise and would go on a Norwegian cruise again!