I received an offer for a free cruise from Casinos at sea, so I figured why not. I have sailed with NCL many times and have always been completely satisfied, however this ship is different. It was beautiful and some of the things were great, such as the cabins were spacious and had plenty of storage. The food was outstanding, no matter where you ate. I was on deck 16 with a balcony, but there was no coffee maker in the cabin as is customary with a balcony room on all their other ships. The ship design is very choppy and hard to navigate...it seemed like nothing flowed. Everything was extremely hard to find. There was no signage when getting off the elevator as to what side of the ship you were on, so you had to go to the room hallway to figure it out. There was no "regular" gift shop with all the little souvenirs to buy. It was mostly clothing and high end merchandise, also no American cigarettes to buy only Turkish. I am a smoker and there were only 2 places to smoke; one was a small area on deck 18 shoved to the very back of the ship with no seating or tables, the other was in the casino where there was a small(tiny) enclosed area in the back of the casino, where there were about 20 machines and 2 tables....Awful! My biggest regret was signing up for the spa. I always book on the first day as it is always money well spent. Well not this time The cost was $269. for a 5 day cruise! None of the jets were working in the pools, there were no hot tubs or whirlpools, the spa was very dark and kind of dreary. You had to go down a flight of winding slippery stairs to get to the spa from the front desk, which was okay for me, but if you had any handicap or were elderly it was an issue. The floors throughout were extremely slippery, and I saw several people fall. Certainly not worth the money! Embarkation was a total disaster. We chose to board at 12pm, but when we arrived we had to wait in a line outside behind about 800 people, and finally boarded at 2:30pm! I'm not sure if that was the fault of NCL or the port of New York. Also we were supposed to depart at 4pm and finally left at 6pm. When we got on board we were told there would be no stop in Virginia Beach with no reason given. I will continue to sail with NCL, but not on this class of ship.