My husband and I wanted to try cruising out of Boston, a port local to us, and to try out Norwegian after already having sailed on Carnival (10 years ago to Canada from NYC) and Royal Caribbean (to Alaska last year). We travelled with another couple who were on their first cruise ever. We all enjoyed ourselves, aided by the mostly smooth sailing, pleasant weather, enjoyable itinerary, and great service.

The Pearl was similarly sized to our prior ships (Carnival Glory and RC Serenade of the Seas), and a size that we like. It's big enough to have plenty of venues, but not so big as to be inconvenient to walk end to end and to mostly use stairs (our rule - only use elevator if traveling more than 3 flights UP). We can't compare it to bigger ships, that have lots of extra entertainment, but I feel sure we don't miss go-carts, super-slides, etc. because we aren't traveling with kids anymore. We would probably enjoy some bigger, more spectacular production shows, but the singers and dancers on Pearl did a fine job.

We had an inside cabin on deck 10. Deck 10 seemed pretty quiet as it is sandwiched between other cabin-only floors. We did not choose our cabins, but allowed Norwegian to assign them. The inside cabin had a nice sized shower and pretty good storage space. We barely met/saw our steward, but he always did a good job cleaning the room. Read more