This was my wife's and mine first time ever cruising and after checking a lot of cruise lines, we felt that NCL and Freestyle cruising would work best for us. This cruise was to celebrate our seventh wedding anniversary and didn't want to have to plan things around meal times or have assigned talbes. We are so glad we picked NCL!

We drove down from Indiana Saturday spending the night just outside of Jackson, Mississippi. We arrived in New Orleans around 11:30 am and thanks to other reviews on Cruise Critic, we parked at Fulton Place Parking for only $70.00 for the week(almost $40 cheaper than NCL parking) They had a free shuttle that took us right to the terminal where we checked in our bags and headed in. We were in and out of the terminal within 15 minutes at the most and boarding the ship.

Because we are not big alcohol drinkers, we figured it would be wise to get the soda sticker. This cost $50.53 per person and turned out to be a very wise investment. Unlike some reviews I have read, we never had a problem getting a soda with our sticker and even got refills with no problem. We figured that we saved well over $100.00 each at the very least by getting this soda sticker. We would just lay our key cards on the table when sitting down to eat and was asked right away if we wanted a soda. Refills would be at our table before we finished the first soda. Read more