I should begin by disclosing that we were a large family group (21 people) cruising together on this trip. Some of our experiences might have been unique to our situation, but overall we were disappointed with this NCL cruise.*Stateroom and ServiceOur inside stateroom felt slightly roomier than expected. We had 2 adults and 2 children in our room, so we utilized the wall bunk and the 2 beds put together (did not use the trundle bed). The bathroom was just big enough to meet our needs; however, due to some upstream work being done on the plumbing we had several moments of horrible smells coming from the toilet.Our cabin steward was very disappointing. I think he meant well, but to our frustration he was not good at what he did. The first 2 days we did not receive the daily bulletin. We had an ice chest with 3 gallons of milk for a 1 year old, which never received ice unless we begged or reminded him. Having enough towels was constantly a struggle: with 4 of us registered for the room, it seemed frustrating that we always received towels for 3.After several requests, we got the 2 twins beds placed together although there always seemed to be a gap between them. On Princess, they would place a special contraption that would make the 2 twins feel solidly like a single full bed...not here. We requested a crib before the cruise and never received it. After an additional request we received a fairly nice Pack-n-Play (it had a strange rubber smell to it however). I requested linens for it and received 5 pillow cases. What the?! On Carnival, the crib request was fulfilled when we arrived; it appeared spit-polished and came complete with linens and a comfy blanket for the child. Nice touch.*DiningOur large group of 21 hoped to dine together every evening, so we tried to set something up for The Windows main dining room. They would not take reservations during "normal" dining times, so the first 2 nights were a bit of a struggle to get seated. The service the first night was horrendous. The server messed up just about everyone's order, and the food was brought out hap-hazardly. 2 hours later we were not even interested in dessert. After 2 nights of this, we found maitre-d's Jesse and Dhuri who took care of us the rest of the cruise. The moral is: you can't operate through the normal NCL service channels. You have to "know somebody."After that, our service experience in the main dining room improved. The food quality was just OK. The one thing I noticed is that all the meat dishes have some sauce on it: even a basic steak or baked chicken would have some sauce on it. I didn't typically care for this, but others might. Even with the improved service, we noticed that dishes still came out hap-hazardly. I think most of it was an attempt to get the kids fed early, which was appreciated. Even the adults though would get dishes sporatically, so one person might be on their appetizer and the other might be finished with their entree!Raffles Court was our biggest disappointment. The buffet was fine for breakfast; the selections were quite good, although they never really changed. For lunch and dinner, we found the buffet to be lacking. Even the pizza did not taste very good to me or the kids! I am one of those people thinks even cheap frozen pizza is still pretty yummy, but not the pizza here. We were also disapointed in how often the buffet was "closed" or had next to nothing out. I always assume the buffet is the guilty pleasure available 24/7. Not so. I have to admit, the soft serve ice cream was addicting and the banana cake was quite good.We finally gave up and went to Cagney's for steak. The service was VERY good here, but the steaks were just okay. Note: I am a bit of a steak snob, but even some of the less discriminating people in our party thought the steaks were just fair. Some expected better for the cover charge. I say again, though, the service was excellent.Le Bistro was decent. Again, for the cover charge we expected better quality and selection. The only thing that really stood out to me was an entree that required yet another surcharge!! The service was good here, but we did not feel inclined to go back.Blue Lagoon was our savior on this trip. We went there after many disappointing meals to get some really good comfort food. The wings were awesome! The dumpling soup was good and just about every sandwich was tasty.On the last night, we went to La Trattoria, which is just an extension of the buffet area that has been sectioned off for an Italian restaurant. As it turned out, we saved the best for last. Every dish that we ordered was excellent. The portions were huge, and everyone left happy. I definitely recommend this restaurant, and it had the cheapest cover of all the restaurants!!*Kids ActivitiesThis is where NCL shines. The Kids Crew was enjoyed by every kid in our family (5 in total spent time in the Kids Crew). While at sea, the services are free. While in port, they charge a reasonable hourly fee. They kept the kids entertained throughout the trip.The pirate pool area in the back was also excellent. Our 5-year old twins cannot swim well, and there were plenty of wet areas for them to play and splah without needing to get neck-deep in water.*Grown-up ActivitiesI was disappointed with the activities, but truth be told we did not try a lot of them. I hit the casino several times and was not very inclined to go back. The Casino at Sea players cards do not get you any comps unless you play or lose A LOT of money in a short amount of time. The BJ and poker tournaments had really high buy-in amounts and the rules made the tournaments less appealing (e.g. - the poker tournament was $100 to join and the blinds were so high that people would drop out really quickly).Bingo also was very expensive in my opinion...$40 to play 3 cards (minimum) for only 4 games!!! I think of Bingo as a cheap way to have fun for an hour or so. There were so many people there that the odds were horrible. If we could have played for $10-20, I would not have cared at all about the odds. Also, the pay-outs were weak for the amount you paid. I think the game payouts were like $150-250. I am guessing the cruise was bringing in $5,000 per session and only paying out less than $1,000. Granted, they were giving away some excursions in between games, but I wasn't very interested in those. Perhaps this is standard now, but we thought it was a poor value for fun.*Final ThoughtsI will give New Orleans and NCL credit for relatively easy embarkation and debarkation. When we were originally checking in, there were so few people there that at times we did not even know where to go! Otherwise, it was a breeze.All-in-all, a disappointing cruise is still a lot of fun. We had high hopes for this NCL cruise, but our experiences on Carnival (for families) and Princess (for grown-ups) was a lot more pleasurable.