This is a review of my sailing on the NCL Pearl on October 23, 2011.

I've been cruising since 1988 and this was my second NCL sailing. Previously, I did a 4 day cruise on the Sky last year. I am 42 and cruised with my 40 year old friend, also a moderately experienced cruiser. Two young at heart middle aged girls! We booked the cruise directly with NCL and got a fabulous rate for a balcony guarantee. I also received $175.00 in on board credit for having cruised with NCL and for having cruised in the past year. What a nice surprise that was! I didn't care so much for the itinerary for my part, I could happily stay on the boat for 7 days (which, as you'll soon read, we pretty much did!).

I live in South Florida and prefer to drive myself to the port. Parking there is so easy and, for me, I hate waiting for someone to pick me or hate that that they're waiting for me for whatever reason, so we left my car in the parking garage. It's $20 per day. I also hate picking people up, lol, but I do it. I prefer to get to port early, but in this case, in all the years I've been driving to downtown Miami, I missed the exit, got back on I95 and wound up in the express lane almost to Broward County. Our bags were taken by a porter as soon as we got close to the terminal. The line to exit the terminal was double wrapped around the building. I texted with some of my Cruise Critic friends who got there early and were inside. Apparently there was a problem with the prior sailing, so boarding was delayed. We weren't informed of the delay by anyone from NCL. We were outside for about an hour (in the hot South Florida sun!) before the line started to move. Once we got in, it took about another 1½ hours before we were actually on the ship. Read more