& Embarking: I had heard a lot of complaints about waiting in line forever and what not. We had no issues whatsoever. Maybe 40 minutes tops. It was very smooth.&

Ship: The ship was in great shape! We had a balcony, starboard cabin 9158. The room was spacious and clean. The beds were very hard though. We actually asked for extra padding and that did help some. Pillows are hard too. Our steward was very attentive and friendly. We never had a problem getting a lounge chair. It's pretty spread out so it never felt overly crowded. Lots to do. We only went to one show and that was the last night, it was called "Elements" and was INCREDIBLE!! I'll admit we're hard to impress in this area, we've been to several Cirque Du Soliei shows and we really loved Elements. We used the gym twice. Quite nice. We also did the cycle class. That was fun, but not quite as intense as I was expecting. The classes are 2/$20 or 1/$12. They had yoga, pilates, boot camp conditioning (this was more expensive) and cycle. We did get massages at their spa. The massage itself was great, not sure if it was worth $119.00 each though. And ugh they tried to sell me everything under the sun, like $500 worth of treatments for my back. That was really obnoxious.&

Food: Ok, this was not anywhere as bad as other people had indicated. For breakfast we had the buffet a few times. It was indeed the same food everytime, but everything was quite good. We also had Versalles numerous times for breakfast. We loved all of their breakfast food. Now dinner was another story. We had Cagneys Steakhouse the first night and that was probably a big mistake. IT WAS SO DELICIOUS. The service was amazing. We had the same waiter everytime, his name was Anil from India. We actually ate at the steakhouse FOUR times. (I know this is a tad nuts LOL) We also tried Le Bistro, everything was great, but the service was really slow. Teppanyaki was fantastic also. Very small, intimate dining experience with maybe 12 people tops. So, if I had to rank the specialty restaurants that we tried it would go 1) Cagneys 2) Teppanyaki 3) Le Bistro. We had Versalles for dinner ONE time. Service was slow, food was blah. Not worth it. The service in there isn't anything special either.&

Weather: Really turned out well. The forecasts were crud and I was really bummed out. All in all it only rained one day really, and that was in Belize. We had heard that the cruise the week before us had really yucky weather, so we felt really fortunate!!&

Things I learned: Next time bring your own bottled water and soda cases. I saw people wheeling them on. What a great idea. At $4.00 per bottled water and no idea on the soda fees, it was well worth it. We also brought on 5 bottles of wine at $15.00 corkage fee per bottle. This saved us a lot. We'll definitely do that again. Also, we would not book any excursions in advance. You can do anything you want and more when you get to the port. There are about a million people waiting out there wanting to sell you excursions, and the costs are ½ of the ship's. Also, I'd bring my own pillows. Bed/pillows were very hard.&

We would sail with NCL again and on the Star. The service was really great overall, the passengers were fun. We met some really nice people and had a great time!! Couldn't beat the price either. We paid $559/per person for balcony rooms. (however our onboard account was $2000. Yikes)& &

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