Since we went on this cruise as NCL Latitudes members, we knew what to expect, and had no unrealistic expectations. Therefore, we were neither surprised nor shocked when things didn't go as planned. As a result, we had a very enjoyable cruise, and plan to repeat it before the end of the year, when NCL will leave the Port of Houston for good.

The Port of Houston: For people who have never seen the Pasadena/Deer Park/La Porte area, it can be described in two words: ugly and smelly. Even the port of Curaçao, back in the oil storage area, is nicer. If you could receive a $10 bill for every refinery you counted between the airport and the ship, you could probably pay for your cruise. We drove and parked our car in the fenced and patrolled lot for $49 for the week. No problem, but if you do this in your personal car, wash your car as soon as you can (after leaving the immediate area). The chemicals from the refineries and the salt air can ruin the finish on your paint job very quickly).

The small terminal is adjacent to an area where they unload huge container ships, and there is not much else to see except a beautiful suspension bridge toward the city. The small size of the terminal causes a huge delay getting off the ship. They only let about 50 people at a time leave the ship, and it can become a real zoo trying to find your luggage. You'll have to walk up/down a very long ramp to board/debark the ship, so if you have to push a wheelchair or carry a heavy carry-on, plan on a few rest stops.

It was obvious that the Norwegian Sea was built in 1988. Although it's not new, it looks to be in very good shape. The paint was new, but the ship was not particularly clean. There are quite a few public areas on the ship, although not as many as we would have liked. There are two showrooms on Deck 5, one forward and one aft. There are several nice bars, although they are rather small. A reformed smoker of 31` years, I am very intolerant of cigarette smoke, but never found smoke in a bar to be a problem. Of the four NCL cruises we've been on, this one was by far the best in terms of enforcing the NCL smoking policy: no smoking on the port side of the ship or in dining rooms. It just wasn't much of a problem this time. The ship has only one shop onboard, but it is very large and well-stocked.

The Internet Café had about 8 PCs that cost $.75 per minute. I think they charge $3.75 per email if you use the ship's email address. If you use Yahoo Mail, AOL, Hotmail, etc, you save the $3.75. Nice hardware, but pay attention to the instructions on logging off, or you can cost yourself money. There is no printing capability. There was a horrible vibration in the aft areas of the ship.

Fortunately, the Deck 2 cabins aft are all crew quarters, but we felt and heard the vibrations in the dining room on Deck 5 virtually every time we ate there. The ship has two pools on Deck 9. One is tiny and one is rather large. Few swimmers made use of them. We never saw anyone who was unable to find a deck chair on Deck 9 or 10, and the staff did enforce their policy of removing personal items from deck chairs that had not been used for more than 30 minutes. There were no deck chairs on the Promenade Deck, and we thought that there should be some. The deck is very wide, and there was ample room for deck chairs without interfering with walkers/joggers. The only places to sit on the Promenade Deck were on top of lifejacket lockers or on the deck itself.

Entertainment: We only attended one matinee magic/comedy show, so cannot critique the entertainment. The show we did see was probably OK, but we could neither hear nor see it well because we arrived too late to get seats close to the stage. The cruise director and his staff seemed very personable, and most everyone seemed to like them. Poolside activities were typical. I found the poolside band to be very entertaining, although their music did become somewhat monotonous toward the end of the cruise. The Jean Ryan troupe did Grease and Sea Legs, and I heard positive comments from other passengers on both productions.

Casino: It was very small with not a lot of slot machines, although several paid off during the cruise. My wife came out ahead on the slots and I came out ahead on the craps table, so I guess we did OK. The casino could get smoky at times, but that's what we expected. It wasn't particularly noisy, though.

Onboard Photographers: We saw a few good photos that they took of other people, but for the most part, they photographers were not very good. On the other hand, this was our first NCL cruise in which the photographers weren't "in your face" all the time. A simple shake of the head and they'd move off to find another subject. I had five rolls of film developed onboard, and it took them 44 hours instead of their advertised 24. One roll of the five was extremely overexposed; the others were fine. They don't do nearly as good a job on film developing as either RCI or Princess ships.

Food: My wife and I have always felt that this is the singular area in which NCL was better than either RCI or Princess. On this cruise, however, if it was typical of the fleet, it was readily apparent that the quality of the overall dining experience on NCL has declined,.just as it has on both Princess and RCI. Ours was the first cruise with a totally new menu, and we felt that they probably should have kept the old one. The quality of the food was mediocre, although its presentation was always excellent. We were served outstanding prime rib early in the cruise, but all of the other beef we tried in the dining room was very tough and dry, similar to the beef often found in restaurants in Mexico.

The alternative dining facility, Le Bistro, was consistently outstanding, with beef that was "melt in your mouth." We thoroughly enjoyed the two meals we ate there. Unfortunately, they don't change the Le Bistro menu during the cruise, so it could become monotonous. Le Bistro makes a wonderful Caesar salad, and the French onion soup is absolutely wonderful, but extremely hot. We added ice cubes to it and still scalded our mouths! A tip here: You can take your own wine to Le Bistro. The $10 corkage fee is less than the cost of two glasses of their wine. The overall Le Bistro experience is nicely done for a suggested $5/person tip that you can charge to your room or pay in cash, as you prefer.

The buffet (Big Apple Café) had what I would call "just food," although some of it was nice. I heard it compared to Howard Johnson's, Luby's Cafeteria high school cafeteria cuisine, etc. We didn't find it all that bad. In fact, the food itself was very good; it was the presentation that left something to be desired. They did have an excellent omelet chef there for breakfast, but he didn't set up until 8:00 a.m. They served mediocre hamburgers, hot dogs and pizza there every afternoon. Popcorn was available at the Deck 9 pool bar in the afternoon. The free ice cream on Deck 9 was available from 1:00 until 3:00 p.m. each day.  NCL used to market this cruise as having something like 30 or more different kinds of salsa. We're from Texas, and for us, bottled hot sauce is not salsa. NCL must believe otherwise. The only actual salsa available on board tasted like canned tomatoes with some kind of pepper juice in it. The dining room uses a lot of cilantro for garnish, but it was never put into the salsa...nor were onions, peppers, etc. I like bottled habañero hot sauce, but I don't need 30 varieties of it. 

Bars: There are several good bars and bartenders on the ship. One of the best was Michael, on Deck 10. He mixed a very good margarita, as long as we had him use Husson's tequila instead of their usual Jose Cuervo. It cost a bit more, but was well worth it. Oscar's Lounge had many, many brands of tequila available, from the Cuervo junk to some really good blue agave brands. We never had a problem getting a drink at poolside, and the service was very good. They did have a "tequila tasting," but we didn't attend. They also had a wine tasting, but we chose to miss that, too.

The Salon: I didn't use it, but my wife did. It was very small, but well-run. She said that the manicure and pedicure she got was the best she's ever had, and that the young lady (Theresa?) who did it was outstanding.

Workout Facilities: Aerobics take place on the pool deck, which makes it very noisy for other cruisers. The gym itself is very small, and gets very hot even early in the day. It contains 3 treadmills, 2 or 3 stair-steppers, a few free weights (mostly in kilograms, not pounds) and a few pieces of Nautilus-type equipment. There IS a cold water fountain and plenty of towels. There was a 30-minute limit on the mechanized equipment. There are also men's and women's saunas, but we didn't use them. The showers up there (this is Deck 10) are much larger than those in the staterooms, and I understand that some passengers used them in lieu of their own showers. Unfortunately, the only access to the "gym" is by going outside into the usually-strong wind.

Stateroom: We were in an outside cabin on Deck 2, so we had a porthole instead of a window. No problem. The cabin was smaller than the old Royal Caribbean inside cabins, but there was so much storage room that we never had a problem finding places to put things until the last night, when we had suitcases all over the place. By keeping the beds separate, there was ample room. If we had put them together into a queen, it would have been horrible for lack of space. The only problems we had in the cabin were a horribly uncomfortable mattress (foam pad, actually) on my bed, a creaky bed for my wife, and a room that we couldn't get cool. We expected this, so we had brought a small fan with us and believe me, it helped us survive.

At night, the bedding is arranged in the form of a duvet, so we opted to get extra sheets from the cabin steward and sleep under them, atop the duvet cover. There was ample room under the beds for storing all of our luggage and my scuba equipment. The bathroom was small, but it wasn't necessary to sit sideways on the toilet. The shower was quite small. We did have difficulty finding cool water from the tap at times. The hair dryer provided was extremely weak, but my wife had taken her own, so we had no problem. 

Other: The ship has a small game/card room, and we saw it being used several times. That room also had a paperback exchange, but we never saw any books left there. Table tennis is available on Deck 9 forward on both sides of the ship, and the tables were used frequently. On the Promenade Deck, aft, is a fairly large basketball court, but we didn't see it used much. We did walk the Promenade Deck several times (4.25 laps = 1 mile) early in the morning before breakfast and watched the flying fish sail out of our way.

The Ports: I won't say much here, for it's fairly straightforward.

Cancun: They anchored so far out in the bay that it took a 30-minute ferry ride to get ashore, after waiting for more than an hour for the second tender. The tender landed at Fat Tuesday, which was already starting to get into the swing of Spring Break. The locals funneled us INTO Fat Tuesday to get to the street, but we just kept walking and took a cab to the Forum mall. The cabs are $7.00 for the entire taxi, so we joined another couple and paid $4 per couple. The Forum is just like any other mall, except for the view outside the windows: beautiful. It contains a large Rainforest Café (whoopie) and a Hard Rock Café. The Hard Rock has a very nice outside deck overlooking the water..very nice place to enjoy a cold Corona and watch the surf. If we repeat this cruise, though, and want to shop, we won't go to the Forum. Instead, if we want to shop, we'll go to Plaza Caracol: It's much nicer, has better shops, better prices, and friendlier staff. On the other hand, we'll probably either take the shore excursion to Isla Mujeres or just stay on the ship. Cancun isn't much of a port. If the waves are too high, they won't stop there anyway.

Cozumel: What can I say about Cozumel? It's our favorite port. I scuba dived while my wife shopped, and then we met and went ashore for a few hours. We went to Palmeras for some of the world's best margaritas (on-the-rocks, not frozen).they pour triples, I think. We did a little shopping and went back to the ship.

Roatan, Honduras: This is a beautiful island. The reefs are in wonderful shape, and the diving (with Anthony's Key Resort) was world-class. There is virtually no shopping except for a straw market-setup just off the pier. If you leave the ship, wear insect repellent! The sand fleas can be horrible. The ship's snorkel excursion went to Tabyana Beach Resort, which was the same beach where we stopped for lunch between dives. The beach was beautiful and the lunch was excellent; it reminded me of a private island meal: hamburgers, hot dogs, wonderful BBQ chicken, fresh papaya, outstanding spiced iced tea, etc. Great day, great dive, great port,.but don't expect too much other than beautiful scenery, beautiful wooden bowls and carved boxes, and very friendly people.

Overall: As I said at the start of this long review, we plan to do this same cruise again before NCL leaves the Port of Houston at the end of this year. We found things about the cruise that we didn't care for, and we found many things that we liked. In essence, this cruise proved, once again, that attitude is the primary factor in determining whether a cruise is good or bad. We had a pretty good idea what to expect from NCL, which wasn't much, but we went on the cruise knowing that we were going to have a good time, and we did...in spite of an incompetent and extremely slow dining room waiter, in spite of food that I didn't care for, and in spite of several other things I didn't like. Hey. a land-based vacation isn't always what you expect, either. All in all, we enjoyed the cruise immensely, and do want to do it again.