Age: 23
Occupation: Programmer
Number of Cruises: 2
Cruise Line: NCL
Ship: Sea
Sailing Date: September 18th, 2004
Itinerary: Western Caribbean

I just finished sailing with NCL and had a great time. I would agree with most of the cruise reviews already listed before mine. So I thought I would share a few tips that I learned. If you are like me, you have read through all of the reviews and picked out the tips to write down and keep in mind when you pack.

The rooms are small but they’re a few things you can do that would help. One is don't bring suitcases that can't fit under your bed. That should be less than a 12 inch width. Leaving the suitcases out takes up valuable space. The standard rooms have no soap or bottle holders so if you have your own shampoo, conditioner, etc you are out of luck. If you have a suction holder for your shower at home, bring that with you.

The rooms come with hair dryers but they are very weak, so you might want to bring your own. Also, they were about 5 skimpy plastic hangers provided and the room steward said he couldn't provide anymore. So you might want to bring your own hangers if you prefer to hang up your clothes like I did.

Our stand room did come with four comfortable pillows so don't worry about bringing those. The sheets and blankets were also great, so that's that much more you don’t have to worry about toting along with you (My friend was worried about that so she had carried a blanket and pillow with her during the entire embarkation and disembarkation).

For the shore excursions, the staff was renting out thermal water bottles as you left the ship. I don’t know how much they went for, but if you have something similar at home, bring your own and save the money. Also, I took my old video camcorder and found that it would not work at Honduras and Belize. It was too humid for the camera to operate. So I had to lug the thing around with it never working! Newer models might be able to handle it though.

Try to pack light if you aren’t a big fan of waiting in line. NCL will let you carry your own bags on to and then off the ship. We let them load the bags for us, but we chose to take our own bags off the ship. It was wonderful! We were checked out and in our cars heading home within one hour. You do have to carry the bags about 600 feet though, so make sure you are up for the physical exertion.

Bring plenty of jeans or long pants/skirts. We wanted to eat at the ship’s two nice restaurants, but learned that they required long pants for men. My husband only brought two pair so we were out of luck by the end of the week. Our alternative was the Big Apple, which I’m sure most people enjoyed but I personally thought it was holding place for all the other restaurant’s left overs.

Other than go and enjoy your cruise! We especially enjoyed the trivia games and karaoke sessions. I think we made every one of them when we weren’t out for a shore excursion. We won a ton of their cheap water bottles, key chains and koozies. The four stops are wonderful and very beautiful. I hope you have as much fun as we had.

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