Norwegian- which ship?

[Thesullivanster]

Hi all! We are looking for opinions of veteran Norwegian cruisers. We love the line and are looking into our next cruise April 2019. Our first cruise was eastern carribean on the pearl and our second was also eastern carribean with different stops on the Epic.

 

Here is what we learned about our preferences: how nice and new the epic was was nice but we pretty much liked everything else about the pearl way better. We are small ship people I think. On the epic, it seemed like the service, food and entertainment, while still great, was just slightly lower quality simply because of the number of people on the ship. We were not fans of the drag queen show but thats neither here nor there lol we also hated the fact that there was never deck chairs available to lay out on unless you get up super early and put your towel on one. This was never a problem on the pearl and we think its because everything was just less busy in general.

 

In keeping these things in mind, can anyone who has tried a lot of ncl ships recommend a specific ship for our next cruise? We have been looking at cruises out of LA because we have never been western carribean and porting out of US is ideal for us. We dont really want to go to all those same stops we have been to, Belize, Honduras, etc. but it has to be warm.

 

Really what we look for is good service, good food and the ability to lay out and have less wait time in general at bars and pretty much everywhere we go. Also we noticed that the crowd was more fun out of Houston than Florida. We are young married couple who are getting away from young children and want to get away from other peoples children too going out of Florida was like 50% families with kids and 50% older people.

 

Thanks in advance!

Edited February 4, 2018 by Thesullivanster
added info

[CruiserBruce]

Welcome to Cruise Critic!

 

For all the NCL info you will ever need, check the portion of Cruise Critic devoted to NCL, located here:

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=107

[Clarea]

As mentioned, I would post on the dedicated NCL forum.

[Keith1010]

I also wanted to welcome you to Cruise Critic.

 

It will take a few months to figure out all of the boards on this forum and you will discover lots of areas for information.

 

Keith

[evandbob]

Hi there! I've been on Epic and Breakaway, and enjoyed the BA more. However, we were just on the Dawn last month, and it's refurbishment made it look like a new ship. Heard the Jade had a similar makeover, so we just booked a Panama cruise on that ship.

 

If you like the smaller mid sized ships, research which NCL ones got refurbished and go from there. Some lines do a dry dock and just add a new venue like a food shack, while NCL seems to do a thorough redesign.