It's been a while since our last cruise and last vacation and we needed a quick and easy vacation, WITH the kids. We joined my wife's brother and his family on a cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines on their Eastern Caribbean itinerary. We had never been there so why not.

First of all, I'm no fan of cruises. I don't like being couped up on a boat for several days but my least favorite part is how long it takes to get off the boat to go ashore and do something fun. Although NCL does a pretty good job of making the process as efficient as possible, there are over 2000 people on the boat and it just takes a while to get a large portion of them to get off the boat, especially by tender.

As far as cruise lines go, NCL is one of the better ones. Their fleet of ships is pretty new, has lots of ammenities and of course their "Freestyle Cruising". That means that unlike other cruise lines you can eat meals when and where you please as well as with whoever you please. That's a big plus for us as we didn't want to have to rush back to the ship from a shore excursion to make our dinner time plus since we were traveling with small children we needed the extra flexibility as more than once the kids were napping during the regular dinner time.