So my party consisted of 3 friends in our early 30's who get together annually. I was a little worried after reading the reviews on here about the Star, but I must say I had a great time. A lot of it had to do with the fact that three days before the cruise we got a call to upgrade from a mid-ship mini suite to a penthouse and VIP status. It was more money, but 100% worth it. Awesome balcony, which was a plus on an Alaska cruise. We had priority boarding and embarkation, butler and concierge service and access to Cagneys steakhouse for breakfast and lunch. Cagneys was a huge plus. I've been on 7 cruises on other cruise lines and this was my first on NCL. The buffet area was not the greatest on the Star. The food did not look fresh and was nothing special. Needless to say, we took advantage of Cagneys. We did try Versailles the first night, and it wasn't bad. But we decided to try a specialty restaurant every night for the rest of the cruise. We loved La Cucina and Endless Summer ( Tex Mex), but all the others were great. We thought it was fun to try a different restaurant every night and didn't mind the service charge. I read a lot about the staff pressuring guests to book reservations and so on. While we did have people approach us, we just kindly declined when we wanted and it was fine.

Being in Alaska, the age group was definitely higher, however we enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere. They had awesome martini tastings and a very cool pub crawl.

Vacation is what you make of it. I went in with a positive attitude and chose to ignore the little things and enjoyed my time on the Star.