Plan ahead

The slogan should be renamed to reservation style.  This was a school mid winter break trip, so it was a full ship.   I was previously on the Norwegian Dawn in 2006.  Lots of improvements compared to that trip.  I had a hard time getting to / understanding the reservation system on the website.   I kept on thinking I was being up-sold to buy more dining packages. I would really appreciate a separate tab/area for reservations.  Would be helpful to have more warnings and help on how to reserve from Norwegian.  I had made my reservations a few weeks before the trip, so many time slots had already filled up, and I ate dinner often around 9PM.  We prefer the sit down meals vs. the buffets, but with kids in our group, we often had a pre-dinner snack at the buffet.
We missed all the shows, as they were fully reserved.  You can wait before the show starts and hope to get in.  We did not do this.  Not sure if you can reserve shows before the trip, but we tried doing this on the first night on board, and nothing was available.
Kids area was often full if you were not early enough to get there 20 minutes before they opened. Their operating hours always closed for lunch and dinner times.  This causes so much pickup and drop off wait times.  Compared to Carnival, Carnival was mostly open, and is a more freestyle way to pick-up/drop-off, that does not cause massive lines.  The kid liked the splash academy, so no issues with the staff and activities.
Food:  very salty, and desserts were too sweet.  The amount of food waste on ships is so high, it sickens me in general.  People take too much, don't like it, and toss it.  I understand it is difficult for the company to find a good balance of quality vs quantity.  A bit disappointed on the food due to everything being too salty.  The hard ice cream was generally good though, and I liked the hot cobblers/crumbles, and the crepe station at the dinner buffet.
We had two add-ons when booking the cruise - we chose the pre-paid gratuities and the dinner plan (3 meals in the paid restaurants). I would not recommend the paid restaurants.  Food quality was about the same as the regular restaurants.  Next time I would pay the extra service charges for the Drink plan.  
Ship is very well maintained.  The room balcony was excellent.  It might be windy on deck, but the room balcony was nice and calm.  Grand Stirrup Cay is still a crappy island. Much better than 10 years ago, but still not developed enough to handle the crowds.   They need a pool there!!!   Went to the Atlantis resort for the aquarium tour.  Got a taxi and went to the box office to buy the day pass.  About half of what the ship excursion costs.  We did not leave the ship for Port Canaveral.   Wanted to go to the space museum, but felt that there was not enough time there with the ship arriving there around 1PM, and the museum closing at 6PM.  
Disembarkation was a bit slow.  Took an hour from getting called to getting to customs. Next time I will chose self disembarkation
It was a long time since I had been on Norwegian, and would consider them again after knowing what to do now.