Oscar's birthday

The first day on the boat was a sea day as we made our way south

and we decided to dress up and go to the dining room for a special dinner for Oscar's birthday.  This is where I found my first beef with Norwegian cruise line.  We were a party of 8 and they ask that bigger parties make reservations.  So, I call for reservations and am told that there is only room at  

 8:45 or 9:15pm for dinner for a party of 8.  We are told to come to the dining room at the time that we want to eat and they will accommodate us.  So, we head down to the dining room with hungry kids and wait in line with other irate people that couldn't make reservations.  All 

the people with reservations are being seated and there is one woman (not me shockingly) that is trading words with the maitre'd about the situation.  She states that she couldn't make reservations for her party of 20 and that you had to make reservations before boarding  

 the ship in order to get them.  Which I find just stupid.  Norwegian is supposed to be the freestyle cruising ships and I'm finding that what this means is you get to eat whenever you want in the main dining rooms if you set up the time before the cruise ever leaves or if you 

 want to get a pager and wait for your table to get ready.  I think I would rather have a set time that is too early or too late that at least means I get to eat immediately instead of waiting my turn at Applebee's or something....anyway, we get seated and tell the wait staff that it is Oscar's birthday and 

we get two cakes.  One for Oscar and one for the rest of us to share.  It was a nice dinner and Oscar actually behaved for most of it which made us feel like we could do dinner sometimes on this cruise, instead of always eating in the buffet line.  Back to the room to get Oscar's present from the Schillim family which was a book that is a song that they all sang as a family to him.  Two of Oscar's favorite things, a book and music, which made him ecstatic.