Our family took the 10 day cruise to the Southern Caribbean on March 16, 2012. We are a couple in our 40s with 2 teen daughters. We had taken the girls on several short Royal Caribbean trips, and then last year we took our first Celebrity cruise on Eclipse without the kids. We loved it so much, we booked the Equinox cruise for all of us for this year.

We flew into Ft. Lauderdale a day early and stayed overnight at the Hampton Inn North Cruise Port. We do NOT recommend this hotel. People rave about it on Trip Advisor but our experience was much different. Even though the hotel had a free shuttle to the port, we took a cab. The hotel wouldn't take us to the port until 1 p.m. and we wanted to be there earlier. We got to the port at about 11:15 and almost walked right on board. They have redone the terminal and it was phenomenal. We had our champagne and burgers from the Mast Grill by 11:30.

There was only one bad experience on this ship, so I will tell about it first. The muster drill. Be prepared...it is a joke. They crammed us into the photo area and it was mass chaos. Then when people complained about it being so awful, the staff member in charge of holding the sign for our area chewed us out and said that if the passengers on the Concordia had listened to their crew members they wouldn't have died. What??? Does she honestly believe that? I found out later that she worked in the overpriced dress shop and wasn't even part of the real "crew". They kept telling us if there was a problem we should all come running to the photo area and jam ourselves in there to be safe. Right...like I believe that would be a safe area. I know they have to do the muster drill by law, but they could have handled it WAY better. Read more