A little about us, DH and I are in our mid 40's and got married in August. This was our honeymoon and DH's first time on a cruise ship. Now, this is a man that gets sea sick standing on a dock so we were a little apprehensive to say the least. We live just outside of Tampa but decided to kick off our vacation early and stayed at the Embassy Suites Saturday night. The room was amazing and the cost was $109. The served a hot breakfast in the morning. Saturday night we took the trolley, which neither of us had ever been on, to Ybor City and had dinner at the Columbia Restaurant. The food was amazing!! If you have never been, I strongly suggest it.

Sunday morning, I was up at 5:30. Go figure!! I went downstairs and waited for the Starbucks to open, got us coffees and was back in the room checking to see if DH was up yet. Of course he wasn't....yet. I opened the drapes and made all kinds of racket then gave him the "Oh, you were still sleeping?" comment. Needless to say, we were at the port by 9:30. We were the 2nd ones into the port and the first ones to board the ship. I had splurged for the trip and upgraded us from a balcony to a Vista Suite. Of course that meant VIP embarkation which I took to mean, "I'm first!!!" We boarded about 11:30 a.m. I must admit that the DH did pretty well during the 2 hour wait and only looked at me twice and said "Really???? I got up for this??"

Once on board, we headed up to the lido deck and got our first libation of the day, had some lunch and went down to our room. Surprisingly, it was ready. We dropped off our carry on and explored the ship. While the theme is gaudy, the ship was very clean and in great shape. We loved our suite. The best part, other than the wrap around aft balcony, was the fact that the bedroom was separate from the living area. This meant DH could sleep in a few mornings. For some reason, I never was able to sleep past sun up. We found the Serenity area, which is at the back of the Lido Deck. The bartenders there were very nice and always pleasant. Not so at the bars by the pool mid-ship. We had the 8:15 dinner seating which proved to be a mistake after the first night. I had originally signed us up for the 6:00 seating by DH informed me that he HAD to make his football picks Tuesday night at, you guess it, 6:00. I took one for the team and made the change. We hated it. We changed to any time dining. We went to the piano bar that night for about a half hour and then headed to the comedy show. It was good but a little raw. After that, we headed back to the cabin. Read more