We arrived in Tampa 2 days before our cruise. We stayed at the Hyatt Place Westshore. It was a very nice hotel with shuttle to port for $25 for 6 of us. We would definitely stay there again.

We were a party of 6-me, husband,23 y.o. daughter, 25 y.o. daughter,my mother, and my sister. We stayed in the garden villa 14000. One word to sum it up is amazing!!We arrived at port around 10:45 and made it through security in 10-15 minutes. After checking in and providing payment info, we were brought to special area for suite guests and introduced to our concierge Virginia. She was excellent! She gave us our key cards, we had some pastries and juice, and were escorted onto ship around 11:30. We were brought right to garden villa to leave bags and escorted to Cagney's for lunch. Everything went very smoothly.

We picked out our 6 bottles of liquor (included with garden villa) after lunch and headed straight for the sundeck. Virginia asked us if we knew where we wanted to go for dinner but we told her we were going to "play it by ear". We got a cooler full of ice and a blender from Mark, our butler, for our frozen drinks. We watched sail away from upper balcony, and wandered around the ship. (I had been on the Dawn before so I showed my mother and sister around). We saw the early show and had dinner in the Venetian. Everywhere we went we were treated like celebrities...it was kinda nice! Read more