Embarkation was great, quick and painless.We'd booked a suite so we had VIP embarkation, no standing in lines. The lines that we saw whilst checking in weren't long. I liked the idea of different embarkation times for passengers which meant that there wasn't too much chaos. Right from the time we pulled up to the kerb and got out of the car we had nothing but helpful employees, helping us with our luggage, making sure that we knew where to go and directing us through the whole process.

We boarded at 4.00pm and went straight to our suite. Obviously our bags weren't their yet but we'd packed what we thought we'd need for the interim. The suite was lovely a spacious and didn't look dated at all. There was enough room for us and our two energetic boys. I didn't feel cramped the whole cruise. The storage was excellent, a wardrobe in the main room with a full set of drawers, another wardrobe in the dressing room with internal shelving and a make-up area with adequate lighting. The bathroom was also impressive. A double vanity with a bath/whirlpool and shower overhead. The shower screen was made of safety glass, which I was pleased about as I'm not a fan of the shower curtain. The entire room was clean and fresh. The balcony outlook was great to and we had ample chairs to sit on if we decided to lounge there. There were 4 lamps in the room, two of which were beside the bed. My main lamp didn't work (I think the globe needed replacing), so I used the little attached reading lamp which was more than enough to read by. My husbands main lamp worked, but he had no reading lamp, just a hole where it should of been. But we weren't too fussed, although it would have been nice to have the choice of either lamp to use.

We had a bar fridge, which could be locked by the steward if you chose. There was only one available power point in the room, so lucky for us that we'd bought our own power board to plug in our various electrical gadgets such as I-pod, mobile phones and tablets. The suite had mirrors everywhere which made it feel much more spacious. As you can tell I was impressed by the size...it's not huge but bigger than I'd expected. Read more