We just got home from our first cruise ever, and having learned a lot from previous reviews on Cruise Critic, I thought I would submit my experience to help other travelers.

My husband and I would both rate this as one of the best vacations that we have had in quite some time. Kids were flown off to Grandma's, so it was just the 2 of us to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Having read a lot of reviews, it was hard to believe that people had sailed on the same ships at times. Some people seemed to hate everything, while others thought it was fabulous. I think attitude has a lot to do with how your overall cruise experience is. Going on the trip with reasonable expectations allowed us to deal with the things that were not always perfect, but to truly enjoy those things that were good.

The trip started off a little hectic. Hurricane Dennis was blowing towards Florida, so we ended up changing our flights to a day earlier, arriving on Fri. am instead of Sat. am. This was absolutely the best thing to do. I would highly recommend taking an extra 1/2 day if possible to arrive at least the night before. We had no hotel reservations since we were not sure if our flight would be cancelled before we could make it to Fla. Read more