Let me start out by saying that we were originally booked on a Western Caribbean itinerary. Hurricane Wilma had other ideas. Instead of a Western itinerary review, this will be a modified Eastern review.

This was our third cruise in as many years. This has pretty much become a fall ritual for us. This time we convinced about 26 of our friends to join us. We have cruised the Western Caribbean before and thought that we had everything figured out for all the ports. We were acting as the tour guides for everyone else.

We arrived in Miami via the red eye from Las Vegas. I had been keeping a close eye on the weather situation in the Caribbean. For the two weeks prior to our departure, there was not a cloud in the sky. We were particularly aware because we got caught in Hurricane Ivan last year on the Inspiration. We flew Song airline on the way out. They have TV's in the back of all the seats that you can watch. I was watching CNN when I heard mention of a tropical depression named Wilma. I thought "great". By the time we landed in Ft Lauderdale, they were saying that it looked like Wilma could be a significant storm. Read more