On April 9, my wife, and two daughters, 6 and 8, embarked on our first ever cruise. We were all very excited about it, although my wife was a little nervous due to being very susceptible to motion sickness. This will probably be a long and rather detailed.
Embarkation: This couldnt have gone any easier. We actually drove from Ohio, to Galveston for the trip. We spent the night at the local Days Inn which allowed us to park there during the cruise. This was good because the rate at the hotel was like $75 and we would have paid $70 to park at the dock. We got to the port around noon and were on the boat in about 30 minutes. I thought they did a really good job of getting us through everything and on the boat. We were told we could drop our items off at our room and then we went on deck for lunch and to enjoy the pool. We ate at the Cezanne buffet restaurant and hung out on the Lido deck for a few hours. Then they asked everyone to participate in the muster drill. That was not a whole lot of fun, but a necessary evil I guess. While at the muster drill the boat took off. Our cruise had officially started.
The Ship: The ship is incredible. It seemed very clean to me and very nice in every aspect. The cruise was completely full and the ship was big enough with enough different things to do that I never felt it was overly crowded. My wife had heard that interior rooms lower down on the ship feel less movement, so we got an interior room on the Main Deck. The room had two singles pushed together to make a king and two beds that came down out of the ceiling. The room was small, but it had just enough storage room for us to find a place for everything. Our girls loved their bunk beds.