We planned our trip meticulously. Because of my husband's ill health, we flew independently to LA & stayed three days in a hotel where we talked & planned what to do whilst on our trip. On the 7th of May, we headed for the port. Seeing the GMT Summit from a distance was impressive & the staff who noted our disabilities were pleasant & very helpful.

We were ushered to the front of the embarkation line. This is where things started to go wrong. We spent almost two hours & numerous denials of already having received our cabin keys to eventually be escorted on deck (no chance of a photo call for us) by a crew member to the guest relations desk. Here we were given a key & asked to return the following day for duplicate keys as they could not do them at the time as the printer was not working. Nor was it working the following day.

We eventually made it to our cabin. It was clean, tidy & adequate. The wardrobe needed some tender loving care, but we had made it to our first big cruise. It would have been lovely to make ourselves a cup of drink but there were no other facilities available except housekeeping. Read more