A little background, traveling was myself a 41 year old female and my son 15 years old. The cruise dates were Monday-Sat, August 14th-19th 2006. We flew in from Tampa to Fort Lauderdale which was about 1 hour flight. We had started this journey coming in from Hartford, CT but took a side trip to Tampa for the weekend. The flight from Tampa went smooth. My suggestion is, if you fly on the day of the cruise make sure you don't have any connections and keep it to a less than 3 1/2 flight. We grabbed our luggage and caught a taxi to the port. The port has high security so everyone has to show ID before you can get in, which means this line can back up. We paid $16.00 for the taxi not including tip and we were their early. Our flight came in around 9am so we were to port about 10am. We hung around for a while because they don't start boarding until 11:30am. Yes we were just about the first people on the ship. Embarkation was quick and easy. My suggestion arrive early, it's fun and a lot less stressful. We scooted up to check on lunch but that's not served until about 12:30pm.

Ship Info: One of the pool's was closed for repair, this was a little disappointing because the Solarium pool is suppose to be for the adults (which I checked several times to make sure my son wasn't in it, the only thing strange is that the hamburger hot dog area is in the Solarium, go figure) This left just one pool for the kids, which was crowded. We all made the best of it.. I found a deck chair almost everytime I went looking for one it seems they have plenty and in many places (shade, sun, inside, outside,

near the pool, in quite areas. Yes to some people the music on the deck can be loud but you can find a spot away from the music and enjoy the deck just fine. Overall the ship is beautiful. Everything clean and spotless and their was hand sanitizer outside the Windjammer at every meal. Read more