We arrived the evening before in New Jersey so getting to the port the following morning was fairly uneventful. We did arrive about an hour earlier than the recommended boarding time, but we passed through the concierge check-in within minutes. I think the whole process of dropping off luggage, parking the car, checking in and getting on-board took less than an hour. We were met by smiling, happy staff, offered wine or champagne and directed to deck 10 to have some lunch if we desired.
Our aft cabin CC 9160 was ready for us by about 1:00pm. We just loved the oversize balcony and had our breakfast there every morning. We found we had plenty of room to hang up our clothes and store our toiletries etc. Our room attendant, Edwin, was a delight who went over and above to make our vacation as lovely as possible. We had a little problem with our breakfast on the first morning,, too cold..and he delivered our breakfast himself, piping hot, every morning for the rest of the week. He really was a super star and we appreciated all of his attention and his cheery demeanor.
As we had a large balcony, we didn't really spend a lot of time around the pool area so I don't think I can comment on that. As our cabin was under the Sunset Bar we did enjoy listening to the music in the afternoon and early evening.
We had an aft cabin with very large balcony. Enough room for a table with 4 chairs and also 2 lounge chairs, Quite close to the elevator and just 1 deck down from the Café which made it easy to run up and get lunch and bring it back to the balcony to eat. The only noise you will hear periodically are chairs scraping on the floor from the bar area above, but it really didn't bother us that much. In the afternoon and early evening we could hear the singers from the bar which we kind of enjoyed . We had plenty of room and storage. Loved the aft stateroom, I think that's all I'll want in the future!