We arrived at the cruise terminal at 12 noon and porters were scarce, so we took our luggage inside the building (and saved $5). Then we waited in line at the bottom of the escalators, again upstairs for security screening, and again for our room keys. We had our son's desktop computer with us and security said they had never seen one go through before, but they didn't have a problem with it. (My other son had his PlayStation with him which hooked up to the flat screen TV with our HDMI cable.)
The whole process probably took about an hour, then we boarded the ship and went straight to our stateroom. We had purchased a balcony guarantee and were given room #8131 on the Navigation Deck. We were happy that the balcony was one of the clear ones (The railings of the first twenty balconies at the front of Deck 4 are made out of metal.) and that it had a bathtub (Category VF doesn't.), but not so happy to be underneath the Lido deck. We could hear chairs and tables scraping above us most of the day.
We ate every meal at the Lido Restaurant (buffet) and thought the food was great. For the first 48 hours we weren't allowed to serve ourselves (as a precautionary measure against illness--I'm not sure how) but the lines moved quickly. Both sides of the restaurant have almost the same food stations: drinks, salad bar, made-to-order sandwiches, the bistro (several kinds of meat, rice, potatoes, soups, and vegetables), and desserts. One side had a pasta and pizza station (we thought the pizza was much better than Carnival's) and the other side had an Asian station which served the cuisine of a different nationality each day.
8131 Lots of scraping sounds from chairs and tables upstairs on the Lido Deck.