This was the 2nd cruise for myself and my husband and our second with Royal Caribbean. Our first cruise was a Southern Caribbean on the Adventure of the Seas. We chose this cruise for a few different reasons. 1) We live on the west coast, so this cruise was easy for us to get to, there was not a lot of travel involved. 2) Our last cruise was very port intensive and we found that our final day, the only day at sea, was the most relaxing. This itinerary on the Vision gave us 3 days at sea which we thought would be enjoyable. 3) The Adventure was a wonderful ship, but I felt it was a little too touristy. I thought that by cruising a smaller ship, we might get more of an intimate feel for cruising without that extra touristy feeling. 4) The week that we chose to cruise was over Halloween and we thought that would be a fun experience.

I had booked our cruise through our cruise travel agent. She had arranged our last cruise, which we took with a large group. I liked that she did all of the paperwork for us and made any arrangements that we needed, which is why I chose to use her again.

We flew into LAX a few days early to spend some time with my husband's cousin, that lives in the area. When the day of the cruise came, our cousin and his wife drove us to the pier and dropped us off. Locating the pier was very easy with the directions given by Royal Caribbean. We were able to stop right in front of the cruise terminal and a porter was right there to collect our luggage. Read more