We had a group of 27 on the Valor this past week celebrating our honeymoon. My wife, Holly and I, wanted to make our family and friends take a vacation together. This is an amazing ship and we all had a great vacation. We arrived in Miami Saturday and stayed at the Holiday Inn Miami Airport. We booked the rooms through Hotelopia, paid $75 per room (1/2 of the standard rate). We had read previous bad reviews about this hotel but we found it very suitable for our needs, Hotel staff was friendly, rooms were spacious, parking seemed very safe and we were only 10 minutes from the port of Miami. Had dinner Saturday night at Bayside, plenty of choices and lots of shops and entertainment in the area.

EMBARKATION: We called the port ahead of time to see what time we could board the ship and were told they would begin boarding at 2:00pm due to disinfecting the ship. Needless to say we arrived at 10:30 in the morning and were eating lunch on the lido deck by noon. We figure that's their standard response to keep the masses from showing up so early. They really do a good job of getting you through line and onto the ship. Very painless and easy process, just make sure you fill out your fun pass online before showing up! We saw a very long line of folks who hadn't filled theirs out causing them quite a delay.

OUR ROOM: We were allowed to our rooms at 1:30. We had an L-shaped balcony on deck 6(room 6473) which is at the very back starboard side. This room had an extended balcony which we greatly enjoyed. Room is very spacious for a cruise ship, we had 4 pieces of luggage(one for wife's shoes). Our clothes easily fit in the drawers and closets, and there are plenty of hangers already there. The bathroom had plenty of shelf space for all my wife's stuff and she even let me have a small area. We heard very little noise from neighbors or from the floors above and below. This was the first balcony room for both of us and our future cruises will definitely be balcony's as well. All of our group was on deck 6, a couple of the rooms were directly over the Ivanhoe Theater and they did hear the entertainment at nights. Read more