All I can say is WOW! One of my best cruises ever! I'm 41, female and was traveling with my parents 76 & 83. My first cruise ever was on the Radiance to Alaska 09/2003. The ship looks just as beautiful today as it did then!
Traveling from California, we decided to arrive one day early and stayed at the Ramada Airport/Cruise port hotel on hwy 84. They are located just 1-1/2 miles from both the airport and port everglades...very convenient. I do recommend this hotel for the convenience, but be prepared...there are LOTS and LOTS of cruisers there...leading to huge crowds with lots of luggage in a small amount of space at times. We stayed there post-cruise also and were overall very satisfied.
We took the 1pm shuttle to the cruise port, which in reality ended up being the 2pm shuttle. Due to some confusion, the driver tried to drop us off at the wrong ship and that added a bit more time to our "commute". We ended up on board at 2:45 and noting that lunch buffet ended at 3pm we scurried up there since we had not eaten since our 8am breakfast...(by the way, hot breakfast buffet is including in price of room at hotel. It was very good..made to order omelets, etc!)