Started off well with good weather out of Miami. We arrived at about 10.45 for the 4 pm sailing. Embarkation was efficient and we were checked in and on the Lido within the hour. We made our way to Guy's Burgers having read rave reviews but we were disappointed. I had to disgorge the last mouth full as it did not taste good. What a contrast to the Burger I had after the Cruise at the Big Pink on Collins in South Beach. Now that was a Burger, a 10 oz Angus, wow!

We were pleasantly surprised to get into our Aft Balcony on the Empress at around 1 pm and our luggage showed up shortly thereafter. We met our Steward, Rannie, nice person, always had a smile and provided good service for the entire week. We took a walk around the Ship and found it very clean and in good shape.

We were impacted by bad weather and unable to tender into our first Port, Grand Cayman. We were notified of this at the last minute. We had a rocky voyage from there to Cozumel where we arrived to wet, windy weather. Carnival could do a better job of providing on screen weather forecasts. We were left in the dark. The next stop was Belize and we did receive a letter the night before to say excursions were cancelled. We had nothing planned so it wasn't a concern. On day five, we eventually got good weather and toured Roatan. Seeing the poverty and all the garbage was depressing. We ended up at West Bay Beach which was nice. Our Tour Guide was very good but I took what he said about having next to no crime with a a grain of salt. I was not surprised by the report on Cruise Critic a couple of days ago that a family from the Carnival Conquest was robbed at gun point. They rented their own car and went off the beaten track, not a smart thing to do in some of these Countries. There was a State Dept. Advisory on Honduras on December 23rd and Roatan is only 30 miles away. Read more