This was the first cruise in which my wife and I didn't have to schedule around a school vacation. It's nice, the state of New York pays us not to show up to work anymore. Wonderful country America.

We chose this ship because of its newness and also because of the ports it visited. We so wanted to really like this ship, and for the most part we did. There were many good things to like, but there were also several concerns.

First the good things. Embarkation and debarkation were the easiest we've ever done. We flew down on JetBlue a day early and stayed at the Normandie (booked it through Priceline for $95--if you can some how get another upscale hotel for the same price i.e. The Caribe Hilton,do so). We went to the Pan Am pier around 12:00 noon on Saturday and we were in our cabin by 12:20. For debarkation, our group was the first off the ship (8:00 am), we caught a cab to the airport and was there by 8:30. We actually arrived 45 minutes before the JetBlue desk opened up. We had our boarding passes and our luggage checked 3 hours before we needed to board the plane. We probably could have taken a cab back to Old San Juan and did some sightseeing and still made it back to the airport on time for our flight. Read more