Mid 40s no kids who booked this on a whim about 3 weeks out. first time on this class of ship.

Embarkation: Galveston has a well deserved reputation for being a CRAPPY embarkation port. Booked Lighthouse parking( covered slots) . close enough to see the ship, very friendly and efficient staff who loaded our bags on the shuttle quickly and got us to Terminal 2 in no time at all. word of advice: spend the money on a porter. if you wanted to 'self check' your bags, the workers could not be bothered to look you in the face, or even bypass the party of 8 in front of you who did not have luggage tags already on, forcing the next 4 groups behind them who DID to wait about ten minutes while they ran off and stood in line to get tags. if you portered it, you could go directly to the check in line. the usual division of lines based on C&A status applied, although the person at the lead tried to shunt us down the extra long Gold line despite being in a suite( and Emerald). there is NOT a lot of room in the terminal once you got checked in, and NO separation by boarding number. you had to push you way through the SRO crowd. they called Pinnacle first, then Suites. there was a huge number of WC assistance parties required. Began boarding about 1115 or so and was in the Promenade eating a light snack before noon( we wandered around a bit first)

cabin were ready at 1 though no announcement was made. GS balcony ( I thought) was smaller than I was used to, with no lounger at all but the cabin itself was nice and large and had more than enough storage space. it was about equidistant from both sets of elevators. one floor down from aft stairs was the CL and one floor up from Aft was the Pool/solarium/windjammer. Read more