This is only our second cruise, both being on Royal Caribbean. We booked it ourselves from a promo e-mail sent by RCCL. We stayed at the Quality Suites in Cocoa Beach, with the "Park & Cruise" package; total about $140.00. We are really glad we did this because the arrival process was extremely frustrating. The shuttle departed from the Radisson (where the parking was located), but we were delayed several times because the shuttle drivers kept reporting that the line to get into Mariner's berth were very long. The shuttle finally left but we were still on it for over an hour (the actual drive is 5 minutes). All traffic converges into one point and there was only one lane open, so we had to wait for the people going into paid parking. When we finally got to the unloading point the process went much faster, but if we had been driving our own car we would have had to circle around again to park the car, and probably wait another hour, because of the way the port is laid out. The drivers reported that the Carnival terminal was not nearly so crowded, but we will find out in February when we come back to sail with Carnival. The hotel itself was about what we expected and was quite adequate for one night pre-cruise stay. We plan to just stay at the Radisson in February, though, because the desk clerk told us parking for a cruise is complimentary for Radisson guests. The ship is a floating destination, and we really enjoyed all the onboard facilities. As a child of the '50s, however I guess I didn't think Johnny rockets was anything special - nothing wrong with it, but like I said, I was there at the time!

We go on vacation to relax and do nothing, so we didn't do many of the activities - I went to the art auction, enjoyed the champagne, and won two of the raffles, so I came out ahead of my wife, who dropped a couple hundred on Bingo. For the same reason we did none of the shore excursions - the Caribbean is HOT in August! We didn't even go ashore at the tendered ports because on our previous cruise we spent half the day on the tender. Service was very good for the most part. Our stateroom attendant was very attentive and kept the cabin clean and well stocked. On two occasions the bartender put regular coke in our cups. The first time my wife caught it in time, but once I had a glycemic attack from it. We caught it before I had to go to the infirmary. It did irritate my wife to be charged for the OJ I needed to recover. I don't know how they arrived at the seating assignments, but on the first night they tried to seat us at a table for 8 with 6 teeny-boppers! This after I had made it clear that we are mature adults. We had to stand aside for 40 minutes while they found us another table (they claimed their computer was down). We had requested a table near the window, and on the fifth night of the cruise, they finally notified us that they had found one. By this time we had befriended the others at our table, so I didn't even respond.

The stateroom was a balcony and was very nice and quite spacious compared to the porthole stateroom we had on our previous cruise. The lighting was actually bright enough to read by! RCCL has Fox News on the television, and I really appreciated that. Others have criticized the dining on RCCL, but we thoroughly enjoyed almost all of the meals aboard the ship. There was plenty of selection, and the waiter was happy to bring whatever anyone wanted (one of our table mates had three shrimp cocktails one evening!). We saw no need to try Chops or Portofino's. The entertainment was first-rate, and when you are advised to line up early for the ice show tickets, you had better, because the choice disappears pretty quickly. We had to settle for a time that was awkward for our dining, but I guess I should have lined up sooner. Disembarkation was frustrating; again because of the long wait in lines once we were called. We asked for 8 AM, they assigned us 8:45, and we were called at 9:45, then it took another hour and a half to actually get off. This was apparently due to the line at CBP and may be due to the combined functions - on our last cruise, we did Customs and Immigration separately, and it went much faster. Once we got to the agent it went very quickly, so maybe they were just overwhelmed. In summary we enjoyed the cruise very much despite all the negative comments above - I guess everything I didn't mention went so well!