We drove about 5 hours to Ft. Lauderdale since we live in Florida. We were celebrating our 37th wedding anniversary on this cruise. We arrived about 2:00 and my husband dropped me off at the check in area while he went to park the car in the garage. The only problem with that was he took off before I had a chance to get the luggage out of the trunk. He thought we had already gotten it out. I guess he was a little weary from driving the 5 hours. The porter went running after him but we couldn't catch him. So we had to wait for him to come from the garage to tell him the luggage was still in the car. He then had to go back to the garage, get the car, bring it back and unload the luggage. That was probably the funniest thing that happened to us all week. My suggestion is, the driver should get out of the car and make sure the luggage is all unloaded before he takes the car to the garage. The parking was $15.00 a day which wasn't collected until the last day after we returned from the cruise. They accept credit cards for the parking. After that fiasco we proceeded to the check in area. It was very well organized by deck categories and took very little time. Once we got on the ship we asked if our cabin was ready and they said it was so we we went immediately to our balcony cabin. We were on the Caribe deck. We were very pleased to see that there was a small refrigerator in the room where we were able to put the sodas, wine and water bottles that we brought with us. It had a queen size bed, plenty of closet space and lots of wooden hangars. The balcony was larger than we expected with 4 chairs and a small table. The balconies on this ship are staggered and the people above you can see your balcony and you can view the balcony below and you can visit with people on the surrounding balconies if you want to and you can also hear their conversations if you don't want to. That was the only disadvantage to the design of the balconies. The beds had bedspreads on them with white down comforters underneath them. We met our outstanding steward, Sumchai immediately, Sumchai was fantastic! The ice bucket was always full, and he kept our room immaculate and any requests were taken care of immediately. As soon as we unpacked it was time to check out the ship. We had been on the Princess Sun, Holland and several Carnival ships so that is want we had to compare this ship to. This ship has a beautiful conservatory area with a pool and hot tubs where you can get sun without being exposed to the outside climate. There is also a huge Movie screen on Decks 14 & 15 on the pool deck. There are always lots of current movies being shown on that screen and in other areas of the ship. The very top deck has a skywalkers nightclub which is really neat and appealed to the party group. We were surprised that there were more younger people than we expected on this ship. There was a good mix of age groups. Since this was the week after Thanksgiving there weren't as many children as the previous week. After we checked out the ship, it was time to eat.

Dining - We were assigned anytime dining/personal choice dining which we hadn't requested but we decided to give it a try. There were 2 dining rooms, Michelangelo and DaVinci where we could choose to eat and also the Horizon buffet on Deck 14. The 2 dining rooms are named after the artists of the huge paintings on display in the dining rooms. Both of the dining rooms were very elegant and similar. We seemed to favor the DaVinci dinning room the most. If you want to eat by yourselves or with a particular group, you need to make reservations each morning. We preferred to eat at a big table which gave us an opportunity to meet a lot of different people on the ship. We really enjoyed that feature of anytime dining. Every night we had a different group to eat with. Since we were being served 5 course meals and we were at big tables, it usually took over 1 1/2 hours for dinner each evening. We reserved a table for 2 on the 2nd formal night as we were celebrating our anniversary that night and preferred to be alone. the food was fantastic! The chef has been on this ship for many years and he has won several awards. You won't be disappointed with the food in the dining room. the nights that I had steak, I had to send them back because they were too done but I eventually learned that medium rare was pink to them. We usually ate breakfast and dinner in the dining room and lunch up at the buffet. the food at the buffet was also very good with lots of different choices. The other disadvantage of anytime dining is - you don't get to know your waiter as well as you do when you have assigned seating.We usually went to the dining room around 6:00 and rarely had to wait long to get in but it appeared that those that were coming in late may have had to wait in line to get into the dining room.

Activities - There was plenty of choices of things to do from chilling by the pool, trivia, to putt putt golf. We enjoyed all of the activities that we participated in. We lost money in the casino but we heard some people did win. The cruise director James and his assistants all worked very hard to show everyone a good time. Formal nights - you see a variety of outfits on formal nights. A lot of men wear tuxedos and ladies wear gowns but a lot just wear dressy clothes and some choose not to dress up those evenings and go casual and dine at the buffet. We enjoy getting dressed up s little for the formal evenings but don't go the tuxedo and gown route but feel comfortable dressed the way we are. Read more