Background: This is a family and friends cruise, 10 people total (5 couples) ranging in age from the mid 60's to 31 yrs old. We had people from Maryland, PA, Texas, and Nebraska in our group.

Pre-cruise: We flew from Baltimore the day before into Miami and stayed at the Holiday Inn Port of Miami. It was a nice hotel with great location - we walked right across the street to the Bayside Marketplace for the afternoon. We ate lunch at Bubba Gump's, had afternoon drinks at Tradewinds on the water, and dinner at the Hard Rock cafe. The next morning we walked to the CVS 4 blocks away and bought 3 12-pks of sodas to carry aboard.

Embarkation: We took a taxi to the port on 1/12 at about 11 am and it was $10 per taxi plus tip. The lines to get aboard were very long and we ended up on board around 12:45, which is the longest it has ever taken us to get aboard a RCCL ship. I was surprised since I had read many reviews that described little to no wait to get on the ship. That was not the case for us. Read more