We arrived in Miami the evening before we were to set sail. We stayed at the Marriott Biscayne Bay, which was a short cab ride to the pier. While we generally like to stay at Marriott properties, this was not our favorite. While the room was clean, we found it to be quiet noisy, including a "mystery banging" all night from the water pipes or something similar. The room was also very small; I would not book here again personally.
We arrived at the dock quiet early, around 11:30. While it was quite busy, with lots of eager travelers there already. The line ups seem to go fairly quickly, our line up was a bit longer, it took us around 20 minutes to get through.
The ship itself was quite beautiful! There are many impressive areas on board. We will get into some detail: The royal promenade was very impressive. The mix of shops was very cool, from the expected gift shops and duty free, to the unexpected barbershop, wine shop, tattoo parlor. There were several specialty shops, one for light snacks and coffee, one for pizza, salads etc. Both of these were a bit confusing. We thought at first that they were both "pay" shops where you would buy everything. It turned out that the food was included in your cruise price, only the drinks were extra. Highly recommend these shops, the pizza was excellent! The wine bar was also very good, with a lot of wines to try. Almost every area of the ship was amazing. The mini golf was lots of fun, a bit busy but expected. The Flow rider looked like lots of fun, however my adventurous side took a pass on this one. There were tons of activities on this ship; it was very hard to be bored.