We sailed on the DEestiny on Feb 3rd, 2008. I took this trip with my husband as a belated honeymoon of sorts. We were married oct 20th of 07. We are both 29 yrs old and we are from Michigan. This was my 4th cruise and his first. We arrived in San Juan a day early, on Saturday the 2nd. We arrived at 3:30pm and took a taxi to old san juan to our hotel for under $20. We stayed at Da House Hotel. It was awesome! Very quaint and old and had so much character! As read on several sites, this place is LOUD. It is above a salsa club and the noise goes on all night into the wee morning. We were up late drinking with our cruise critic buddies at senor frogs and then enjoyed the rooftop hottub, so we were pretty tired and slept good thru it. I would suggest staying on the 4th floor, to minimize the noise levels. The hotel also has no elevator, so be warned! Saturday night, we ate dinner at Barrachina and had the world famous pina coladas, they were awesome! We just walked around and checked out OSJ. We then met our cruise critic buddies at senor frogs for some drinks and fun. This was a great group, we really enjoyed our time with them all and it made the trip that much more fun. I encourage you all to join the roll call board and schedule a meeting time, we ran into each other a lot on the ship and it was nice to see familiar faces and have someone to hang with sometimes, but still have privacy. Sunday, we ate breakfast at La Bombonera in OSJ. It was Very good and really cheap. I suggest this if you are there early. We left our luggage at the hotel and did some more walking. We checked out the forts and some stores and bought some beers to put in our checked luggage. We took 12 and drank most of them during the week. We brought a collapsible cooler and tipped our room steward to keep it full all week and it was! We were to the ship by around 12 and it took about 1.5 hrs to get on the ship, including the time we spent in the duty free! We bought 2 liters of rum and some sprite for mixing and to keep in our cooler. We ate lunch at the buffet and waited for our room. They had the doors closed off, so you couldn't get there early, We were in our room at 2:30 as posted. Our room was the largest I have ever had on a cruise. We had an oceanview on the main deck, room 2081. We had a king bed and large sofa, long desk and mirror area and a table and 2 end tables. The bathroom has large cabinets and large shower. Toilet area is cramped as always. There were big closets with plenty of room for hanging and shelves. There were 2 robes we never used, extra down comforter extra pillows in the closets. We spent the first day exploring and watching the super bowl on the big screen in the showroom. We attended the sail away party on deck at 10:30 and went to open seating in the dining room that night. The food on the ship was pretty good. I did not like the spaghetti carbonera I had one night, it was very strong with onions and no one at our table liked it. I really enjoyed the filet mignon, the turkey pasta, chicken parmigiana, raspberry dessert. The pizza and ice cream were good. Lido deck burgers and fries were too. We did get grilled ham and cheese from the deli once and they were good. Never ordered room service. We ate 2 breakfasts in the dining room ,it was slow but good. Loved the Belgian waffles with berries! We ate the buffet other mornings, it was good ,but lines can get long. We went to the welcome aboard show, it was okay. The dancers are not that good in my opinion, but okay to watch once or twice. We never went to another dancing show. The juggler was pretty good one night and the late night adult comedian, Ronnie was HILARIOUS!!! We liked Destiny Idol as well. We went to So you think you can dance and it was not very good. It was at midnight and not many showed up. The newlywed game was alright. We did watch the Hairy Chest contest on our day at sea on our way to Dominican Republic. We only used the pools 1 days. The day we were at sea until 3 going to DR. The other days we had shore trips planned and we were in a new port every day. The pools had tons of kids jumping and splashing on the lido deck. The adults only end was much better, but I missed the music and activities that happen near the other pools. We loved the drink of the day that was the yellow bird...very good. The other drinks were okay, we ordered some and also made our own in our cabins. Shore trips: St Thomas - went to paradise tram on our own. Walked there in about 10 min and it was $19 pp. We had some pina coladas up there and took some pics. We got a cab there to Coki beach for $9 pp one way. We rented snorkel gear for $10 each and got 2 chairs for $8. We bought bucket of beer there for $12 for 6 beers and we ate burgers and fries. Food was good. Snorkeling here was great, tons of fish. Beach was nice and not crowded, we were only ship in port that day. Took cab back to ship and did some shopping around the pier. Dominica - we booked thru Beno tours and had a great day! We got Beno's nephew Brandon and he was great! We were a group of 8 in a minivan, 6 of us were cruise critic buddies and had met already. We went to Emerald Pool, Trafalgar Falls and Mr Nice's fruit stand. I wanted to do the sulphur springs but there wasn't time. The rainforest was so pretty and the guides were awesome! Mr Nice is hilarious and the fruit is so fresh! This was one of our favorite days. I do suggest water shoes made for hiking...you will want them. The water in the emerald pool was cold, but felt awesome, get in! They were having a festival that day and the streets were filled with music and costumes, it was fun Barbados - We booked the turtle and shipwreck snorkel thru carnival and LOVED IT. There were about 20 of us on our boat. We did the turtles first, they were amazing. I loved it! Then shipwreck has TONS of fish swimming about, it was the best snorkeling on the trip and possibly ever! We had rum punch on the way back. St Kitts - we did S Frigate bay beach on our own. It was okay....the beach bars were not busy and the beach was pretty empty. The drink prices were high and so was food. The chairs and umbrella were like $8 for 2, so that was okay deal. The water taxi from Mr X is $10 round trip, the taxis were much much more, take water taxi if you go to this beach. The locals on the beach are VERY pushy and would not leave us alone. They stuck their tongues out at us and called us cheap when I declined a massage 5 times. ! the beach was sorta rocky and we had to walk a ways to get sand in the water. It was an okay day, but next time would chose another beach or book a tour here. Dominican Republic - first day took the shuttle for $5 each round trip to the shopping area. The area was kinda shady outside the market and they tell you not to wander. We felt safe at the market though. Lots of vendors, most selling the same stuff. Barter with them, they will always lower the price. Next day we did the bayahibe beach break thru the ship. It was awesome. We went to the Coral Canoa beach resort for the day and had unlimited open bar. The beach was very rocky and rough, so we ended up in the pool at the swim up bar all day. We were with 10 other cruise critic buddies and had a blast. This was a great day, I would suggest this tour to anyone. We spent Sunday night in san juan again. We stayed at the coral princess inn in condado. We enjoyed the beach that was 2 blocks away and had dinner there. We went to bed early that night and left for home on Monday. The airport was a breeze on Monday, so much better than on Sunday!! We loved this hotel too and it was very small and pretty. The pool was nice there and we spent time in it as well. All in all, loved the trip. There were a few small details that we didn't like, but it didn't affect our trip!