PRE-CRUISE. We went to New York for a few days before our 2/24/08 cruise departure. We have been to NY before and were looking to spend some time relaxing rather than seeing all the tourist spots. We stayed at the Hotel Belleclaire at 77th and Broadway on the upper west side. We had a great rate on the room through Expedia and were well satisfied with the hotel. Read the reviews on Expedia as they are very accurate. We arrived in NY on Friday and used Carmel limo service to get from LaGuardia to the hotel and then again from the hotel to the cruise port. When I tried to find out how long it would take to get from the hotel to the cruise port on Sunday am I was told 1.5 hours from 2 sources (the limo company and a RCI rep at the cruise port). We left the hotel at 10 am and arrived at the port about 10:45. There was no traffic getting there and once we arrived at the port it looked like the majority of guests from the previous cruise were long gone.

EMBARKATION. We got out of the car and within 2 minutes were approached by an employee asking for our bags. We went on into the terminal where we received our sea pass card, received a number for the bus we were assigned to, had our picture taken and were told to wait until the buses start shuttling people to the ship. There were plenty of chairs, coffee, water, lemonade, and cookies to pass the time. The estimated boarding time was noon and the first bus left a little after noon. We were on bus 5 and left the terminal around 12:30-12:45. Within minutes you are at the ship and on board. We headed up to the Windjammer after dropping our carryon bags in the room. I read a lot of complaints about the embarkation process, to the point that I was wondering if I made a mistake booking out of New Jersey. I have never had the problems at any port that I was reading about in some of these reviews. I will return to New Jersey to take a cruise. I understand there will be times when the ship may come in late due to weather or some type of emergency but in the normal course of business I had no complaints about this port.

STATEROOM. We had a category D2 balcony stateroom. For us it is worth the extra money to get the larger of the two balcony rooms. We can always find room to store our things. One of my suitcases fit under the bed, the other was too large but there was room for it elsewhere. The bed was very comfortable. Our beds were separated and there was a mattress pad doubled over to add extra cushioning to an otherwise nicely firm mattress. This was the first time we had a safe and a remote that had the numbers wore off but we survived just fine. I did miss have a card with our stateroom attendants name on it. We had no pen or paper. We did not receive our coupon book until we asked for it. This is not the first time this has happened. We also had to ask to have ice brought to the room during the cruise as apparently this is no longer automatic however once we asked it was always there. We had a bar of soap and the liquid stuff in the shower and that was it. Where our room was located I think we felt a little more vibration in our room than I normally do but again it was not all the time and it did not affect the trip for us. It did make me realize that I do not want to be in the very back of the ship. Read more