My wife and I are in our mid 30's and brought our almost 5 year old son along. We booked our cruise through HAL after finding the same pricing pretty much everywhere. We flew to Fort Lauderdale the day before embarkation, stayed at the Hilton Airport (very nice and quite convenient) and arrived around 11:30 at the port via a hotel shuttle ($9 per).

Embarkation was easy, probably 30 minutes total and that was due in large part to the ship not clearing port authority/customs for new customers. A few cranky seniors complained about the wait, but what's new. Probably the worst part of the cruise, as all veteran cruisers know, is that first couple hours on board before your rooms are ready. The buffet area is packed, and people are just waiting around. That's what happened, but the rooms were ready by 2pm, and things thinned out quite a bit. During our wait we ate (of course), toured the Spa (nice but oh so expensive), and lounged on the aft pool deck.

We had a balcony cabin on deck 5; king bed was very nice and the pull out small couch was fine for 1 person, in this case a young child. Not big enough for 4 for sure. The ship was in tip top shape cleanliness wise at all times. DEcor was ok; I found some of it very appealing, some too modern for my tastes. Read more