My husband and I and my brother and sister-in-law arrived in Tampa the day before embarkation to drop the kids off at my parent's house in Tampa.

My dad drove us to the terminal on Sunday. We arrived around 11:00am. Registration went smoothly. We were on the ship and having lunch by 1:00pm. Soon after lunch the announcement was made that the rooms were ready. We booked 2 side-by-side verandah suites on the Navigation deck. The room was a nice size with a good size verandah. The rooms were just steps away from the Navigation deck pool which was nice. We had plenty of storage in the room and all our suitcases fit under the bed. We used the room safe with no problems but be aware that many people used their room key to lock/unlock their safe and then couldn't get back in the safe when their magnetic strip on the room key got demagnetized. This happened to my brother and the locksmith had to come and drill open his safe. It's best to use a driver's license or other credit card.

The life-boat drill went well except for having to wait for some passengers that didn't show up on time. Read more