Well I will start with a little background information, my wife and I have been on 13 cruises prior to this on all the major cruise lines RCCL, Carnival, NCL, and Princess. I am 32 and my wife is 29. We are both active and have a 7 month old baby girl, she did not accompany us on this vacation. This was our first cruise with a group of friends, all together we had 10. Five couples, one couple had never been on a cruise, one couple had been on one other RC cruise, one couple had been on three Carnival cruises, and one couple had been on three cruises, one on Carnival, one on Princess and one on Celebrity. Our ages for the group ranged from 25 to 38. This is a very long review, if you want my final thoughts just scroll to the bottom.

Friday May 8th 2009

We started the trip off by flying from Norfolk to Orlando on Friday May 8th 2009. The flight was great and we arrived in Orlando at 7 p.m. After the flight we went straight downstairs to get in line at Budget rental car. We had already reserved a car and figured we would be out of the airport within the hour. Boy was I wrong!!! After a complete fiasco, including over an hour in line while employees took breaks and another 30 minutes waiting on a car that I had reserved, I finally had a car and was leaving the airport at 8:45. Needless to say I will not be using Budget again. Their customer service was terrible and I could not believe how oblivious they were to all of their customers. So we leave the airport and meet some friends at the Tommy Bahama restaurant at The Point in Orlando. Dinner was fabulous as usual, we have been there a couple times and have enjoyed it every time. We left dinner and went right across the street to our hotel. We booked a two night stay on Hotwire, the hotel we got was the Rosen Plaza. I loved the hotel, the location was perfect, the room was clean, and the pool was great. Read more