Background My husband & I are 50 years old and have cruised various cruise lines including Princess, Norwegian (NCL), Costa, RCL and Carnival.

Pre-Cruise We spent 3 days pre-cruise in San Diego. We stayed at the Holiday Inn on the bay with a bayside 11th floor balcony. We chose this hotel mainly for its location being close to the cruise ship. The view was wonderful. The hotel was clean and the accommodations were very comfortable. While there are several choices for dinning, we found an Italian place called Philippi's in Little Italy that was wonderful. We really liked their pizza and their prices were quite reasonable.

Embarkation & Room Embarkation was fast and easy. The port is very organized, not like some we have been through. It was about 11:30 when we headed across the street to the terminal. Porters were collecting luggage and loading them into crates by your room location on the ship. The lines in the terminal went fast. It was only about 10 to 20 minutes and we were able to board the ship. Rooms on the ship were not going be ready until 1:30, so we went for lunch on the lido. After lunch we headed to our room to drop off our carry on. We were pleasantly surprised that our luggage was already there and had been placed inside the room by our room steward. Our room U110 on deck 6 had ample storage space with drawers, closets with shelves and plenty of hangers. There was an in room safe, robes hanging in the closet, 2 beach towels on the couch and a small tray of sample size incidentals in the bathroom. I noticed that there was no hair dryer or refrigerator in this room. When mentioned to the room steward she immediately obtained a hair dryer for me to use for the duration of the trip. We liked the location of this room. It was mid ship and directly across from the larges suites. It was a nice quite location. Read more