My husband and I booked this, our first cruise, to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary and what a celebration it was! Hurricane Jeanne tried to disrupt things, but was only marginally successful. We were a day late leaving Miami, but the compensation was more than enough from Royal Caribbean, so I didn't mind at all.

Precruise: Had booked the Hyatt downtown on Priceline for $37. It's a beautiful hotel and has a free metromover that will take you to Bayside Marketplace. We spent a lovely evening there, having dinner at Bubba Gumps, listening to a Latin band and taking a $10 cruise of the harbor. We did have to stay an extra night (which was $120), but travel insurance will take care of that. One more reason to buy travel insurance when you travel during hurricane season!

Embarkation: I knew from my months of review of these boards not to book the Royal Caribbean transfers from the hotel, so at 10:30am we were tossing things into a suitcase and hailed a taxi. It was an $11 ride to the port from the Hyatt downtown. Due to the hurricane, there were 3 RCI ships in port and several others as well so it was a total zoo! There were people everywhere. We managed to find a porter and sent our bags off and were in the first group of 25 in the terminal. After about a 15 minute wait, they allowed us to enter the check-in area. This was done by decks, so we were the second in line to check-in for deck 9. We were on the ship in minutes! Read more