We booked our trip on Thursday July 29th and departed on July 31st! We live about 5 hours from Miami...so getting there was no problem. On Wednesday evening our 19 year old mentioned he wished we were going on a cruise this summer! I looked over at the hubby and he said okay. Son is heading back to college--soon! I looked online to see what was sailing on the 31st. At first I tried to get us on the Oasis of the Seas....RCCL being our usual first choice. Their website showed availability, had the TA try to book us 2 cabins, and they were sold out. Next choice was NCL EPIC. TA was a little wary for us because we usually try to stay away from tons of kids and always stay off the mega ships when traveling with hubby!

Luckily hubby is not too inquisitive, because he never asked exactly what I had planned! He would have FREAKED out to hear there would be more than 4,000 guests on board. My girlfriends and I did a 3 night out of Miami in May, and there I learned of the Walk-Off program...I told my boys to only pack what they could roll on and off the ship, we each took one small suitcase....no waiting to disembark was a big bonus for us!

We arrived to the Port of Miami to see this massive ship, funny looking in the front, looked like a big floating box! And it was pretty darn big. I think there were 2 Carnival ships sitting behind the EPIC, they were definitely dwarfed in size by EPIC. We arrived pretty late, it was a little after 3. Apparently right around 3pm they stop all arrival processing to give a head count to the Coast Guard. We did have to stand in line for about 20 extra minutes while waiting for this process. There were only a handful of us waiting at this point. Once the processing began, it was swift walk to our cabins. NOTE: online we were told there were no credit cards taken for parking! We parked in Terminal C, and paid by credit card when pulling into the parking garage. $140.00 for the week. Read more