Background: My DW and I are in our late 20's and from the Houston area. We booked this cruise as an anniversary/late honeymoon gift to ourselves. We had never been on a cruise before so we were totally new to the experience.
I did TONS of research before deciding what we were going to do while we were out there so I felt pretty prepared for anything. Now that we have been through it, although it was fun to read up on things, a lot of it was unnecessary. We picked the VOTS because it was obviously the easy to get to and saved us money in airfare.
Embarkation: We arrived at the terminal around 11:30am and we were VERY surprised at how busy it was. We thought we were pretty early but once we got in and through security, we noticed the hundreds of people waiting to board the ship. The lines moved quickly and so we joined the big group waiting to get on. I talked to a lady in line and she said she had never seen it like that before. We waited for about an hour and then they let everyone on. We have taken plenty of plane rides and this was way better than that. No complaints from us.
Room was middle portside deck 8. Great view from balcony. Plenty big and not noisy at all. Inbetween aft and forward elevators/stairs.