Pre-Cruise Stay: My wife and I stayed at the Marriott Courtyard in Cocoa Beach Florida for 2 days before embarkation. We would recommend this hotel as it is 10 minutes from the pier with access to a beautiful beach,good pool and whirlpool, nice rooms, and a transfer package you can purchase through the hotel with Travelynx from Orlando airport to hotel to ship and back to Orlando airport.

Embarkation: Arrived at 11:15 a.m. We were on the ship by 12:10 p.m. after a 25 minute wait in chairs. Very efficient! Upon entering the ship at the deck 3 atrium, I would recommend that you resist the temptation to immediately run to the lido deck for lunch at the Gathering. Instead, walk over to the Atrium Bar and purchase your soda card, if you want one, then go into the Crimson Dining Room for a relaxing lunch. Had a full lunch menu to choose from with food brought by a waiter, plenty of room for your hand luggage, and the dining room was quiet and only half full. Very nice experience compared to our usual madhouse on the lido deck experience!

Room: We were in 6314. This upper deck room was on the port in the middle/front area of deck six between the bow and mid-ships elevators. It is a good location for getting around the ship, but the room itself had some noise issues. It was near one of the whirlpools on the lanai deck, so that when on your balcony on sea days you got some noise from that area. No noise at night from the whirlpool area. However, as soon as the ship reached international waters and the casino opened for business, we discovered that we could clearly hear the "music" made by the slot machines one deck below. On a scale of 1-10 I would rate the noise at a 2. It was like a low volume radio playing in the next room, it was always there each day the casino was open. We adjusted to it after the first night on-board and it did not become a problem for us, but it might for some light sleepers. Read more