First off, let me say that this was my first cruise so I am writing this without comparison to anything else. I read a lot of the reviews here before leaving on my cruise and so I was skeptical about some things, especially the food.

From the start, we made our own way to the cruise ship terminal, arriving a day earlier and staying at a hotel nearby. We showed up around 11 a.m. It was a zoo at the terminal with three ships in total being alongside. A porter greeted us right away and took all of our bags. We had arranged to pick up our tickets at the terminal and had to find out where to get them. The porter stayed with the luggage while we did this. It was a very short line to get our tickets and baggage tags. Once done, our porter took the luggage and we moved into a long line. This line moved at a steady pace and we were onboard by around noon. I was quite impressed how quickly and smoothly it all went with how busy it was at the terminal.

On board, it was another long line-up. The actual check-in was done on-board being that there were two other ships in port as well. In the line, they offered us champagne, rum-punch and non-alcoholic punch. They had many staff conducting check-in and I'd say we were in our room by 12:30ish. Our bags arrived outside our room door around 6 p.m. Read more