We were originally supposed to fly out of JFK to San Juan on Sunday 8/28/11. Hurricane Irene had us change our plans and arrive the Friday prior. Good thing we changed flights since NY airports closed and over 200 people missed the cruise.

Stayed at a local hotel (Marriottt San Juan) until Sunday. We took a taxi to the pier and arrived a little past 10am. The lines of people were just starting to form. They kept making us change rows and then divided us into two rows to drop off our luggage. At 11am the line began to move and we dropped off our luggage. It took about 10 minutes for the drop off and tipping. (Make sure you have your luggage tags filled out ahead of time. They are available up at the desk but no one offered them to you if you didn't already have them. The line moves pretty fast and then you go into another line to show ID and get into the building. Another ½ hour or so and again some line division and confusion, we show ID and are in the building. There's a duty free shop to buy water or soda. I called RCCL to ask about bringing water on board and was told we couldn't do so. However, I bought a 12 pack of water for $5.99 before boarding right at the pier - instead of spending $40 on the water package. Handed a health form, show ID, get Seapass Card and go onto the ship. We went right to the Windjammer for lunch. Buffet style and something for everyone. By the time we were done, it was 1pm and we went to our room. We were on 7th floor in the front of the ship. Nice size room, large balcony and there are little mirrors that opened over the desk to store misc items. We were traveling with our 8 year old daughter and thought she'd be sleeping on the pullout couch. She was thrilled to see a bunk bed opened above our bed on the first night. When we traveled on the Disney cruise we rec'd a towel animal every day. When we didn't receive one on the first day, we asked our attendant Dale about it. He said they only do them 3 times. When we told him it was one of our daughter's favorite parts of a cruise, he made her an animal every day.

We walked around the ship. It's a nice size. You don't feel like you'd get lost on it. We brought our daughter to the indoor pool to see it was adults only. Since they were expecting rain in the afternoon, this was a bit of a disappointment for her. We went to the outdoor pool and it was very small. There were ledges to sit in shallow water but the pool itself was tiny. When she jumped in and told us it was salt water, we were surprised. Disney pools are not salt water. It seemed particularly salty and could only image how crowded it would be when the ship was full. We walked to the kid pool with the waterslide. The slide didn't open until noon the next day. The kiddie pool wasn't salted but it was shallow and really only for wading. Basically, there was no place for older kids to really swim. Thank goodness there was only one day at sea or this would have been a problem. Read more