We embarked the Star Princess in Rio de Janiero. Embarkation seemed very unorganized, as he (my cabin mate)is Elite, and usually goes right to the front of the line. Not so this trip. We were told that there were more elite passengers than any other status. This may have been true, due to the fact that the average age of passengers were over 70.
Once on board (the whole process took about an hour and 30 min.) everything went smoothly. Our luggage arrived shortly after we were shown to our cabin.
Cabin: ours was an obstructed view outside, and was nicely appointed with room for everything, including a lot of clothing for our 4 week odessey vacation. Although it was listed as "obstructed view" we had only a little bit of the very top part of a lifeboat under our very wide picture window. So it was not very obstructed at all.