I must say right of the bat that this was our first cruise so I have no yardstick to measure against, but I know what I like and I liked this cruise!! It's a nice no worry, no hassle vacation that can be enjoyed by anyone.
Embarkation was just a bit confused, as there was a special waiting area for repeat cruisers and suite customers and we were all just kind of hanging around there for some time until someone finally came up and said that we could all board at any time because we had priority boarding and was wondering why we were all waiting. There was no sign or person there to tell us to do anything different. Once we got past that hurdle though, everything went smoothly. The baggage took quite a while to get to the cabin though and did not arrive until around 3pm or so. The cabin that we had was very, very nice and spacious and had a very generous balcony. It reminded me more of a rather large hotel room than a cabin on a ship. I've heard that some people don't spend much time in the cabin, and if you're one of those people that spend every hour of every day out partying and use the room only for sleeping, then the extra expense of the balcony would not be worth it. But if you're like us and sometimes like to relax and watch the world go by, then the balcony is worth every penny. We watched grand sunrises and sunsets from it-I saw a shark while watching the water. I saw hundreds of jumping fish one day. I loved watching everything going on while we were entering or leaving a port. It was fantastic and I recommend it highly. Stretch your budget if you have to.
One thing about a forward deck 8 cabin though is that it is just under the Windjammer, and very early every morning, people were rolling carts on the deck above and making quite a bit of noise. I mentioned it in the ship review at the end of the cruise, and suggested that softer air filled wheels would make no noise at all and should solve the problem, or at least buffer the noise quite a bit. We'll see if they act on it because I hope to be back on the ship in the future. The Grand Suite had plenty of storage space, an excellent bathroom, a sofa, 2 chairs, and a deck with 2 loungers and 2 chairs with a small table on which we enjoyed a wonderful room service breakfast. The room also contained two terry robes and slippers for us to use while on board.