We left from Miami. Getting on board was easy no issues at all. I talked with some folks who had 'priority boarding' passes. I asked the fee, she said $40 or $50 for it. Not sure if we were just lucky or they simply wasted their money, but we were able to board within 10 minutes of them.

The crew was nice, I really haven't known any crew that was rude or demanding. However, if your primary language is English, get ready for a lot of blank looks from the crew at times. Many are foreign, in fact I only saw or spoke with as many as 3 the entire trip that you could bet their language of native dialect was English. Not a big deal, but that's the industry I suppose. Just more or less a heads up. The ship, Valor was nice. A couple of things I noticed getting on Sunday afternoon. Deck 5 is the Casino, among other things. On the deck 6 (where our room was) the stairwell going down to five, you immediately smelled smoke, real bad too - as if active gaming was currently in progress. Again no big deal, but ventilation was real bad. I will post some good things, but let's get down to brass tacks here; you want to know what isn't good first. Here they are: The pool(s) is/are tiny. There is a water slide, pretty nice I'd say. Keeping in mind that the near top deck for the open pool (deck 9 LIDO) - the pool itself might fit 15 before you are bumping elbows. We too brought kids, and the sardine fest of kids in that pool was crazy. There was an equally sized pool towards the back for adults only I think, but geesh, what if I wanted to chill out by the pool with my kids without getting nearly jumped on by others. Don't mean to be Debby Downer here, again just voicing my opinion in hopes this helps you gain a visual or at least set expectations accordingly. Two hot tubs on the main deck, pretty nice. I think there were others towards the front as well. There are some others in the adults only areas, I'm sure they were nice, but we stuck with our kiddos, so I really can't tell you much about those.

I know it's vacation or holiday, but for the love of God, does the music have to be so loud for 8 hours during the day on Deck 9? THUMPING OVER & OVER, etc... I like loud music, trust in that, but the selection was very slim, and was really directed towards the youth genre and other similar Jamaican type. That is fine, but a little more variety would certainly have been welcomed. Someone please tell me why there is a DJ on deck 9, using a laptop, as if he's actually controlling the music selection, wow. Gimme a break. Read more