My parents and I flew into Miami on Friday, so we could spend some time with my brother before we got on the ship. We stayed at the Holiday Inn by the airport, and their rooms had just been refurbished. We rented a car from Alamo, because they have a shuttle to and from the port as well as the airport.

Day 1: September 25th -- It took 1-1/2 hours to embark. When we got on the boat, we headed down to our room on the Riviera Deck. It is nice sized, bigger than the Inspiration. The victory is a gorgeous ship and has a really nice layout. I had read some of the reviews saying it needed to be repaired on the walls and carpet. I only saw one wall that needed to be repaired, but everything else looked great. After we unpacked, we ate lunch on the Lido deck in the Mediterranean restaurant. Their hamburgers and fries are delicious. We went back to the room and took a nap. During which, they delivered our luggage, so it was a pretty fast delivery. The lifeboat only took a half an hour. It said on the caper that it was supposed to be from 3 to 3:30 pm, but didn't start until 4 pm. After the drill, we went back to the room and I noticed in the caper, that they didn't have the in-cabin movies listed, like they did on our other cruises. Instead they have a channel on the television, that tells you what is on at the very moment, but does not give a starting time for the movies on TV later.

We had the 6:15 pm seating assignment in the Atlantic dining room. Two out of the three couples at our table were on our Inspiration cruise last year. We figured out that we all had the same travel agent. Our waiting staff introduced themselves, but didn't bother to learn our names. We weren't able to leave the dining room until 7:45 because of the service. Read more