This is my first posting on cruise critic but my 24th cruise. I was travelling with my Mom, Dad and 16yr old daughter. I am 42.We flew on Delta from orlando to San Juan, no problems there. We had not signed up for transfers so went direct to the taxi stand. The cost for 4 pax was only $21.50. We arrived at the port to a long line. They start to check in around 12pm so we waited until the line started to move. They did arrange then to have a platinum line which made our check in quicker.
We boarded the ship and were told out rooms would not be ready until 2pm. We were familiar with the voyager class ship so went to Windjammer for lunch. The food, service and choices were great. We then decided to look around the ship and find the teen room for my daughter. The ship is a beautiful and we were really looking forward to our week long cruise. We chooses this cruise as it went to Aruba and Curacao which are 2 ports we have not visited before. Our rooms was ready by 2pm so we went to investigate and make sure our connecting doors were unlocked. We found the beds very old and uncomfortable so will be better once they have undated the beds and bedding. Then spent a while checking out the cruise compass to make sure we did not miss anything and plan our day and evening. My daughter was looking forward to her teen programme as she loves these and as she has already completed 23 cruises so know the ropes as she says. She went to the teen room to meet everyone but came back after half hour not happy as she said that all the other teens don't speak much english and she does not speak spanish, so she decided to try the next day. We were then introduced to our cruise director at the welcome aboard show. His name is Richard Spacey and we were fortunate enough to see him on a previous ship so knew we would have fun with him. He is great, funny and the best out there.
We had booked a shore excursion via RCCL in ARuba which was an off road jeep tour. 7hours long. This was great. Very dusty and bumpy but great. You end your day at a private island with a water park, lunch and drinks included. It was good to get clean. You can also snorkel for free and this was the best place I have found to see huge fish so close to shore. Aruba was really nice and I would love to go back. Next day Curacao, No tour just shopping. Again nice place and want to go back. I found St Maarten the best place for drink. St THomas is OK but prices higher as it is back in the US.