My wife and I returned home yesterday from the Gem's 9 night Eastern Caribbean itinerary. I would not call myself a seasoned cruiser - this was only my fourth cruise, and first in almost ten years, it was my wife's second. We are 43 and 44 years old respectively and our children are in college, and this was our "empty nester" cruise.

The embarkation process went relatively smoothly - we live in the Philadelphia area and drove up to NYC on Friday night and stayed over one night in Manhattan. So it was a short drive from Midtown to the pier on Saturday morning. We had to deal with traffic for a Food Network event taking place on the next pier, but other than that, parking was very easy. We dropped off our luggage on the first floor, and moved relatively quickly through the check in line. When we were at the front of the line, the computers went down, so there was a bit of a delay there (10-15 minutes), but an announcement was made quickly so people knew what was going on. Also, the gentleman directing passengers to each open agent was very friendly as we chatted with him during the delay.

We boarded the ship around 12:30 or so. We made a cash deposit on our stateroom account (no line whatsoever), booked a couple of on board ship activities, purchased the water package, talked to the spa representative, and by about 1:00 the announcement was made that we could proceed to our cabins. All in all, no complaints about embarkation. Read more