December 17-23, 2006 We flew to Ft. Lauderdale on Dec. 22 staying at the Hilton Garden Inn where we had two 2 room suites. The hotel had complimentary shuttle service from the airport and to Port Everglades cruise port. I would recommend staying at this hotel if you are just wanting a nice place to stay the night before your cruise. It is within 10 minutes from the airport and the cruise port as well. It also offers complimentary shuttle to nearby shopping/restaurants.

The embarkation was well organized. We arrived early along with a few hundred others, but we were whisked in and were on the ship in our cabins within 30 minutes of reaching the port. We had booked 3 inside cabins about a month before the cruise. This was the first time we had booked through the internet instead of using a travel agent, and we were very pleased with the service and promptness of receiving our cruise packet of information and tickets. We booked our airline tickets online ourselves.

Upon reaching our cabins, our Costa cards were waiting on our beds. The cabins and bathrooms were not any different from past cruises inside cabins on Norwegian, Carnival, or Holland. The cabins are small as are the bathrooms, but I have yet to find a cabin I would call spacious on a ship. I'll just say I was not disappointed in our cabins. We had our luggage within 2 hours which gave us time to eat lunch and explore the ship before leaving port at 7 p.m. There were 6 of us and we were assigned a table for just us in the Portafino dining room early seating at 5:30 p.m. I would highly recommend this time, as the late seating was not until 8:30 p.m., and by the time those people were done with dinner it was between 10 and 10:30 p.m. For us, a six course meal that late at night was not something we would have enjoyed. After dinner we went to the second show in the theater. Read more