We are a three-person family (mom, dad, 11-year-old son) who've cruised regularly for years exclusively on Royal Caribbean. This was our first venture into holiday cruising and our first trip on a Voyager class ship.

Transfer to Port of Embarkation Because we had Royal Caribbean handle our travel arrangements, we had a transfer from the airport. Now, I was a little worried about this one, but it seemed to go smoothly. It was a little strange that we were the only 3 people on the bus who were on the Explorer (everyone else was on the Freedom), and we got a few nasty looks when we were dropped off first, but everything went pretty smoothly.

Embarkation We were very worried about embarkation because the lines looked very long. In reality, they weren't long, just poorly managed by the pier staff. It didn't take us more than 10 minutes to get from the end of the line to the desk where we could check in (granted, we are Platinum members, so we got in a shorter line near the end, but that's all). We were on the ship quite quickly and got to our stateroom in pretty near record time! Read more