We cruised thanksgiving week 2013. First let me say we had a great time, despite the service being quite bad on our cruise. Due to the typhoon in the Philippines the ship was very short staffed, which resulted in the crew struggling to keep up with the demand. Your service experience may be quite better than ours and we chose to not penalize the crew for what happened to their homes and families.

parking: we parked at safe cruise parking. same area as other non port parking facilities, close to port and very bad neighborhood. But parking lot was fenced off, easy to find, free shuttle to port. waited 10 mins for shuttle getting to port. no wait getting back to car.

embarkation: very easy and quick. we got to port at 1030 am and did not have a line for security or checking in. we were on the ship by 1130. *traveling with kids- you cannot put a money limit on their card. its full access or no access. beware they can rack up video arcade charges extremely quick. Read more