Cruised with 3 co-workers & my daughter--3 veteran & 2 rookie cruisers. Chose this ship & itinerary to see how the novice cruisers would like cruising. I flew in the morning of the cruise & took advantage of the check-in at the Miami airport--once we got to the port ( in record time due to our NASCAR- trained cabbie), we were on the ship in about 15 minutes! Sail away was pushed back to after 6:30 due to scheduled maintenance on the lifeboats, so we wound up having dinner while still docked in Miami. Saw the welcome aboard show then hit the comedy club & the piano bar all on the first night.

Our cabin was a balcony with 2 single beds and a pull down bed , while my friends opted for an ocean suite down the hall. No complaints about the location ( Empress Deck) & we had a wonderful cabin steward who took care of us! We only had a short time in Key West on Friday (7:30-2), so we did a quick stop to the Southernmost point then hit Duval St for a mini pub crawl. We booked Nanci Cocom Beach Club for Cozumel the next day--this was the highlight of our trip! After a short cab ride ($21 for the 5 of us), we hit paradise. There were only 2 other ships that day with us (Paradise & Elation), and they left much earlier, so we had the beach club to ourselves after about 2:30 (we got there at 1:30). They kept the beach open til 6 since our ship docked later.My crew opted to snorkel and get massages on the beach. The staff took great care to keep our food and drinks coming and they were very friendly. Got to see a marvelous sunset & still had plenty of time to shop once we got back to the pier. Spent most of my evenings at the piano bar as the same folks kept coming back each night-Marty, our piano man was so much fun. Also saw the evening movie on the deck and checked out the comedy shows. Sun time was spent entirely on the Serenity Deck as we were always able to get lounge chairs. My only negative was anytime dining--this was my first time since I prefer late seating. My friends didn't want to eat late, so we opted for this. We wound up getting seated in 3 different sections as my first night's server ( good service) was full the other 2 nights. Service was a bit uneven and I miss getting to know my servers--I'm going back to late seating next cruise.