Traveled over spring/Easter break from NJ. My wife (45) & I (57) brought our 17 yr old daughter (1st cruise) and our 14 yr old son (2nd cruise). This was our third, but first on Royal. We flew into Ft Lauderdale on Saturday night for a Sunday departure. We booked a flight home for Monday so we could stay and extra day in Ft Lauderdale. We booked both stays at the Ramada Inn by the Airport. This place was such a dump; we could not wait to get out. In fact we paid to take a Taxi to Miami rather then wait for the hotel shuddle to take us to the Port. We could not stand being in the room because of the smell. We stayed Monday at the Hampton Inn in Hollywood in a suite of about the same price. We would go there again.Excuse me for digressing. After reading other reviews we took advantage of getting to the ship early and it was a breeze getting checked in and we were able to board the ship by 12:30 pm after about a 20 minute wait in a holding area. The common areas of the ship were pristine. My daughter is still amazed at the size of the ship and all of the activities that were on board. While the wife & I had a balcony cabin we put the kids in a room over looking the Royal Promenade. They loved it. An inside room with a window.

We scheduled all of our excursions through the net & not through Royal. A word of advice, if you are going to a location that requires you to tendered to get you to shore, DO NOT schedule your excursions for first thing in the morning. You may not get there at your scheduled time. Royal puts their own excursions on the first couple on tenders and as one of the crew said when a couple told the crew member that they would miss their excursion that they booked separately, "to bad you should have booked through the Ship".Our first stop was Belize where we did the zip line & cave tubing excursions. The only problem is the 45-50 minute ride to the location. Our driver was going about 70-80 mph most of the way. The ride was even more of an adventure the Zip Line.

Costa Maya, we took a beach day at Pez Quadro. We had the best time there. The beach was small but clean and the water crystal clear. The total cost of $100 for the four of us included an open bar for the day. By the way Mexico has no age limit for alcohol. The four 14-17 years olds next to us took advantage of the fact and were seen later staggering through town. I hope they made it back to whatever ship they were on. Read more