Day 1 - Embarkation

We drove to Miami from our home near Tampa. We arrived to the port area @ 10:15 a.m. and found very heavy traffic at the port. Biscayne Blvd, which is the main access road to the port, is closed for construction and it's a mess. We followed the crazy, pothole laden detour and finally got across Biscayne to the road that leads to the cruise terminals. From there, it was grid locked. It took about 30-45 minutes to get from that point to the parking garage, which is about a mile or less, away. It was a mess, but there were a lot of ships there that day, so this might not be normal. We arrived at exactly the same time for our Imagination cruise two months ago and we didn't have this problem. Anyways, we chose to drive straight to the garage and lug our bags to the porters as opposed to trying to drop them of first. The drop off area was a mad house. After the initial craziness, the rest of the embarkation was quick and painless, slightly more than 45 minutes from the time we walked into the terminal, until we were having our first drink on the ship. Not bad. I will say that I'm not crazy about their new boarding process where they don't give you your S and S cards until you board the ship. It didn't seem to make the wait any more or less, but just more lines to wait in. I would rather wait in one long line and get everything taken care of than the stop, go, stop, go method. But it wasn't that bad. Headed to Lido and had our traditional first drink, a Miami Vice, how fitting.. There was a decent Reggae band that played on the Lido deck all week. Had excellent burgers for lunch followed by our 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th drinks. We headed to our cabin at about 2:00 and all of our bags were there (awesome) including the most important bag that contained 2 12-packs of beer, 1 12-pack of coke, 1 12-pack of water, 1 liter of rum, and 2 bottles of wine. Smugglers rejoice! Anyways, we unpacked and enjoyed our balcony. We had cabin 6489, which is an aft facing balcony on the Upper deck. We are sun worshippers so we LOVED this cabin! If you are not a sun lover, you might want a side balcony cabin as there is VERY little shade on the aft balconies. Anyways, the aft area, even the side facing cabins, are a great location. Just steps away from formal and informal dining areas, and most of the bars. We then explored the ship some and did the muster drill, which was painless, lasted 15 minutes, quickest one we've ever done. We tried to find the Maitre'd twice to see if we could get a table for two, but he was nowhere to be found so we gave up. We had late seating, 8:00 in the Washington dining room. We went to dinner and found that we had a 4-person table that we shared with another nice couple that we spent some time with during the week. Dinner the first night was one of the best meals that I have ever had on a cruise, which is a welcome change because I feel that the quality of the food has declined in recent years. I had the pumpkin soup, wilted spinach salad, and two entrees, sweet and sour shrimp and the New York strip steak, followed by the chocolate melting cake. All of it was superb, cooked to perfection. Outstanding! After dinner we bar hopped. The guitarist/singer at the casino bar was good. He played acoustic guitar, so a lot of folk, country music, Eagles, buffet, etc. The Rised Up Band in the Paris Hot bar was pretty good. We usually spend most of our time listening to the rock bands on cruises, that's our thing. But these guys were catering to an older crowd, playing more slow love/dance songs. We're more into hard rock, and it was just difficult for us to sit through Unchained Melody and Sea of Love waiting/hoping for them to play something heavy. So... The only other thing besides karaoke, which makes me nauseous, was the piano bar, Lindy Hop. We ended up spending a good deal of time here. Joel is a very talented musician and was very fun. This place was very popular, standing room only most nights. Get there early and get a seat at the bar, it's much more fun if you are up close. Since we are night owls, we ended up at the disco most nights because it was open the latest. Again, this is not really our thing, but it's a fun place to people watch. The sound and lighting there was cool, but did notice almost half of the lights were not functioning, including one whole wall of video screens, and the video screens above the dance floor. Not a big deal, but it would have been awesome if they were all working.

Day 2 - Nassau Read more