This was my first cruise and I went with my DB (darling boyfriend), we are both 23. We drove down to Tampa from Atlanta a day early and spent the night with a friend that lives in Tampa.

We arrived at the port on the day of embarkation around 10:30am and parked ourselves. This process was easy and we were at the terminal going through the check-in and security check process within a few minutes. At 11:30 they started calling boarding group numbers and we were on the ship eating lunch on the Lido Deck by Noon. All of the staterooms were ready at 1:30 and we were happy to drop off our carry-ons since this made exploring the boat much easier. Our checked luggage arrived in front of our stateroom door by 3:00pm.

We had an inside stateroom on the Empress Deck. I can see why people like to have window cabins, however we chose to save the extra money those cost and put it towards other vacation splurges. I really liked being on the Empress Deck though. Everything was close by and we could use the stairs to easily get where we wanted to go. The elevators were slow and busy, and I was thankful we were not dependent on them to go between deck levels. Since this was my first cruise the cabin initially felt small, but once we used all of the storage space (there was plenty of it) to put our things away it felt much bigger and it really ended up being more than an adequate amount of living space for the duration of the cruise. Read more