My wife and 12 year old have been on maybe ten cruises and my wife and I did this exact cruise in 2002 (sans child). In 2002, it was the best vacation we ever had, great people, food, ports and rather cheap with the euro 1 to 1. Not this time. Pound was over 2 to 1 and the euro was 1 to 1.50. The purpose of this trip was to introduce my son to the trials and rewards of travel. (vs. the Playstation game "Euro and Europe in summer.")

We flew from LAX to London (AIR NEW ZEALAND--A+) and stayed for two days before taking the Eurostar to Paris ... and then taking the Artesia night "sleeper" train to VCE. Do not take this train unless you want no sleep! "Not possible" as the French would say. That magic dream moment of seeing my son walk out of the VCE train station and be impressed with the beauty of Venice was marred by 26 hours of no sleep and the throngs of summer heat and tourists. I grabbed a water taxi to take us to the ship dock. That is the only way to go. Walking in the heat... "Not possible." I talked the driver down to 85 Euros but some got it for 65. We were beat and Celebrity started loading passengers at 11am and we had lunch and were in our room by 1pm.

We had cabins 7002 and 7003. They looked bigger and really were! Probably double the size of any other OV room. There was a full sized sofa bed with a very comfortable mattress. It was the best designed and most comfortable mattress I've ever seen on a sofa bed. There was a small entry way where we kept our suitcases, a desk with three feet all around it, two chairs beside the sofa and a window that both my son and I sometimes sat on to get a free internet signal. (Found on only in Croatia) The windows in these room face forward and had a "tunnel" view. The rooms are also not next to each other. There is a crew thing between the room and require a long walk between. Be careful with M-class forward rooms. The diagram makes rooms look close that are very far apart! The Port forward rooms are NOT across from the inside rooms as shown. Since we were at the dead end of the forward hall, there was NO noise of people walking by and it was a long way to the back or anywhere for that matter. We had one rough seas night and there was a lot of motion (expected at the front) and we were next to the anchor chain dropping during tender days. But I'd try for these rooms again. These were wonderful rooms for a family. Last trip on the Infinity we nearly killed each other because the space was so tight. Read more