Wow! We just finished our first cruise and it was amazing. Here's what we thought:

Leaving Colorado to head to Miami: Goodbye cold weather hello Miami! We stayed overnight at the Sofitel Hotel. This was a great place. We found the hotel shuttle right away. DH has a great eye and great luck. More on his "luck" later. Our room was very nice and the beds were soooo comfortable. The hotel has a shuttle that took us to a restaurant called 94th squadron. The food was wonderful. Service sucked, but we really didn't care. Just happy to be starting our vacation. After dinner the hostess called our shuttle back, this time it was a cadillac that picked us up. We went to LeBar at the hotel and met Maryanna and Maxim who were the best employees we had ever met. Such wonderful people. They brought us Champagne and chocolate desserts after learning it was our Anniversary. We enjoyed talking with them about their travels. Again wonderful service from Sofitel employees.

Embarkation Day: We took the 10:00 am shuttle to the pier and arrived around 10:30. Dropped off our luggage then headed inside the terminal. We did have to show our passports to enter. Security went very quick. There were many people available to tell you exactly where to go next. Check in only took about 5-10 minutes. Had to show our passports again. I know many people are saying passports are not required, but I say go ahead and get them. You show them alot! Anyway...After check in we headed upstairs and got our cabin cards. Sat down in the row they told us to and relaxed. The fire alarms went off for about 10-15 minutes. Only one person freaked out and ran out the emergency door. Everyone just stayed put. The employees didn't seem concerned, so we just stayed put. They finally got the alarms turned off and we just relaxed by people watching. We started boarding exactly on time (Noon). It was very organized. One row at a time. Have your cabin card out, you show it to about 6 different people all along the way to the ship. The rooms were not ready when we got there so we went to the pool got a bucket o' beer and a pina colada. We ate lunch at the Garden Cafe. The pasta station was very yummy. The rooms were ready about 1:10. I ordered the "Captains Choice" for our cabin. The wine was fine but the fruit was not very good. I wouldn't order that one again. We got settled in (#10580) and watched us leave Miami from the balcony. We could see dolphins swimming along the ship, it was wonderful! The balcony was great we loved it and will always have a balcony for future cruise's. It took our luggage FOREVER to arrive. Sometime after 7pm they showed up. Ncl had goofed our luggage tag numbers and that caused the delay. From now on if will hand write our cabin # on the tags just to make sure. It really didn't bother us that our luggage showed up late. Ours was among many that had incorrect tags. Some people were just crazy mad. We decided to have a couple drinks from our bar setup on the balcony and relax until dinner. We met our room stewards Alicia and Daniel. They kept ice in our beer helmut everyday as per our request for the duration of the cruise. They never missed a day .We had dinner at Aqua. Good food, we both had the sirloin steak. The vanilla souffle was excellent! Read more