Pre-cruise...Flew into Miami Friday, day before cruise. We stayed at Hyatt, about 6 blocks from Bayside Market. Beautiful hotel, but we were so exhausted, we basically collapsed as soon as we got into the room. (We were up all night stressing about the weather, we were expecting a snow storm and didn't know if we would make it to Florida. After a nap, we went to dinner at Bubba Gumps at the Bayside market. We have eaten there before and always like it.

Morning of...arrived at the port 10:30, we did VIP check in and were the first ones to arrive. It was extremely smooth. Erica (concierge) came by and introduced herself. We had already made out our list of restaurants we wanted and times, so we gave it to Erica and she took care of all of our reservations for the week. We were the 1st people escorted onto the ship (DH loved it) and were taken to see our room, even though it wasn't quite ready yet. After checking out the room we just explored the ship. Our last 4 cruises have been on Jewel class ships which are all pretty similar, so it took a little while for us to get used to the layout (kind of choppy).

Room...very nice, plenty of storage space for DH and I. HUGE balcony, biggest I have seen yet. First time being on front of ship. I prefer back of the ship room, less rocky and I love the sound of the engine. (front of the ship was eerily quiet at night to me). Whirlpool tub was nice, took a nice long bath while sipping champagne the first night. Read more