Background: I am a 26-year-old woman and traveled with my 21-year-old sister and parents in their mid-50's. This was the 2nd cruise for both my sister and myself, and the first for my parents. We were each traveling on a limited budget.
Embarkation: After getting a ride from Staten Island we arrived at the port around 1:30pm. A porter helped us with our luggage right away, and we waited on line for about an hour to check in. Not an awful wait, and the actual check in process was quite painless. There were cookies and juice once you left the terminal, and we were greeted with a glass of champagne when boarding the ship. After exploring the ship for a short time, we went to our staterooms and they were ready and most of our luggage had arrived. Our last piece of luggage was delivered around 6pm.
Cabins: As I mentioned, we were traveling on a budget, so we decided to reserve inside staterooms toward the front of the ship. As expected, the accommodations were a bit claustrophobic, but the setup of the rooms made things quite manageable. My sister and my room had 2 twin beds, 2 end tables, a small "desk" with chair, and another little area with a hairdryer (which actually worked very well) and outlet. The bathroom was also small, especially the toilet area when it comes to leg room. The shower wasn't too small, the water pressure was great, and we enjoyed the ease of setting the water temperature so that it was the same each time you went in. There was a closet, 3 drawers, 4 shelves and a safe. There was enough room for all of our luggage and personal items. There was a TV, but the only channels that came in were CNN, FoxNews, Turner Classic Movies, ESPN and the ship channels. That wasn't really a big deal to us. My parents' stateroom was the same, except with the beds being together, and seemed slightly larger than our room. We didn't hear any noise from our neighbors. The only thing that I could really complain about is that we did hear a LOT of noise when we were anchoring, but I think it was because of our location in the ship.