GETTING ON: On June 6, I left for my cruise to Alaska. I went with my family, immediate and extended. When we arrived at the port, it was fairly clear as to which way we should go, not a confusing process, when we got inside, it took a while to get everything sorted out (our fault, not the cruise lines.) The lines were extremely long and the process was so slow I took out my iPod and started listening to it. Once we got on, my cousins and I were in a stateroom with my grandpa and we decided to find our cabin without waiting for him. Of course, we had no idea where it was. We asked about 5 people how to find our cabin using our room card. None of them knew so we went to the purser's desk to figure out where we were supposed to be. After about a half hour of running all over the ship we finally found it. We had an inside stateroom. Pretty small. Neat, though. Crappy TV you can buy for $30, you know, one of those little 13 inchers. Lots of movies on, some in different languages for the international guests. We explored the ship to try and get our bearings. This smaller ship was harder to navigate than the larger ship I went on in November. The layout confused me and my cousins. We weren't familiar with it until about the fifth or sixth day.
DINING: For meals you had the buffet, Windjammer, or the dining room, Edelweiss. There was also a place for snacks like hamburgers, pizza, and fries. We ate in the dining room for dinner every night so I can't say anything about the Windjammer for dinner, but the dining room food was good, not as good as my last cruise, but good all the same. Different choices every night but you still had a couple entrees that remained the same for those picky eaters. Breakfast in the Windjammer. Well, all I can say is DON'T EAT THE EGGS!!!! They were soggy and undercooked and disgusting. Just get other foods, there's plenty, stay away from the sausages, too. I never had breakfast in the dining room. Lunch in the Windjammer. Limited is all I can say. There are a lot of things that would be good if they were prepared right. If you go, look at the rice and you'll see what I mean. I never had lunch in the dining room but I don't even know if they had a lunch in the dining room. The Solarium Cafe was a good place to go in a rush. The fries were good, I didn't even want to try the hamburgers or hot dogs and the pizza was sickening. So I stuck to the fries, there were some good desserts on the ship, though. There was ice cream on the ship but don't go out of your way to get it, it wasn't that good. You serve yourself and the flavors alternate between chocolate and vanilla, only one flavor at a time though. I still got about 3 a day, though.
RECREATION: This is where the ship shined. Or maybe I just really liked the rock climbing wall. That was the best part of the ship no doubt at all. Sometimes it would be just me and my cousin so we could climb as many times as we wanted. There were skill levels for everybody. It was a blast! The gym was right around the corner from the rock climbing wall which was pretty cool. The gym was kind of cramped but it still was a good place. There were two pools, usually only one would be open at a time. The indoor pool was smaller than the pool I have at home but the outdoor one was bigger, we only went once as it was usually raining. It was a neat experience to swim with a glacier right behind you. So now I can say that I swam by a glacier! The were plenty of bars and clubs around the ship, way more than there needed to be. The other recreation, mostly for kids is running up and down the stairs to the displeasure of the adults and dropping things from the top stairs to see if they reach the bottom.