We decided that a three generational cruise at the end of summer might be fun and planned to cruise over my son's birthday. So the three of us: me, my son, and 16 year old grandson booked an oceanview cabin for a 4 day cruise to the Bahamas. A week prior to the cruise, I was offered an upgrade to a balcony cabin which I took.

We flew from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale. As we had purchased transfers to the port from NCL, we were met by a representative in baggage claim area. After collecting our baggage, it took forever for ground transportation to arrive. The representative kept reassuring us that the bus was on its way. It took forever for the mini-bus to arrive. By contrast, a much larger group of Royal Caribbean travelers were on there way within a half hour.

Once we arrived at the cruise terminal, the process was flawless. On board the ship, we were greeted with champagne flutes (OJ for the 16 year old) and I was pleased to find that the ship was cool! The air conditioning problems reported by readers in July had been fixed. We were told that our cabin was not ready yet, so we checked our carry-ons, and explored the ship. We met several other passengers who were able to bring their bags directly to their stateroom, which we would have liked to do as well. Not sure why this was inconsistent. When we arrived at our stateroom, it was not ready for 3 passengers, but only 2. There were only 2 life preservers and 2 beach towels and the pull out sofa was not prepared with sheets, etc. It took over 24 hours to get the beach towel and life preservers and we had to remind them to set up the sofa bed. We had lunch in the Adagio Restaurant and enjoyed the pasta bar and ice cream. Read more