My family just enjoyed our very first cruise a few weeks ago. We chose July because we were cruising with a large group of family and friends with children out of school for the summer. I might add our children were teenagers, not the little ones who can make a vacation turn into a nightmare. We loved the ship! Our cabins were great even though we didn't select them as we'd had no experience on a ship before. We did ask for a cove balcony and it was great. I'm not certain I'd go with any balcony again on a Caribbean cruise though since we enjoy being around other people when the ship departs and our departures were LATE, 11:00 PM so there was no seeing anything interesting from our balcony in the dark. I was a bit disappointed in our cabin steward. It was his first week back after "vacation" and I suspect he just wasn't in the groove yet. We asked for ice in our room and never got it. We asked for the continental breakfast and never got it. Once we tipped him the day before the end of the cruise, he became much more accommodating. Perhaps we should have done that earlier.

We were new to all of this and didn't prebook our excursions. Lesson learned there. Most of the things we wanted to do were all booked up and that was disappointing. We went on a trolley ride in Key West with plans to jump off at the beach but honestly the beach was icky looking so we opted to go have some Key Lime Pie on a stick instead. In Freeport, we also just winged it and ended up at Junkanoo beach after a scary interaction with several taxi drivers. We loved Junkanoo beach though. The coconut drinks do flow heavily with no regard to age, so beware of that!! That night I decided to suck it up and book Atlantis (even though the price is ridiculous) just so we'd have no worries about our last excursion day. Atlantis is beyond beautiful. It appears to be lined in gold! The beach was great and the water was so perfect. The native folks selling things on the beach are interesting but annoying. You never know what the price is or will be or if you're getting scammed or not. Still, very interesting despite the aggravation.

The ship is gorgeous! We enjoyed all the food, especially in the Crimson Dining Room. If you're lucky enough to get Superman for your server, you'll want for nothing! We opted for late dining. I'm not sure how that compares to other dining times but it did cause us to be late for some of the shows we wanted to see. Read more