Us: Professional couple in our 50's traveling by ourselves. This was our 10th cruise and first as Platinum on RCL. We've also sailed on Princess and Celebrity. First time on a Freedom class ship.

Booking: We usually book a cruise way in advance (our last cruise was a 2 week Canal on Serenade that was booked a year ahead). This cruise was arranged on short notice. We booked on Jan 3 with our internet TA for a balcony guarantee on the Feb 7 sailing. Three days after booking we noticed at the RCL website that the assigned cabin was a hump junior suite (our 1st), 9344 courtesy of the upgrade fairy. What a surprise!

Hotel/Air: The air was luckily obtained thru AA frequent flyer miles flying from our home airport in San Francisco to Miami. Flying out left at 9:30AM to Dallas for a 45 minute wait & then on to Miami arriving around 7:30PM. Flight home had us nervous as latest available was 10:40 AM departure from Miami to Dallas, 2 1/2 hr layover in Dallas & then on to SF arriving around 5:45 PM. Hotel was a bust. We use Priceline for booking precruise hotels and got too aggressive in bidding and were rewarded with the Holiday Inn Miami Airport West (Doral). It was a 15 minute drive from the airport and the kiss of death was the 1 hr wait for the complimentary shuttle to the hotel. Read more