First, as I stated previously this was our first cruise. My family consists of myself, my husband, (both age 48) and our 2 adult children, our daughter (age 18) and our son (age 20). I picked our travel agent because I have known her from a side job that her and I were both participating in. Unknown to me, her full time job for the last 10 years has been as a travel agent. This sounded great to me, because I knew we wanted to go on a cruise but had absolutely no idea where to start. She began by asking me who was going, when we were going, where we were thinking about going and also what we wanted to see and do on the cruise ship. I stated that because my children were older, don't get me wrong, I love children, but I really wanted a ship that was not going to resemble the Disney cruise ships. I have heard these are fantastic for families with smaller children. We decided on the Serenade of the Seas because of the itinerary and the size of the ship. We flew into San Juan, PR on Saturday March 14, 2009. There was some confusion in the airport as to where we were to go to wait to catch our transfer to the ship. With several other ship passengers arriving at the same time, it was a little like mass confusion. It took approximately 1 hour to get to the ship, this included standing in line, the ride and then going through all the customs and picture taking before you actually board the cruise ship. I was really impressed by the security of the ship. Every time you disembark and return to the ship your picture is taken and compared to the original taken when you first boarded the ship. We spent the first day of the ship walking around the familiarize ourselves with the ship. All the workers on the ship are so friendly. Through our discussions with several workers we found out that most staff work 6 months on the ship with 2 months off, and during those 6 months on, they never get a full day off, only hours per day! One would never know this because of how well they treat all the passengers. Always a hello, good-bye, "can I get you anything", or cleaning up the several plates that we used while eating. I never met a staff member who seemed to be in a bad mood, which I found to be truly amazing. My family loved, St. Thomas and St. Maarten the best. We really had more time on these islands to explore. The beaches were wonderful! It is true that you will need to bargain if you want to rent beach chairs and umbrellas. Our first port was St. Thomas. I would recommend not taking the taxi's unless you are unable to walk for 30 minutes. We took a taxi into town, but found out from other tourist that it is only a 30 minute walk, so instead of taking a taxi back to the ship we chose to walk. It is a beautiful walk, if you can do it, I highly recommend it. Also, if you are in port on a Sunday, do not let the taxi driver talk you into believing that the stores are open until 5 p.m. in town. We trusted ours and when we got into town found out that we only had 1 hour until the shops closed. I was so disappointed, plus I feel like we were taken advantage of. If you choose to take a taxi, please realize that some will charge differently. We paid $4 p.p. while another couple in the same taxi paid $5 p.p.

Our second port was St. Maarten. We took the water taxi over to the beach at $6 p.p. only to find out that we could have walked to the beach in 20 minutes. If you want to go to Orient Beach you will need to take another taxi, we didn't do this so I am not sure how much this costs. Immediately upon getting off the water taxi, you will bombarded by people trying to get you to tour their time shares. We just wanted to get to the beach so we did not participate in the time share lectures. We just wanted to get to the beach. We needed 4 chairs and 2 umbrellas. The first guy we met wanted $30, which included some beer that we did not want. We walked further down the beach and ended up getting 4 chairs and 2 umbrellas for $15. Good thing because less than 2 hours later it began to rain and it never stopped the rest of the day. They say it never rains in St. Maarten, so I guess this was rare. The shops are great and there are some casinos. The 3rd port we visited was Antigua. This is were my family chose to do our zipline tour, also called a Canopy tour. We met our ride at 9 a.m. and had a 40 minute ride to the site. After being harnessed up and given a safety course, we were led to a small zipline. I like that they start you off small just to get you familiar with ziplining. Since I have never done this before, I was happy to start small. I don't like that they don't let you bring your cameras, this is because they want to charge you $16 for a picture. I am sure some people may drop theirs but I feel it they loose it that should be their problem. For $105 p.p. I feel they should give you a free picture or let you bring your camera, they could suggest an inexpensive camera. We all bought tshirts, we bought bigger because of the 100% cotton content, but at that, I am sorry to say they all shrunk! The t-shirts will set you back another $16. I really enjoyed this excursion but I don't understand why they have to be so much money. My husband and son chose to look around the town while my daughter and I went back to the ship. Both said that it was kind of dumpy and the casinos were very smokey and packed. Our fourth port, was St. Lucia. They say it usually rains here, but this day it was so beautiful. My family took a taxi to Reduit Beach for $24 total. Instead of renting beach chairs and umbrellas this time, we chose to just lay out on our beach towels. This beach has alot of water activities. We saw jet skis, water skiing, and being pulled on a tube behind a boat (this looked kind of fun). There isn't much shopping here, but there is a lot of restaurants. My son got hungry and ordered a small Margarita cheese pizza, it was $15. Virgin margaritas were $6.50, this shocked me as the ones on the cruise ship were much better at $4. What I thought was nice is that everyone in our taxi decided they wanted to be picked back up at 3p.m so the taxi driver gave us a ticket that ensured us we would have a ride back to the ship at this time. Our last port was Barbados, we took a shuttle into town for $2 p.p. We had hope to do most of our shopping in this port. When we got into town we only found stores, mostly boutique like stores. We couldn't find any tents set up like we had in all the other ports. I would suggest if you are buying gifts or tshirts or whatever to buy them in the other ports. We found out later from others at our dinner table that alot of people go to the beaches or do excursions in this port. Well, a couple of my family had gotten badly sunburnt on Wednesday and the sun was the last thing on their minds. This brings me to another point, sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen. Do not underestimated the power of the sun in the Caribbean, it is hot! So, hope this helps you in regards to the ports. In regards to the ship, wow! there is so much to do. There is miniature gold, rock climbing (hey, I did this) and so did my husband after the worker told him an 89 year old lady did it, there is basketball, pingpong and a host of other entertainment. We chose to eat in main dining area at 6 p.m. The second seating was at 8-8:15, but my family felt the earlier one suited us better and it did. We chose to dine with others, I felt it was a good way to meet other passengers. We felt very lucky as we had a terrific group of people. I feel you get out of it what you put into it. The drinks vary in price. I would suggest buying bottles of wine instead of glasses. Make sure you read the size of the bottle. I ordered a glass of wine the first night and it was the smallest glass of wine I ever saw. The second night I order a bottle, it was a much smaller bottle than the others had at our table but it could have just been the price that I paid. I thought I had read that you could not take the bottle with you, meaning around the ship or to your stateroom. But, I had seen several people who did this and finally asked our head waiter. He said if you bought the wine on the ship you indeed could to this. Oh well, at least I know for the next time. My daughter and I played bingo. If cost us $22.00 for a page with 6 games on it, this one was to win a cruise so I thought the cost wasn't too bad. The next time we played bingo, the tickets were also the same price and it was 1 game for $500. I had a coupon but if I didn't I probably wouldn't have play since it was only 1 game. There is some shops onboard but not too many. I would like to see them sell magazines, but they do have a library that you can check books out from, I thought this was a neat idea. There is also a casino on the ship, I didn't win but my husband did on the last day. All in all, we had a great time. My husband said he would probably cruise again but next time we would get a room with a balcony. Please note, we paid for 2 rooms on the cruise ship because our travel agent said that with four people we would appreciate the extra room since the rooms themselves are so small. I hope this helps if you have never been on a cruise before. By the way, the food was wonderful, if you don't want to sit down for fine dining you can always go to the Windjammer which is a buffet style dining room and we went to it quite often. There is always a variety of food, hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza to specialty foods which my daughter enjoyed. Also forgot, we did go to the shows every night and would highly recommend them. Enjoy and have a great time.