First time cruisers, married couple celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. We have traveled plenty over the years including a few trips to the Caribbean, but first cruise and major trip for us without the kids. Choose the 7 day Southern cruise due to the five port stops so as to visit as many islands as possible that we had never been to.

San Juan: We made the mistake (in hindsight) in association with our travel agent to fly into San Juan the day of the departure, meaning we did not have chance to see the island as our flight arrived in late afternoon and our prearranged transfer took us directly to the ship -again our mistake not RC. As we should have arrived the day before which would have given us several hours on departure day to see the island sites.

Embarkation: Was very smooth with no lines and quick service right up to and on to ship (majority of guests had already embarked hours before). I was frankly worried about this process and long lines and also needed to get a decent meal before ship departed, but turned out not to be an issue at all. We were able to use our My Time dining to get into assigned sit down meal shortly after they opened at 6pm, with plenty of time to get out to the deck to watch departure. Read more