This was a great cruise, got a great price and the ship was awesome! We were on the Allure in May, this ship was just a scaled back version to us. 4300+ passengers, but big enough to not feel crowded, and not overwhelming. We docked next to the Oasis (Allure's sister ship) in Cozumel, we thought our ship was big, that one made ours look small! Ha!

We took a transfer from MCO thru Go Port Canaveral. It was the cheapest we found online and was flawless. $29/pp, round trip. Gratuity not included, or required. Other transfers, it was mandatory. We did tip, of course, but I didn't like the idea of a 20% mandatory fee added on. Embarkation was a little slow thru security, but we arrived right at noon, so probably at peak time. Once thru, Crown and Anchor Gold got us thru to the ship in just a few minutes.

Beautiful ship, fun cruise director Casey Pelter, friendly captain Toni. All the staff we encountered were very friendly and always helpful. This was the last sailing out of Port Canaveral for the Freedom of the Seas, so the made it a little special for us. (That's what they said anyway.) Now, they are in Ft. Lauderdale for 6 months, I think, then on to Barcelona. They had a celebration in the Promenade on our last sea day with a ballon drop, 2 huge cakes, champagne and punch. Because of the weather in the Bahamas area, and since Royal's ships had missed Coco Cay for the past week and a half, our Captain decided to change our itenirary to Grand Cayman instead. That was a nice surprise! There was some storms around, but our Captain did an awesome job of getting around it to give us perfect weather the whole time, less a 15 min shower. Flow rider and the sports court was interesting and entertaining to watch. We left the kids home, so no reviews on those activities. We sat in On Air and watched the World Series and Falcons game on the big screen. Not too crowded, but fun. They played the last game of the World Series on the poolside theater, that was neat. They had several movies playing during the week, but the times didn't work out for us. That was disappointing, we always enjoy watching a movie outside at night. Read more