My husband and I were extremely excited to take our first ever cruise. I had heard many good comments from friends etc about RCL, and comments here on CC were also pretty favorable.

We arrived in Vancouver the evening of July 31 and stayed the night at a downtown hotel. Took a cab the next morning to the Ballentyne Pier and we were there shortly after 12 noon. The lineups to go through security, then US Customs all moved very smoothly, as well as the registration lineup. I think I counted 13 or 14 cruise line reps doing the passenger registrations.

We weren't even on the ship when we encountered our first photo session. Arrival on the ship itself also proceeded smoothly. We had arrived before 1pm and the cabin hallways weren't open yet to passengers, so we headed up to the Windjammer for lunch. Wasn't terribly impressed with the food - it seemed rather ordinary and a little bland. We learned that day to avoid the iced tea - canadian iced tea is very different from US iced tea! Read more