My daughter and I chose this cruise simply because some friends from Boston chose it. We lost my wife in November and wanted to do a father-daughter cruise to celebrate life.
The Neiuw Amsterdam is just the right sized ship for us. It is maintained in immaculate condition, and out of my 20 or so cruises, I've never been on a friendlier ship. The joy and happy countenances of the crew even seems to brush off on the passengers - except for one sour old lady that we got a kick out of as she was never happy at any time we saw her; we called her our ship witch and she provided plenty of laughs for us.
We ate most of our meals in the MDR and were pleased with the quality of the food and the service. As we had anytime dining we tried to make reservations at first but most of the offerings were too early for our liking, so we took to just showing up at our preferred time and never had to wait to be seated. Only on the first night was there any line, but that is standard on most cruises I've been on.
Standard balcony on the Veranda deck. We were just above the life boats so one couldn't look straight down to the water, but it otherwise did not affect our views. Storage was hanging clothes dominated with not a lot of shelf or drawer space. Our room stewards were very good even though they had 18 rooms assigned to them.
After our cruise we could not get a flight out on the same day so we stayed Sunday night at the Riverside Hotel, the only hotel in downtown Ft. Lauderdale. It was fantastic! Within walking distance was the water taxi which we took to Hollywood and back, cruising by all 8 ships in port that day. We also went bar hopping/eating and managed to eat about 4 small meals in one fun evening.
Just walked around. Some nice shops.
Larger than I had imagined. Rented a golf cart and made two trips around the place. Shops are especially nice and T-shirts surprisingly inexpensive.