This cruise was a surprise birthday present to me. We cruise a LOT and for this special birthday, my gift was to a totally new port that I've wanted to visit for a long time.

The Empress of the Seas is old, but she's got a lot of heart via her crew. As for the looks- it was built close to 30 years ago, and it hard to update. It is cool to see the fist RCI ship with a multi deck centrum. We had JS 8686, which is in the port aft corner. So people know, JS's on the Empress are roughly a basic balcony on every other ships. And this corner cabin is even a little tighter- as there's no real seating area. BUT... it has a much larger balcony, and we were rewarded when we backed in to Havana, so our breakfast was coffee with an amazing view we've never seen before.

The entire crew of the ship was very excited to be going to Cuba, and their excitement did a great job smoothing some excited nerves of passengers. The Hotel Director, Santiago, ran a great seminar about Havana- what to expect when you leave, exchanging money, eating, drinking, buying stuff, etc. In addition to that, they had another "passenger" host some of his personal presentations about Cuba. Very, very helpful, and i hope they continue this. Read more