First Vacation with my girlfriend. We wanted to go out of New York as to not have to fly anywhere. New York Cruise Terminal was fine. Felt like it took about an hour to check in. They were going as fast as one would expect. Once aboard, everything was AMAZING. My only other cruise was in Europe and It very minimal services. It was all about the countries visited.
We loved our ENTIRE experience from the moment we walked on board till we actually walked off. Balcony room, excellent. We walked up and down the stairs riding the elevator maybe 5 times the entire trip. We also did a ton of walking. After eating so much, we needed to just to breath. We did laps around the 7th floor. Great walking track. Dining was wonderful. Sure there was food we didn't enjoy as much as other things but the service and their attempt to please us was wonderful. I recommend the Hibachi restaurant. We did it our last night and it was so entertaining and delicious. We didn't enjoy the French restaurant so much but it didn't affect how we felt about the cruise. We went to almost all the shows. The entertainment was either funny or great. We loved the Russian couple doing the aerial dancing.
My girlfriend suggested we go to the spa on the first day to sign up for a massage but ended up buying their 7 day amenities package. That made the vacation 20x better. We used their hot tubs everyday and since they only sell 100 amenity packages per cruise, we were in the tub alone most of the time. Totally worth it. The locker room was just like a gym's locker room so using the full size shower and bathrooms were much nicer than the one in our room.
We liked the Mid Ship Balcony. Less rocking in the middle of the ship. The balcony was nice and relaxing.