We sailed on this ship 2 years ago with our 3 sons. This time we sailed with our 15 and 18 year olds only because the older one is in college and had a different Spring Break. We drove down from Greenville, SC on Friday, spending the night north of Orlando in Lake Mary. It was an easy drive over to Tampa on Saturday morning. My in-laws also cruised with us on this trip. They drove separately.

We arrived at the parking structure around 10:15am. The BOS has moved up a berth. We parked in the garage from 2 years ago and had about a 2 block walk after crossing the street to reach the ship. We dropped off a large suitcase and a garment bag with the dock folks, tipping them in the process. We were directed to a line that was not very long after showing our paperwork to the RCCL folks at the door to the building. We are Platinum and, at first, our line seemed longer than the other one (gold or less) but an RCCL rep came over and said that after the large family of about 20 people got the through the security scanner machine (the other line had 3 scanners but tons of people) that they would be sent to another line. After about 5 minutes or so we went through the security check and then were ushered to a desk representative. She was most friendly and in a matter of minutes had our room keys and proceeded to head to the ship. This line moved a tad slow because people were just not paying attention. No matter, we one the ship in about 5 minutes after getting our room keys.

We went to guest services to get an extra room key for our rooms 3518 outside and 3519 inside across the hall. RCCL assigns an adult with each child. The boys were staying in 3519 and we were staying in 3518. This allowed my wife and our youngest to have access to the rooms that they were actually going to be sleeping in and not their assigned rooms. We have always gotten adjoining outside cabins with our 3 boys but this worked great, saving us some money along the way. Getting the keys took all of about 5 minutes and we then headed up to the Solarium to drop our luggage, getting some towels and chairs in the process. It was completely empty. Read more