My mom invited me on this cruise as part of a group of 12 teachers from the school she volunteers at. We are from St Augustine, so the drive to Port Canaveral isn't that bad. We parked in the garage, and read the sign that said to take your parking ticket with you, so we went back to get it out of the car before heading to the ship. Embarkation went very smooth, and we were on the ship by noon (we had an 11:30 slot for arrival).

We headed up to the BBQ line for lunch, and it was pretty tasty. I had pulled port and beef, the baked beans were thick and spicy, potato salad had potato chunks too big and too much mayo for me, cole slaw was not sweet at all, the mac and cheese was great.

My mom and I had an adjoining room with my sister and sister-in-law. We went to the room at 1:30pm and they weren't really ready. Randall tried to hurry and get it straightened out. We were in rooms 8433 and 8437. The balcony door in between our rooms needed to be opened. When it opened, it ended up blocking the door to one of the rooms, which I thought was an odd design for adjoining rooms. It would not have blocked the door if they had chose to make the rooms on either side of us adjoining instead, so that was odd. I enjoyed the room, but my mom had a very hard time sleeping. She said that she would wake up a lot during the night to the sound of furniture moving above us. I guess the staff would clean the floor in the dining room above us in the middle of the night since we were under the buffet dining area. I'm afraid the bed was too soft for me, and by Saturday, my back was completely out and I was in severe pain. I tried to adjust with pillows between my knees and a rolled up towel for my back, but it was too late. More on that in a bit... Read more