Like many onboard, we booked this cruise because of the ridiculously low price for a 5 day trip.

1. We flew into the area and stayed at the Ramada by the cruise port the night before embarkation, a pretty good option since they have a great indoor pool and they are close to the port. Shuttle was $10 pp, so we decided to take a Lyft to the ship for $14 instead.

2. Embarkation was a nightmare and the worst part of the cruise. Not the ship's fault, but security was letting 20 people at a time in the building for check-in and the line outside (in the heat and sun) was 1 1/2 hours long. The bottleneck was the escalator to the check-in area and security held up the line forever for no good reason. Once we made it to the MSC controlled space, we were through in less than 10 minutes. They were very apologetic, but there was nothing different they could have done. Read more