Background: My mother is an active 65 and spends her summers in Tampa Florida so I (40yr old son) decided to escape the cold Midwest in January and take her on a cruise! I read the reviews on Cruise Critic and the price was under $400 for a 5 night cruise. We like to go and do things more than lay around but some relaxing is always good.

Grandeur, first impression: Neat ship! We entered the ship on deck 5 and walked around before heading up to the Windjammer for lunch which had great food in our opinion and we are picky eaters. The ship is has a nice dEcor and was very clean. The cabins have lots of storage and are laid out well. W felt the room was larger than we thought it might be from the photos. They had the beds separated as requested and a night stand for each of us for our belongings and the closet was plenty big with each of taking less than our half. A vanity and chair along with another sitting chair provided ample "get ready" space and lounging space in the room but we didn't spend much time there other than to sleep for the night and get ready to go in the morning! I was a bit worried that there would not be enough to do for us to enjoy the entire 5 days but the cruise critic reviews were so good that I thought how could we miss! I had the ship down in about 1 hour of walking around, my mom was lost about half the cruise so it was a good happy medium!

Day 1 - We enjoyed the buffet shortly after boarding which was speedy and easy. I think ½ hour from the time we got the luggage off at the curb to walking up the gangway! It was a full ship but it didn't ever feel full. We boarded at about noon and our luggage was delivered almost right away. They had tables set up around the Centrum from several departments. No lifejackets were needed at the muster drill and it was fairly painless other than standing around for 20 minutes. That was done on Deck 5 and was over in about 20 minutes. We left the pier at 5pm. It was 7:10pm before we passed under the Skyway Bridge which was a spectacular sight at night and seemed the mast of the ship barely made it under the bridge by about 10 feet! We checked out dinner in the dining room but honestly the food menu was the same as the windjammer and thus we liked the casual environment of the windjammer so we left before dinner started and ate in the windjammer every meal and it was FANTASTIC! Grabbing a plate of food and heading out to the open air by the pool (which was right next to the windjammer) was so relaxing and what vacation is suppose to be in my opinion. We attended the Welcome Aboard Show which was fun. Read more