My mom (49) and myself (25) are virgin cruises. Born and bred in the Bahamas and my dad makes his livly hood from cruise visitors (taxi driver). But it never occurded to us to ever go on a cruise, until my aunt who has been on 3 invited us for a family cruise. So 12 of us, aunts, uncles and cousins 10 adults and 2 kids, booked on the Valor.

Embarkation: We flew out the morning of. I know eveone on this site tells you not to do that, but Nassau is pretty reliable getting you to Miami on the 6am flight. Our flight actually got in 20 mins early. We had breakfast in the airport, can't remember the restaurants name, but the croissantwhich was pretty good. We got a taxi to the Port of Miami for $24 flat rate, we needed two for all 12 of us. We arrived at the POM around 11am. We were the only people on the security line which went smoothly. We were the only people on the checking in line which went smoothly as well. A couple of my aunts and cousins got Gold room keys as they were returning customers. It gave them some discounts on the ship.

We couldn't put our cash deposits on our sail & sign accounts as the system was down. We had an hour wait until they started letting us on board the ship. During this hour the check in line got really long so we were glad we got there early. We got on board at noon and went to the Lido deck for lunch. I was still full from breakfast and couldn't eat a bite. I went down to the Lincoln blvd to see the Maitre D' about our group being assigned different tables at dinner. He said it would not be fixed for the first night, we would get a note in our rooms the following day letting us know about the switch. Read more