With more than 30 cruises under our belts, I think I have a pretty good 'base' for comparison purposes. You can review the cruise ports on many sites so I'll concentrate on the ship and services.

We drove to the pier and arrived around 10am. There was a long line on Port Terminal Blvd but we learned that most of the traffic was from people parking on the right hand side of the road to wait to pick up disembarking passengers. If you arrive before 11am drive up the left side to get to luggage drop off and you'll see that it virtually empty. We dropped of the luggage and then proceeded to park the car for $19/day. From the car it's a 1 minute walk to the tent which they refer to as the terminal. I'm still not sure why they forced us to drop off the luggage before we parked the car as we could have parked the car and dragged the luggage the 1000 feet to drop it off.

We're Diamond members, so check in was a breeze and then they put in this small room which probably held 100 people to wait to board. At least they had coffee, water and cookies to kill time. At 11:30 we proceeded to board the ship which involves you boarding a bus for the distance of about 2 ship lengths. Somehow they need to figure out how to build a covered walkway and do away with the buses. We had express debarkation so you can imagine what a pain it was to drag you luggage onto this bus. It would have been quicker to walk to the terminal. Read more