My mother decided last year that she wanted to take me and my daughters (15 on the day we sailed and 17) on a cruise and told me to do all the arranging and she would pay. So I looked at the many different options and chose to sail out of Charleston to the Bahamas for 7 days. We live in Southeastern Virginia so we opted to drive down the Friday night before and stay in a hotel.

We arrived at the ship at 1030 (I believe in being early) and dropped off our bags. We were told to come back at 1130 to begin boarding. We arrived back at 1115 and there were already over 100 cars in line for boarding. I was a little taken aback since he told us 1130. The lines moved a little slow but soon we found ourselves parked in the warehouse (which was nice as our car would be indoors for 7 days). We waited on a shuttle for about 5 minutes and then were whisked a whole 1/4 of a mile to the terminal. When we unloaded at the terminal I was surprised to find no lines. We walked right up to the counter, did what we needed to do and then off to the embarkation photo op. After that photo op, we were off to the second floor for our room card pictures. Once that was completed, we were off to board the ship. Terminal experience A+

We entered the ship on the 7th Deck but could not go to our rooms until 1:30. We were directed to the Lido deck (deck 10) where we found the pool open with people already in it and a buffet line. Since it was about 12:30 by now, we were all ready for lunch. The actually had our rooms ready by about 1:15 so we went to deck 6 (Upper) and quickly found our room. There were 4 of us and we had 4 beds with plenty of room to spare. Plenty of closet space and the bathroom was adequate. I was very pleased. Read more