Embarkation: Our cruise was Feb. 5-12 to the Western Caribbean with ports of call in Key West, Belize City, Santo Tomas de Castilla (Guatemala) and Cozumel, Mexico, with 2 days at sea. Embarkation (and disembarkation) went like clockwork and we were one of the first to get on (by noon). There's a place set up in the terminal that you can buy your soda cards if you want ($35). Some of our group of 10 bought them but I stuck to iced tea and water primarily that week. The soda card is not good for using in your stateroom, however; but it's good for anywhere else on the ship. There are cans of soda in your room and if you open any, you've bought them. We were led to the Lido deck after boarding and the buffets (taco/pizza or burgers and dogs outside or the regular buffet inside were all available) were waiting for us! We were able to get into our staterooms by 1 p.m. and our luggage arrived by 3.
Public Rooms: There were adequate public rooms to use when not in your stateroom and while they were clean enough, a couple of them could've used a bit more deodorizing agents to help but overall, I didn't have a problem using them.
Cabin: We liked where our cabin was located on the ship (center on Main Deck) and enjoyed the spaciousness of our inside cabin. The bathroom was large enough for both my husband and I to be in at the same time if we had to be. Plenty of closet space. HINT:We didn't discover this until the last day as we were leaving, but inside the closets there are shelves that can be laid down to give extra storage space. I would've given our cabin a 6 except that our air conditioning wasn't working properly and even though it seemed okay during the day, at night when we'd go to bed, we never needed covers because it was warmer than it should've been. Apparently our thermostat didn't work properly to correct this. Others in our group said their cabins were either just right or was too cool. We asked the front desk to correct this and someone was there and said they corrected it but it still didn't work properly. We told the front desk twice and our cabin steward reported it once for us but we still didn't get any satisfaction with this particular problem. It wasn't unbearable, though.