8/27/06

By Jimmykaboots

• February 11, 2007

Well let me start off with a little introduction of myself so you can understand it from my point of view. I'm 16 and pretty new to all this cruising. This is my third cruise, unless you count the Queen Mary I which doesnt move! Hahaha. Well for this ship, it was my first time on the Royal Carribean. My family and I plan to go at least once on every ship company before we go back to the ones we really liked. So anyways onto the cruise, we went on a seven day cruise to the western carribean.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn thats right across the bridge from the port of Miami. I wish we could have stayed longer in Miami, its pretty fun. Tough crowd though, but the nighttime market was certainly fun to shop at. Food at the market and the mall next to the market was so cheap! Specially Japanese food, *drools* I love sushi($3-4 USD) and terryaki chicken. Japanese food here in Canada is so expensive compared that that lol. We only stayed one night but I wished we stayed around three nights. If you depart from Miami for one of your cruises I suggest one or two nights because hotels there are pretty expensive. Our hotel Holiday Inn was about $120 a night, but we got two tickets for breakfast which was a really nice breakfast. The fire alarm went off while my dad was showering so that was hilarious. We grabbed our passports, wallets, and purses and ran down eight flights of stairs to the parking lot. There we met a bunch of people in swiming suits from the pool standing around muttering. later we found out that it was a false alarm, the annoying alarm went off a few more times that night so that was annoying but we ignored it. So the next morning we complained and got two more free breakfast buffet tickets. Hot breakfast by the way. The telephone there does NOT accept coins, only prepaid phone cards and credit cards lol, thats new to me.

Embarkakment took really really really long, after getting off from our corporate sedan at the cruise terminal in Miami. We lined up and went through ALOT of security checks, mostly they were to see if we had tickets for the right ship. After finally making it past the luggage check we arrived to a large waiting room. However the room was blocked off halfway into it with security standing there and rope. IMAGINE! Over 3000 people in a room thats like 30 meters by 20 metres. We were literally all sitting on the floor, how undignified. They had a very very limited amount of seating and benches. The wedding party had higher priority than us, yeesh so they got to go first. Then we did, we then also had to go through alot more security checkpoints. In all, we left the hotel at around 10 am and was waiting in the terminal from around 11 to 2 30 pm. Talk about a long wait, then when we were crossing the gang plank we waited a long long time in the smothering heat of the so called new seaport terminal which had glass windows and some glass roofing. They set up these massive fans which literally almost blew us away lol. The gangplank had a weight limit so we were allowed a few people at a time which really slowed down the line. When we got on, we were greeted, by a bunch of waiters and servers talking to EACH OTHER. We just passed on by and headed to our room on the eighth floor.

First complaint I have is that the few elevators on the ship available to passengers are really really really slow. I ran up and down the stairs faster than that elevator. Everyone complained about the lack of elevators and elevator speed. The elevators are really nicely made though, the glass elevators that is if you'd like waiting for elevators then its worth the wait. Otherwise just cotton picking walk up the stairs. Second complain I have is that there is not enough washrooms on board! Theres two washrooms on the top three or four floors, and two washrooms on the lowest three floors. I had to seriously use the bathroom once and ran up tne stairs from level 3 to level 14 to use the washroom. The buffet does not have much variety of food, alot of the food is the same or varries very little from one corner to the other four corners of the buffet. The buffet is called Windjammer, don't bother walking all the way around. You're not missing much, only go to the end when you want desert. What I liked about the buffet is that it had sushi almost every night but the sushi was different then any I have tasted but still good. The teenage room(FUEL) was very nicely made, I can't say the same for the activities planned. The activities were so few and boring it was pathetic, for example we had an activitie like vollyball go on from 3 pm to 6, yes I would like to play volleyball for three hours straight. Then there would be no activities till around eight pm, every night we would be dancing in those dark, what do you call those undignified dances where its dark and people are making out everywhere. Ah yes, raves. I swear, adults out there, not all teenagers are like that. There are the dignified ones like I.

The food on the cruise was ok, we didnt get lobster until the night AFTER formal ngiht which was interesting. The service was pretty good I guess. The shows were well showed but the cheography needs something to be desired perhaps it's because their new. I'd say give them a bit more time and It will be very good. Trust me, I take hip hop and musical theatre dancing, I know good. The band on board was very good, nice improvising. I met lots of teen friends, and this turned out my most memorible trip because of all the great and dignified friends I met. However I dont think we will be returning to Royal Carribean cruise lines anytime soon.