This was our first time sailing on Royal Caribbean and we found it to be a good experience. Of course the ship is only a few months old so that made everything in pretty pristine condition. We used Jet Blue from NY to San Juan for our group of 18 and found them to be very organized and a pleasant experience. Since we arrived as a group they moved us to a special line and processed us together. Upon arrival in San Juan our luggage was collected by the cruise line and we walked out to our bus for transfer to the cruise dock. This was a different dock than we had used on previous cruises and we found it to be somewhat isolated. Embarkation was fairly painless but did take about 1/2 hour. We got on the ship around 1:00 and our luggage made it to our cabin by 4:00.
Our cabin had a nice balcony and was comparable in size to what we had on our last Celebrity cruise. More than enough storage space and a small love seat which was a nice feature as there seldom seems to be a good place to sit in cabins.
We originally were scheduled to sail on Celebrity again, but after they changed the itinerary twice we switched everyone to Royal Caribbean which had our original itinerary available.
Since we had been to several of the islands previously we didn't do much other than a little shopping for the grandkids until we got to St. Maarten where Sue was planning on seeing Heeru at Touch of Gold to upgrade a diamond ring. Heeru was as pleasant as usual to deal with and we always look forward to seeing her. We sometimes bump into some of the old"Prodigy Travel BB" people who we have corresponded with for years there.
We did an island tour on St. Lucia and Antigua since we hadn't been to those two previously. So far, SXM and Aruba are our two favorite Caribbean destinations.
The service and food on the Serenade was very good and we would definitely sail this ship again. The cruise was uneventful until that last full day (Friday) when they evacuated a passenger by helicopter because of a serious medical problem and of course our unexpected 13.5* list to port when the ship tried to make an unexpected turn to port without warning. Hopefully in the future we will find out just what the cause was. We heard many rumors, but few facts.
Overall it was a great trip and we loved the itinerary. Unfornately, we went from 85* and sunny everyday to expecting 12" of snow today here in CT. Time to start planning our next trip to someplace warm <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" />
