Our cruising history: this was my 23rd cruise and my partner’s 20th – mostly on Royal, with some Carnival, HAL, and Celebrity trips thrown in for good measure. This was our first cruise having obtained Diamond status with Royal.

This was a “Plan C” cruise – our 9/13 departure on the Empress got cancelled, as did a subsequent 9/30 departure on Adventure, due to the hurricanes. With less than a week to spare, we landed in an interior cabin (7175) with an overnight in Havana. While we lost a little OBC from the first booking, we saved money in the long run on the cost of the cruise in general, and were able to re-rebook our Southwest airfare with no charge.

Embarkation: because of how smoothly things went at the airport, we were the second party to arrive at the cruise terminal for check-in at 9:30 am. We waited outside until 10 am, when they were allowing folks into the terminal. As there was no leadership provided by terminal staff as to how to line up the thirty or fourty folks who had arrived in the interim, some ‘come latelys’ took it upon themselves to start a line in front of the staff sitting at the check-in table. As my husband and I were loathe to cut in front of the one foursome of travelers who had arrived before us, we waited until the group who arrived just after us started a second line to the left of the first, and stepped in behind them. Imagine the come-latelys dissatisfaction when the staffer started admitting those in the line on the left. Read more