We have cruised several times as a family before one several different ships and wanted to try one of the big ones, so when we discovered Symphony was sailing out of Florida (our preferred departure point as we can combine our cruise with a week in the sun before hand to make the Transatlantic flight worthwhile) we booked it! Got a price we were happy with from the UK RCCL site and started planning.

We have always cruised in a balcony cabin as we like the fresh air and were very happy with our choice of 12862. We try and pick a cabin fairly near the stairs / elevators to save walking down long corridors to find our room, we have never found it to be noisy.

Embarkation was easy, we had a rental car so were dropped off by the shuttle from Miami Airport, handed our luggage over to the porter (there were bags everywhere!) and after a moments confusion on which way to go, we were headed inside the terminal. From here to walking on to the ship couldn't have taken more than 10 minutes, we had our Sail and Sign Passes scanned and we were on our way. Read more