My husband and I (64 and 63 years young) traveled to Tampa Friday night, stayed at the Hampton Inn Avion Park. The hotel was nice and offered free breakfast. Request a room on the side opposite the airport and highway. We used Lyft to get to port and requested a stop at Target on Dale Mabry Hwy to buy wine and Pepsi. Note the Target in on the second level above Whole Foods. We arrived at port about 11 AM. We had purchased The Key so we're able to skip ahead of the line but it was not yet very busy. We dropped the carryon with the wine in the Edelweiss Dining Room and set off to explore a bit and then went back for lunch. About 1:15 PM they announced that our cabins were ready. We found our luggage quickly as well.

I chose this cruise mainly for Key West and it did not disappoint me. Grand Cayman was fantastic, the beach was beautiful. Costa Mayas port area was Claustrophbic with 4 ships in port so we took the trolley to Majahaul to shop and after a couple of hours headed back to the ship for lunch and Sun at the pool.

The only real fail for me was the tendering into Cozumel which was required as we were not given a spot to dock on a pier as there were 7 ships in port. They should have only loaded the tenders for 25 minutes and then departed with those that could make it on in that amount of time instead of loading for an hour and making everyone late for their excursions. There were 2-3 tenders waiting all the time to load and IMO this would have been more efficient. Cozumel itself was a huge disappointment with the traffic and commercialized Mall they forced everyone to walk through and Dolphin Experience at Chaukanab (sp) the only thing that saved the day was petting the manatees. Read more