MarinerBride

We had early dine, so at 5:45 we headed to the dining room. I wasn't sure what the kids would think, but this was one of the highlights for them. They loved being called princess and champion. The kids menu wasn't amazing, so we ended up ordering a bit from that and the regular menu for them, and it worked out well. One thing I noticed on the first night is that the My Time Dining line was insanely long, and I sort of felt like they kicked us out of our table before we were truly done.

We had a lot of fun exploring the ship - previously we had only sailed on Voyager and Sovereign Class, plus things have changed a lot and again, this was a first for the kids. I had packed swim suits for the kids so we were able to take them straight to the pool. I also got them checked in for Adventure Ocean. At 1 we were able to get into our staterooms, and we got the balcony divider opened up between our two rooms. Later on, my daughter climbed the rock wall (don't forget socks!), and we ate a lot of ice cream and waited to set sail.

We've recovered from the cruise and holidays, and I thought I'd share a review from our recent trip! This was my 5th cruise, husband's 4th, and kids' (6yo and 9yo) first. Husband and I got married onboard 15 years ago, but hadn't sailed since our 5th anniversary, so we decided it was a good time to cruise again and celebrate. We booked about a year ago, and I kept an eye on prices and got several decreases. We had a Jr Suite for the 4 of us, and my parents were in the balcony room next door. We flew SW into FLL, and the airport was crazy when we landed, but we had no major issues. We took an Uber XL to our hotel, Hyatt Regency in Miami. FYI, my parents didn't believe me, but you cannot comfortably travel with 6 people and luggage in an Uber XL. It was late, so we ate dinner at the hotel, which was really good. We had an 11:30 check in for the cruise, so we relaxed a bit in the hotel, and then left in our Uber around 10:30. Traffic was pretty bad, so plan ahead. Once we got to the port, we dropped off our bags, went through the Suite entrance, went through security (we had some bottled drinks they let us keep for the kids), got checked in, and were on the ship in no time. This was a huge improvement over our last sailing! Even my parents who didn't go through the Suite entrance were impressed at how quickly everything moved. We had watched our safety video in advance, so we stopped by our muster station, which was also super convenient. Then we stopped by a bar to get our first drinks! We ended up purchasing the Deluxe Beverage + Internet package, mostly out of convenience, and for the kids we got the Soda + Internet. Again, I had been watching the prices, and the lowest I saw them were $69/person/day for just the drinks, and $86/person/day with internet.

I just found it on our SeaPass - we're in traditional early dining!

Where do we even sign up for early dining?

Oops, I lied - it's been 10 years since we've cruised. 🙈

We're sailing on Freedom next month for 4 nights with our 2 kids (6 and 9), as well as with my parents. We're in a junior suite and my parents are next door. We haven't sailed in 5 years, so I know things have changed, plus this is the first cruise ever for our kids. What do we need to know for the kids? How has dining changed (we were always early dine kind of people)? We've got a Water Park Cabana reserved for CocoCay and Atlantis Water Park reserved for Nassau.