Day 1 - We're Off

The second day of our vacation started with a not-so-inspiring four hour drive down to the Cocoa Beach area. The drive was more of the same, lots of road and very little scenery. Fortunatley, it didn't seem to take long until we arrived at the port and saw our boat.

The boat was huge! We parked the car ($40) and proceeded to the passenger area. After what can only be called the most ridiculous "security screening" ever, we got through to the ticketing area. I find it amusing that the security for a giant ship with 3000 people on it is less than the security for a plane with a couple hundred. Oh well.

We were greeted at the front desk by a line of probably 300-400 people. Ugh. Luckily, the line went extremely fast and we only had to wait about 15 minutes to get on the boat. After that it was smooth sailing (pun intended).

We went right to our room to drop off our stuff. I realize now that I forgot to take a picture of the room, but suffice it to say that it was small. It was livable though. We had a little closet, a small desk, some shelving, and a bathroom. The only other thing that fit in the room was the bed. I'd say the entire room was probably 8' by 14'. It was nice enough though, especially for the price we paid.

The funniest thing about the room was that there were two extra beds that folded down from the wall. As if cramming two people into that space wasn't enough! I guess those extra tickets are pretty cheap though, so if you and your friends are trying to save money then it would be nice.

The first thing we did after that was get some food. We had thought we could eat when we got off the freeway, but their wasn't anything before we got to the ship. I'm glad we didn't eat, because they had quite the buffet set out for us. There was a ton of food and it was all quite good. This would become a nice little trend over the length of the cruise, lot's of pretty good food.

The rest of the day was spent exploring the ship, watching us leave port, reading by the pool, etc. We went to dinner and met the people at our table. There were two other couples, a young couple of Georgia (accent included) and a middle-aged couple from Pittsburg. They were all very nice and fun to have dinner with.

Day 1 ended with us going to bed excited about the island excursion the next day. Cococay here we come...