runnerinn

Our family has stayed on deck 1 twice on the Horizon- midship in ocean view rooms 1282 and 1286 and forward in interior rooms 1217 and 1221. We heard vibration early in the morning on port days in the forward rooms, but the midship rooms were very quiet, so I think the interior rooms you are looking at would be quiet too! We like deck 1 as there is little traffic and it is quick to leave the ship on port days. Of course we’ve also never stayed anywhere else in an effort to save money 😁.

As mitsugirly stated, you will have no trouble parking your rental car at the falls and there is no parking fee. There is a window where you go to pay and they will tell you about the options you have including the falls, a meal, and the zip lines. I didn’t pay attention to the cost of doing the zip line since we were only doing the falls. You may have an option to do 7, 12, or 27 falls depending on the water level, but 7 was the only option when we were there. Have a great visit- I think you will love it and be happy you saved the money by doing it on your own!

Thanks! I've looked into TSA pre-check, but we only fly 1-2 times a year and with 5 of us it didn't seem worth the cost. We flew AA from Miami in 2021 and I don't recall the terminal being so awful. I guess that is what you get when choosing a budget airline! We may take our chances with the "housing challenged" people at FLL next time 🤣 Thanks! I'm definitely looking into FLL next time. It seems like most of the cruises that appeal to us are out of Miami. I'm sure it doesn't help that we are flying at the busiest travel times!

Debarkation and travel home: There was a beautiful sunrise in Miami as I did my final run on the track on our last morning ☺️ We said goodbye to our lovely rooms and towel animals- one final portrait taken by L: We discovered on our prior cruises that we prefer to have a relaxing morning on the day of debarkation, so scheduled our flight for late in the day (nearly 4pm). We took one of the last luggage numbers and planned to stay on the ship as long as possible...unfortunately the soft serve ice cream doesn't open until 11am now and that negatively impacted our kids' tradition for debarkation day (I'm pretty sure they each ate 7 ice creams on our previous cruise on the morning of debarkation 🤣). Nevertheless, they were still smiling about the overall ice cream experience! We enjoyed one last breakfast in the MDR (I really liked the egg white frittata and pineapple juice), then found a spot on the Lido deck near the aft pool to wait until our number was called. The morning was a pleasant 70 degrees, so we didn't mind waiting and watching the action down below as trash was removed from the ship and new supplies were brought in. I believe the final call was around 9:45am and we followed a short line of people off of the ship and made it quickly through customs and had no problem locating our luggage. We were in an Uber to the airport by 10:35am. I read in another thread that debarkation was a MESS earlier with crowds of people waiting in the stairwells and elevators, so I'm very thankful that we missed that. Unfortunately things became a bit more unpleasant at the Miami airport. We arrived very early as it didn't seem worth planning an activity for a few hrs, and in the end we were grateful that we had tons of time as it took us 90 minutes to get through security! The line snaked a quarter mile down the hallway and people were so confused and upset as many of them didn't give themselves enough time. We witnessed multiple people who missed their flights 😬. We flew Southwest again and I'm not usually a complainer, but I think the SW terminal at the Miami airport is the most miserable terminal I've ever been in. There were not enough seats for the crowds of people waiting for flights and there were maybe 3 places to get food- pizza, sandwiches, and one sit-down restaurant for pizza or rice bowls. Our flight was delayed 1.5hrs due to inclement weather across the East Coast and we only made our connecting flight in Chicago because that flight was delayed as well 🤦‍♀️. It was a long day at the Miami airport and I'm wondering if we should consider Fort Lauderdale next time...have others had better experiences there? We've had issues on each of our flights home from Miami previously as well. I acknowledge that we are spoiled by flying out of our small airport in Grand Rapids where security takes 15 minutes at the most! Regardless of our travel woes on the way home, we had an amazing cruise with extended family and I've been trying to convince D that we need to book our next one ever since we returned 😁. Any thoughts on whether our family would like the Venezia, Celebration, Mardi Gras, or even the Magic? I looked into other cruise lines as well, but it's hard to beat the prices, activities, and free food available with Carnival. I appreciate any feedback and hope my review helps others in planning future cruises!

Our last stop was on 1/4/24 in Amber Cove, Dominican Republic. This was also a new stop for us and I did quite a bit of research to see what activities were offered. I figured we could stay at the pool and try the zipline there, but really wanted to see a little of the Dominican countryside. After considering the options offered, we planned to visit the Damajagua waterfalls without booking a formal excursion. A beautiful view of the Dominican Republic after my early morning run: K's illness made our plans uncertain as we were uncomfortable leaving him on the ship alone while we went traveling around the DR. I had planned to get off the ship as early as possible to try to beat the crowds to the falls, but instead we decided to take our time in the morning to see if he was feeling well enough to join us. Thankfully, he was feeling much better and wanted to join us on our waterfall adventure. I wrote a fairly complete review of our experience on the Dominican Republic page of this forum, so I'll keep it brief here. We left the ship around 8:30 ship time (it confused me all day that the DR was an hour ahead and my watch and phone seemed inconsistent in what time they showed 😬). We liked this nativity scene at the cruise port: We were able to get a taxi inside of the port that cost $110 for round-trip transportation to the falls. After about a 30-minute drive we arrived at the falls where we paid $12 per person to do the hike up to the falls and jump/slide down 7 falls. Our driver Luis stayed and waited for us and we left all of our belongings in his van except for our money. We were each fitted with a helmet and life jacket and introduced to several guides who led us as part of a large group up the hike to the falls. This was a great and exhilarating experience! The guides helped us navigate the jumps and slides and I would highly recommend this adventure to anyone who is in good physical condition and enjoys thrilling experiences in nature. My only complaint is that the group we were in was HUGE and there were several times when we were packed together in the water in a way that felt dangerous. We had a similar experience when we visited the Blue Hole in Jamaica (too many people) and I think these type of excursions are likely a much better experience if you can go when a cruise ship isn't in town 😁. However, since we were the ones on the cruise, I know we need to embrace the crowds! I'm sad that I don't have any photos as we didn't want to worry about our phones or camera getting lost or damaged and we decided not to pay the additional cost for a photographer. Luis was waiting for us just as expected and brought us back to the ship. L had fun at the falls, but her energy was flagging by the end of our hike and it was soon clear that she wasn't feeling the best (oh no...), so we went right back to the ship instead of visiting the pool in Amber Cove. She never developed the symptoms that K had, but she didn't want to do anything the rest of the day except relax in her bed, so I wonder if she had a touch of the same virus. None of the rest of us got sick at all. We were back on the ship before 1 pm, so the rest of us enjoyed short lines at the ropes course and sky ride while everyone else was out in Amber Cove. My aunts and uncles did a Carnival excursion riding horses and said it was fun. G&G wandered around the port and said there were many benches they could stop and sit on 😄. I don't know that I'd do the waterfalls again off of a cruise ship, but I'd be happy to visit Amber Cove again since we didn't experience anything in the actual port itself! Still to come-debarkation and travel home...

1/3/24-Grand Turk! This was our first time to Grand Turk and we planned to enjoy the beach and planned to do some snorkeling. The morning was mostly cloudy, but it was in the low 80s and the sun came out by the afternoon. Unfortunately K started to show signs of a GI illness around noon the day prior. Since that was a sea day, he was able to spend the day in his bed, but it was a miserable day for him. He still wasn't feeling great when we arrived to Grand Turk, so D decided to stay on the boat with him while the girls and I went to investigate the beach. Since it was cloudy and not the best weather yet for swimming and snorkeling, we headed to the right (south) to walk down the beach and explore. L was not in a good mood as she wanted to head in the opposite direction and go swimming. Z took this photo and we both laughed about it later as it may look like we are having a sweet mother/daughter moment, but don't be fooled! L was yelling at me the entire time about how this was NOT what she wanted to be doing 🤣. I like to walk on the beach, but this became rocky very quickly and L was not having it. We captured a few nice photos and then headed back to the north side of the pier to appease her. L was now feeling a little happier as she was able to go swimming! She had her goggles on and said she could see many fish, so I was hoping to try snorkeling later on. Soon after this we ran into the rest of the extended family walking the beach and found out that G&G were sitting by the pool, so we went to find them. L loves swimming, so she jumped in the pool and did some water gymnastics to entertain me and Grandma. The girls and I were getting hungry and I figured I should relieve D and let him come enjoy the beach, so we returned to the ship and ate some lunch. Thankfully by now K was feeling well enough to eat some fruit and jello and wanted to join us on the beach. We were happy as the weather was now looking like this: We have our own full-face snorkel masks, so brought those out and Z and I tried them and they worked great. There were so many fish! L doesn't like how the mask feels on her face, so wore her regular swim goggles and used her camera to dive down and capture some great photos. We stayed along the perimeter of the rope/buoys and were impressed by how many fish we saw. Aunt D joined in and it was fun to have her with us. We snorkeled for quite a while until I spotted this guy (an eel I assume!) and then L was really freaked out and refused to snorkel any longer 😆 After that we relaxed on some beach chairs (there were many available by this time) until it was nearly time for the ship to leave. This is a very beautiful beach and I'm so glad that the weather cooperated for us to enjoy snorkeling here. Uncle J did a scuba diving excursion through Carnival and had a good experience as well- he showed us some amazing videos of the fish and turtles that he saw. A beautiful end to our day in Grand Turk- I wouldn't hesitate to book a cruise that returns here!

I'm back to chat about the PORTS! We were extremely lucky on this cruise that we were the only ship at each of the ports we went to. I was very surprised about this, but happy to see fewer crowds. We also had fabulous weather! Here are the girls at our first stop in Nassau. I love the views of Atlantis from the ship! 1/1/24- this was our second visit to Nassau, Bahamas. We had been here on our prior cruise and walked to Junkanoo beach and had a chill beach day where we did some snorkeling. I thought about doing that again since it was easy and FREE, but when I did some research on New Year's day in the Bahamas I found out that there is a large festival and parade and I was concerned about getting caught up in the chaos. I decided to book a Carnival excursion as I was afraid many places would be closed due to the holiday. So after debating about it and worrying that it might be too cold for us (spoiler alert: it was!) we booked the "Stuart Cove 2 reef snorkel by boat" excursion. The excursion didn't start until 1pm, so we enjoyed a relaxing morning on the ship. We could hear the music from the parade that was going on for the festival. The rest of our family went to town to see the action and said it was a lot of fun! The excursion was well organized and led by Kendra through Stuart Cove. We hopped on the boat a short distance from the ship and received our life jackets and snorkel gear. The boat was completely full (maybe 50 people?) such that we were packed tightly (which wasn't too bad in the end since it kept us warmer on the way back 😂). The air temperature was in the low 70s and we had a pleasant 20 minute boat ride to get to the first reef. Here we are on the boat: All of us had snorkeled some before and are strong swimmers, so it was fun to see so many fish and coral. I bought L a cheap underwater camera to use as she enjoys taking photos and she had so much fun using it. These are the type of photos we got: The staff on the boat were great and there were even some participants who couldn't swim well that Kendra was assisting. We snorkeled at the first location for about 20 minutes and that was plenty for our family as we were starting to feel cold. Even though we are from Michigan, we don't have much natural insulation, so I knew this might be a problem on this excursion as I had been eyeing the weather for weeks before the trip. The second reef was a short boat ride away. K declined to get off the boat again as he was too cold. The rest of us bravely jumped in despite the cold (I feel cold even thinking about it now 😆). We got a few more photos, but could only tolerate 5 more minutes in the water. Thankfully Kendra distracted us from our shivering on the boat ride back by giving an interesting talk about Atlantis and the celebrity homes on Paradise Island. We felt like the snorkeling and boat ride were worth it to do this excursion, but I certainly think we would have enjoyed it much more if it had been 10 degrees warmer! When we returned to the port, we had to walk through the newly built cruise terminal to return to the ship. It looks really nice compared to what it was 2 years ago when we visited. Unfortunately, all we could think about was getting a hot shower! I did manage to capture this shot of the girls as we ran back to the ship 😁 Up next...Grand Turk...

I love this! When we were returning to the ship one of the days we saw a man sitting in his window seat reading a book (and probably drinking a cocktail!), so it must be a common use of that space 😄

Ship activities and entertainment Water activities: We were glad that we did repeated rides on the waterslides on the first day as the lines were long later on. The blue waterslide is much faster, but they are both fun! I believe you need to be 42in tall to do the blue slide and 48in for the red and the staff were checking and turning kids away if they were too small. We were sad that the waterpark was only open until about 10am on the our last sea day...they said at first that it would reopen after 4 hrs, but it never did (maybe some kind of contamination 🤷‍♀️?). A nice view of the waterpark when everyone else was sleeping in or in Nassau on New Year's Day! L went in the pool once, but otherwise we never used the pools or hot tubs! I was trying to think of why this would have been, but the kids don't like the saltwater pools for some reason, and I suppose we had enough other activities to keep us busy. We never had trouble finding chairs somewhere, but we weren't picky about it either as we don't like to lounge much and prefer the shade. Our favorite spot was behind the waterworks...relatively quiet and hidden. I found the Horizon medallion up there! The Sports Square/exercise options: I ran on the track every morning between 6-7am and it was one of the best parts of my day! I saw the sunrise each day and enjoyed the quiet ship- I only saw a handful of people on the track at this time of day the entire cruise. It's a pretty nice track as well- 7 laps to a mile. We had amazing weather on this cruise and it was never too windy. Catching the sunrise as we arrived to Amber Cove during one of my runs- if you look closely you can see another ship off in the distance 😊 D went to the fitness center each morning at the same time and never had trouble finding an elliptical or bike to use. His preference would be to run on the track as well, but a knee injury has kept him from running for over a year 😔. We often saw D&D exercising at this time as well and it was nice to find a quiet spot for coffee and a pastry afterward since most of the ship was still asleep- well worth getting up early for me! We had a lot of fun playing mini golf...this was an activity that G&G could join in on as well. The girls did silly things on the exercise equipment- does anyone actually use these for the appropriate purpose?? We rode the skyride and also spent some time on the ropes course. These were very busy after about 10am on sea days, but we went around 9am on a sea day and also in the afternoon on a port day and didn't have to wait at all. K&J waited 90 minutes on the day they decided to try the sky ride 😬. The sky ride was just as fun as I remembered it, but L didn't like it at all (she was not tall enough on the last cruise). Be sure to wear close-toed shoes! They also weigh everyone before they can ride now (weight limit 250#). D enjoying his turn on the sky ride. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of the ropes course 🤦‍♀️. Other entertainment: D & I went to two shows in the Liquid Lounge- Vintage Pop and Celestial Strings. I thought both of them were entertaining and well done for a cruise ship performance. The two female vocalists were very talented, the males not so much, but they were ok. I love watching the energy of the violins in Celestial Strings! Z joined us for that show and said she liked it, but didn't know any of the songs...I guess there weren't any by Taylor Swift 🤣. We were disappointed that there weren't movies on the deck every night as we enjoyed watching those together each night when we were on the Sunrise. I think there were movies showing about half of the nights? They weren't really ones we cared for, so we only watched one (Indiana Jones) and L was scared after the beginning, so the two of us went and...you guessed it, ate ice cream instead! D&D convinced us to check out the Deal or no Deal show and gave us one of their cards to play for them. None of their cards had a single match, but K&J won $200! So that was fun to be there to witness. I made it a goal to find the "secret" decks that I heard about here on CC and the girls thought I was doing something illegal, but we found them! It was so peaceful standing at the front of the ship alone. Here I am right before getting arrested for going through this door 😁 Very few people get this view off the front of the boat! Z's artistic view of the bench on a "secret" deck Still to come...the ports ☺️

The Ship: We enjoyed the Horizon on our first cruise and were happy to be sailing on her again. We quickly remembered the layout and how to work the elevators 😁. I appreciate that a cruise has activities that engage people of all ages and interests, such that our group of ages 10-91 could always find something to do, and several activities that we could do together as well. Such as eating ice cream... Our cabins: Our family of 5 had connecting deluxe ocean view rooms (1282 and 1286) on the 1st level. We have no problem being at the bottom of the ship- it's quiet, easy to get off and on at the ports, and cheaper! I also like taking the stairs (truly, it makes me feel better about eating more food 😂). Our previous cruise on the Horizon we were in two interior rooms (just fine) and had two ocean view rooms on the Sunrise. I like having the windows and extra space in the ocean view rooms. The deluxe ocean view room was especially nice as we had two showers (one with a bathtub!) in each room, which was certainly not a necessity, but definitely a perk for this cruise. It would be great to have the bathtub if you are cruising with littles. We also enjoyed the recessed windows on the Horizon (I don't think the Sunrise has these)...they probably aren't meant as a window seat, but that didn't stop our kids from using them that way! Yes, even a 6ft 17 year old can sit in the window 😁 And...the perfect place to display our towel animals! D&D had the same type of deluxe ocean view cabin on the 2nd level and were happy with their cabin as well. K&J and G&G had balcony cabins on the 9th level near mid-ship. Their cabins were definitely smaller than ours, but the balconies were nice. Here's the problem though...their cabins were under the Lido deck and K&J did not sleep well for most of the cruise as they could hear the deck parties late into the night and then could hear deck chairs being moved around after the parties were done. G&G on the other hand had NO problem as they simply removed their hearing aids and could hear nothing 🤦‍♀️. So...lesson learned...if you are hard of hearing, the 9th floor midship is perfect for you! Otherwise, avoid! I brought some small magnetic hooks for our cabin this time and they were a game changer. We used them for wet bathing suits, goggles, sweatshirts, our laundry bag, etc. The kids' room was still mostly a disaster, but it gave me a little sense of control over the chaos. We had a good cabin steward, I Komang. He seemed to stealthily clean our rooms when we were out and quickly came to the rescue when I called him the night that K shut the connecting door between our rooms, leaving all of their room keys locked inside 🙄.

I think it was called Mongolian Wok (?), but this was located in JiJi's (11 aft) at lunchtime. I'm not sure if this serves the same food as the Mongolian Wok on other ships. There was a menu of several different options for stir fry or broth (beef, chicken, shrimp, pork, and a combo I believe). When we were on Horizon previously, you could select all of the items you wanted to make a custom stir fry, but this time we were limited to the choices on the menu. You can choose to sit and eat in the restaurant or take out, but even when we chose take out, we had to sit at a table in the restaurant to wait for our food. One time we had to wait about 20 min before getting a table, but they gave us a device that notified us when the table was ready, so we just went and ate chocolate at the buffet while we were waiting 🤣. My daughter Z loves noodle bowls (Lucky Bowl on Sunrise was a favorite as well), so we went here 3 times and were happy with our meals each time!

Thanks for all of the positive feedback so far! I appreciate your comments 😊. I'll be back in the next few days to post details about the ship, the ports we visited, and disembarkation (debarkation? I'm not sure what term is correct 🤷‍♀️!).

I'm going to group this by topic rather than a detailed day-by-day description. Starting with a hot topic of THE FOOD: I would describe us as a family who is not very discriminating about food, by which I mean that we enjoy many varieties of food from poor quality, cheap food (I'm looking at you, Hungry Howie's pizza!) to much more refined choices such as St. Angel cheese (if you've ever had this, you know what I'm talking about 🤤) and king crab legs. With that being said, we were very happy with our food choices on the Horizon and never came close to going hungry 😄. MDR- We ate as a group at the MDR each night with Your Time Dining. We had a group of 11, so could only request a table for 10 in the App, but after the first night they told us to request for 10, but then tell them when we arrived that we needed a table for 11. This was a tiny hassle as it seemed confusing to the staff each night, but we always requested the table right at 5:30 and had no wait to get in. We found the food to be mostly good, sometimes hit or miss, but always plenty of choices, and the staff were willing to bring L a steak with fries and fruit every night, so that was a WIN! One of the best parts of the cruise were the dinners where we all sat down together to share about our day. G&G have pretty poor hearing, so it was sometimes hard to have conversations, but Grandpa told us some stories about his time in the Korean War and the poverty his family faced growing up. L especially was intrigued by these stories as she had no idea that Grandpa had served in a war. Hopefully the kids will always remember how special it was to spend this time with their great-grandparents. Here's our group in the MDR. Sadly, Grandma is hidden in this photo 🤦‍♀️ As expected with YTD, we had a different serving staff every night, but the first night we met a server named Fedroy and he became our favorite staff member this week. Even when we weren't at his table, he sought out our family with magic tricks and brainteasers that he had prepared for us. I'm sad that I didn't get a photo of him. Here's a paper bird he made for L: And a mouse made out of a napkin: He also managed to balance some forks from the salt shaker which amazed our table! Our family has also found that we enjoy eating in the MDR for breakfast and the Sea Day brunch, so we ended up eating breakfast here every day! We generally went as early as possible and never had any wait for a table (L came with us every day; the other kids only came to Sea Day brunch as they often preferred sleeping in 😆). Two of the days, G&G joined us for breakfast and it was enjoyable to have a quieter time to spend with them in the MDR. Here's L enjoying the cold strawberry soup. The look on Grandpa's face when they placed his in front of him was priceless! I'm not sure what he was expecting, but once he tried it he ate it all 😋 Feeling so blessed that G&G are healthy enough to cruise with us! They have been on many other cruises and Carnival certainly isn't the best for people of their generation, but they never expressed anything except JOY for spending time with us 😊 A couple of notes about oddities in the MDR: I like fish, but several of the varieties (BBQ salmon and another that escapes me) came with the skin on the top. Just...no. Perhaps this labels my palate as poorly refined, but I don't care to eat fish skin. K really likes fish too and was thankfully willing to pick the skin off without complaint, but this was just weird to us. Also- a polarizing subject- the chocolate melting cake! The melting cakes we were served were in several differently shaped dishes, which I saw that someone else posted a thread about as well. I don't mind the different dishes, but it didn't seem that any of our melting cakes were cooked to perfection (for us, fairly gooey in the center) on this cruise and I can't help but wonder if the various sizes are impacting that as the cook time must vary. I tried several of the Indian offerings in the MDR and can vouch for the fact that they were very tasty, but also spicy. I'm glad I gave them a try after reading good reports on here! Other food options: We enjoyed our burgers at Guy's, tacos at Blue Iguana (but why don't they try harder to get the seeds out of the watermelon salsa??), pizza from Pizzeria del Capitano, stir fry bowls from Mongolian Wok (I tried the shrimp and pork, both good, and Z and D liked the beef), and BBQ from Pig & Anchor. And of course- many many servings of soft-serve ice cream! We only have one complaint and that is that the Swirls ice cream doesn't open until 11am now, which really cut into the number of servings my kids were able to consume on this cruise 🤣. Beef stir fry from Mongolian Wok: Chocolate buffet in the Lido: And... the mascot of the cruise for our family!

Hi everyone! One of the activities that gives me the most joy is researching and planning vacations (including cruises!), and I love reading about the experiences of others on this forum, so I'm here to give a summary of our recent cruise on the Horizon. The background: We are a family of 5- my husband (D) and myself in our mid 40s, and kids ages 17 (K), 14 (Z), and 10 (L). We have been on two other cruises- the Horizon in April of 2019 (loved it!) and the Sunrise in December of 2021(loved this too! We felt it was like the Horizon with a smaller footprint). When I noticed that Christmas break 2023-24 went an entire WEEK into January and realized that I had to work Christmas, I immediately began looking for a cruise so that we didn't spend the first week of January in cold, gray Michigan. We would have liked to try a new ship, but the Horizon was our best option for dates and price, so I went for it! After we booked, I contacted my aunt and uncle (D&D) who are BIG Carnival fans and had just returned from a cruise on the Horizon with another aunt and uncle (J&K) and my 90 year old grandparents (G&G). Before we knew it, everyone wanted IN and a 4 generation cruise was born! Pre-Cruise travel and embarkation: We flew on Southwest to Miami the night prior and stayed at Comfort Suites Miami airport. It was fine, nothing special, but the 5 of us could fit in a single room and there was a free, decent breakfast. I am a runner (a theme which you may hear about throughout this review 😁) and knew the hotel was near a neighborhood we had stayed in previously where I could run safely alone. Not most people's priority, but important to me! There was a shuttle from the airport to the hotel and a shuttle from the hotel to the cruise port. I had done my research ahead of time and knew that the cruise port shuttle was first come first served, so figured we wouldn't manage to get a place on our preferred shuttle at 10am. Sure enough, there was a shuttle at 9am and 11am still available when we arrived, but our boarding time for the ship was 11am, so we didn't want to be there too early or late (in hindsight, we could have taken the 11am shuttle and been fine. We were so excited to get there though!). We took an Uber XL to the cruise terminal and it cost about $40 with tip, so no problem. We were able to get through the check-in quickly, but then waited in a very crowded room for about 45 minutes before we were able to board. D&D, K&J, and G&G came separately and were waiting in a different area for a wheelchair to take G&G on board-they thought this would be faster, but we waved at their dismayed faces behind a glass wall as we boarded the ship before them 😬! We were happily eating Guy's burgers and ice cream by a little after noon. Since we had been on the Horizon previously, we were familiar with the layout and activities and had planned ahead with our bathing suits handy so that if the weather was nice we could get on the waterslides right away with short lines! It was about 70 degrees and sunny, so L and I quickly changed into our suits in an empty bathroom by the Liquid Lounge (much quieter than those on the Lido) and were able to ride the slides about 15 times with little wait as only a handful of others had the same idea. We lucked out that our room and luggage were ready as expected around 1:30, so the others went to check out our room and do a little unpacking before joining us at the slides. FYI the ropes course and sky ride were open at embarkation as well, so plan ahead by wearing close-toed shoes if you'd like to try those right away. I'm going to try to post some photos here, but new to this, so let me know if they don't appear correctly and give me some tips on how to do this better! The girls enjoying their first soft serve of the cruise! One of the few photos I managed to capture of K during the cruise 🙄- sneak attack! L enjoying the waterslides K, Z, and L at sailaway-it was SO crowded and loud, but so fun! D & myself with Aunt D and Uncle D at sailaway in our matching t-shirts 😁 4 generations in our matching shirts! More to come...

Thanks for sharing your amazing review and tagging it here for others to see! I loved your photos as it made me relive the adventure 🙂. Based on your photos it looks like there were less people in your group than we had, but it is good to know that we didn't miss out too much by taking our time that morning. Also- I didn't look through your whole review, but the Norwegian cruise port (Taino Bay?) looks AMAZING! We've only sailed Carnival so far, but I'd love to check out the other cruise lines.