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.