October 2, 2008, at 11AM, I was 16 years old at that time, my family went to my school, picked me up- DuPont Manual High School- to drive all the way to Orlando, Florida for a family vacation on the Royal Caribbean cruise. So, then we started to drive, and drive. Basically, all we did was sleep, eat snacks, watch movies on a tiny DVD portable, sleep, read tons of books, then sleep some more. (Though I think I was not a good car rider, because I made my step dad stop every 2 or 3 hours at a gas station to take a leak) Finally, at some point, I don’t remember if it was daytime or nighttime, but we had arrived in Orlando, Florida. Boy, were we really EXHAUSTED! We slept at a nice hotel for two nights, then went to Universal Studio for haunted houses. I’ve never seen anything so elaborating like Universal Studio. There were so, so many different people. Universal Studio has everything I’d ever wanted to experience. There were about 7 haunted houses as we walked along the trail at Universal Studio place, and they were pretty scary, to be honest. My friend and I were talking and walking at the same time and there was a guy in a costume (I was not really sure what it was) popping out of nowhere and scared the CRAPOLA out of us. I’ve never jumped that high in my entire life, and screamed that loud. Then there was a guy running towards us with a buzzing chainsaw. I knew they were not real but it still was scary to us.  

Next morning, we were packing and were ready to leave the Orlando hotel to go to Fort Lauderdale (that’s where the Mariner of the Seas ship was), we were so stoked, excited, and our adrenaline rush was pumping out of control! BUT…our hearts almost stopped and were about to come out of our chests. We spotted a mile-long traffic ahead on the highway as we drove, we looked at each other and said, “Oh crap…I hope we make it.” Because we had to be there at 4:30PM, sharp. The ship will leave no matter what, at 4:30PM. But in the end, we managed to get out of the highway, and drove straight to the dock of Fort Lauderdale where all the ships were. We got really excited again, all smiles on our faces. We were dragging SO many bags along with us, walking and walking towards the big building where we had to check in, give them our passports, and receive our “I.D.s” that we had to carry around the cruise at all times, to get in our rooms, for food, and to get off the ship to wander around on islands for excursions. We finally walked on a bridge towards the entrance door of the ship. Our adrenaline were way high up than the space! There was a waitress at the other front door inside the door giving us a glass of sparkling, white wine. I was astonished that she actually gave me WINE! I was so stoked about it, I drank all of it so fast that I had hiccups for almost 10 minutes which was so NOT fun. We headed up to our room that included the balcony. I entered the room and it was SO beautiful, so luxurious-looking. The bathroom even looked so fancy than my own bathroom at my house! Everything sparkled and was so tidy. I was smiling the WHOLE time (except for when I had the hiccups), we looked at the schedule of events that was happening that first night on the cruise, we had a dinner in a HUGE room called “The Rhapsody of Blues”. We ate such fancy, top-notch food until we realized the ship WAS starting to board and move. We all looked out the round windows across the dining room. We said goodbyes to the ole United States.