To Miami

When we planned the trip, we had booked round-trip flights out of Indianapolis directly to Miami in order to save money. Thanks to American Airlines, this turned into an early Saturday morning flight from Indianapolis to Dallas and then a short 45-minute layover before our flight to Miami. So we booked a hotel near the airport and drove down to Indy the night before, with a stop at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Indy to carb-load for our run through DFW the next day. Our level of 'service' from American Airlines continued at Indy airport Saturday morning. First we asked the desk agent if it was possible to rebook our flight from Dallas to an earlier flight to avoid the short turn-around in Dallas. She refused and told us 'we shouldn't have booked such a tight connection'. When we told we had not and that 'y'all rebooked us on that flight", she got defensive and said "I didn't do anything to you". We told her she represented her airline and she said it wasn't her fault and didn't know why people blamed her. We informed her she shouldn't have taken a customer service job then if she didn't expect to be blamed for her company's issues and she said she was trying to find a new job. Nice. Then she tried to charge us for our bags despite Janie being a Citi Platinum AA World credit card holder. She said that was our problem with the credit card. We asked her then to find someone else to help and the person at the next desk came over and showed our agent how to look up the AAdvantage number and override the charges.

After dealing with her, we stopped for a chicken biscuit at Chick-Fil-A and waited for our flight. Luckily, the flight left on time and actually arrived in Dallas 10 minutes early. J. R. hustled to the next gate and we all got there minutes before flight boarding. Our flight to Miami was uneventful and after picking up our luggage in Miami, we waited for our shuttle to the Best Western. The shuttle took over 45 minutes to arrive, after two phone calls, and left several people stuck at the airport as it was not big enough. We talked to another family the next day who told us they had to take a cab because the shuttle never arrived. The hotel was in sketchy area, but was actually pretty nice and clean. We walked to a local IHOP for dinner, which was a mistake as the service was slow and rude and the restaurant was filled with screaming kids (actually one family with a child who wouldn't stop screaming out loud and parents who did nothing to try to stop it -- and this wasn't a baby or toddler).

We had a shuttle planned to the airport, which was pretty disorganized, but we eventually got our luggage packed on the trailer and were off to the port. The bus driver unloaded our bags and we ran into our first NCL lack-of-service issue -- there were no directions on where to leave your bags. We finally found someone to help us and we dropped off our bags with a porter whose only comment to us was "this is where you take care of me", meaning give me a tip or who knows where your bags will go.

The Norwegian Epic

The lines to board the ship were fairly long, but moved quickly, and we were soon on-board. Unlike other cruises, we were able to go straight to our room, despite it only being around noon. We dropped off our luggage and headed up to the buffet for lunch. The food was good and plentiful. We toured the ship after that, picking up our stickers for the drink program as well as the refillable mugs they provided for those who had purchased the soda program and then the kids took off for the pool while the adults found a drink. Then we headed back to the room to unpack our luggage and split things up between the two staterooms we had booked. The young adults (Alex and Thomas) had an inside stateroom to themselves while Janie, J. R. and Rebecca had an aft balcony room. We had booked the Cirque Dinner & Dreams program for our first night, so we dressed for dinner and went down for the show. The show was incredible. We had seen several Cirque shows and didn't know how they would be able to perform a lot of their stunts in a small space, but they pulled it off with a lot of acrobatics and laughs as expected. The food was also good, but not spectacular, but we figured we were paying for the show and not the food. (Photos courtesy NCL)