My wife and I decided to book the Legend of the Seas 5-Night Holiday Cruise (over New Year's Eve) as part of a Southeast Asia vacation. Our main reasons were that it seemed like a good way to visit several spots in the area without having to deal with crossing borders, it was port-intensive, and the opportunity to celebrate New Year's on the ocean was pretty appealing. Our only previous cruise was four nights on the Enchantment OTS out of Ft. Lauderdale, over Memorial Day weekend several years ago, so it was quite a party cruise and not our style. This cruise was much more our style.

We left the U.S. on the day after Christmas, arriving on the 28th because of the date line. Because of weather in the States, we were delayed and missed a connection and we were told our bags would arrive the day after our cruise, so we spent most of our time shopping for cruise clothes. I therefore don't have much to say about Singapore. We stayed at the Conrad, which was fabulous and had extremely helpful and generous staff, we helped tremendously with our bag issue. I also recommend Oscar's Buffet for breakfast.

Embarkation was easy for anyone with any kind of priority status: we are Gold C&A and had no wait once our forms were filled out. It was a very painless process. The new cruise terminal has a convenience store (7-11), I think, for any last minute needs. Note that as of December 2012, the new cruise terminal was new enough that our concierge made sure to tell the taxi driver very specifically to go the new terminal. The taxi ride was quick and easy. Read more