The reviews of this ship are all over the place. After talking at length with my family, we have agreed that maybe our expectations were set very high since this was a new ship with some great amenities. We had a great cruise and a wonderful vacation. There was absolutely nothing that was horrible or would cause me to not sail on this ship again. I think it is safe to say that with all trips you take, you walk away with a few suggestions for improvement and this trip was no exception. Let me break it down for you-

The ship itself is huge!!! It took a while to learn the layout, but I liked that. It felt like an adventure of sorts. Even though it was very large, we managed to find each other daily as well as coming across people we met throughout the day. I would have thought it would have been much harder to do so.

There are not enough lounge chairs for everyone by the pool area. However, there are places on deck 5 on either side of the ship that always had lounge chairs available. Some of those areas were smoking places and you had to go from one side of the ship to the other in order to follow the sun as the day progressed but I do not think you will find any vacation destination that will allow everyone to have prime lounge chair real estate. There was also plenty of seating on this ship, just not enough lounge chairs for all 4600 to sit in at the same time. It is completely unrealistic to think a ship that carries 4600 people would be able to fit all of them around the pool. Now, there is definitely a problem with people getting up at 6:30 A.M., placing towels on chairs and never being seen again until 11 or so. I did see the staff removing towels on our last sea day but they were met with such a fierce attack from the passengers, it didn't last long. It says right in the Fun Times that you can not reserve a chair for more than 30 minutes. They need to stick to this rule with no exception and I think things would improve. The main pool has a wading area around the perimeter with benches and even seating in the shade. This is a very nice design and it seems like you can accommodate more people. Yes, children jump in and splash but show me a pool where that does not happen. If there was an adults only pool then children splashing would not be an issue but everyone knew signing up for this cruise that an adult pool was not a feature on this ship. To complain about it seems silly to me. Kids will always jump in pools and you will never fit 4600 people around a pool on a ship this size. I liked the fact that there was a second pool as well as all of the hot tubs. I never felt cramped in the pools. Read more