General: Serenade of the Seas sailing from San Juan on 12-23-06 to St. Thomas, Antigua, St. Lucia, Barbados & St. Martin. We are a married couple in our late 50's and this was our first cruise in over 12 years and our first cruise ever with Royal Caribbean. Our last cruise was with our daughter on Premier (remember the Big Red Boat?) to the Western Caribbean. We booked this cruise online with Royal Caribbean in mid November after getting email notification from RCCL of a senior discount available on a limited number of cabins. Our cabin was one of the Large Oceanview cabins without a balcony near the front of the ship on Deck 8. After we saw some of the cabins with a balcony, we're glad we chose this cabin because it probably had at least 20% more room than an equivalent balcony cabin on the same deck. This particular cruise probably had a larger proportion of families and younger children because of Christmas but the children we encountered were generally well-behaved and polite.

Embarkation: We booked our own airfare through Delta using Skymiles and purchased transfers through RCCL for the transportation to the ship from the San Juan airport. After claiming our baggage we met the RCCL representatives and waited about 30 minutes before we were escorted to the bus and then waited another 15-20 minutes before the bus left the airport for the cruise terminal. Would recommend taking a taxi - it's about $10 one-way plus tip so less expensive than the RCCL transfers and no waiting around for other passengers to arrive. Checking in at the cruise terminal was a breeze. We had checked in online the day before so everything was ready to go. We were in our cabin by 1pm and went straight to the Windjammer for lunch.

Dining: We were in the main dining group which was served from 6pm-8pm in the Reflections dining room. In general, we would say the dining experience was good but not exceptional. The food was well-prepared and presented nicely but was not gourmet fare. However, I would have to say that we never left the dining room hungry. The service was excellent - friendly, attentive and courteous but not overbearing. We also dined at Chops Grille one night. We thought this was a good change of pace and it was not crowded the night we dined there so our service was probably a little better than normal. The food at Chops Grille was somewhat better than Reflections but we wouldn't say it was worth the extra $20pp to dine there. We ate lunch and breakfast at Windjammer everyday we were on board the ship. The Windjammer buffet was active but never seemed crowded because of the multiple serving stations and the food was good, standard buffet fare with varying Caribbean dishes every day to break the monotony. We never tried the Seaview Cafe but the pizza we got from the Solarium Cafe was awful. Read more