Our family selected Royal Caribbean's Liberty of the Seas based on the Mediterranean ports that were offered, the price of the cruise, and the date of embarkation. Although there were many positives to our cruise, there were far too many negatives for our liking.

We had pre-booked private shore excursions for each of the scheduled ports. Unfortunately, due to poor weather conditions we missed out on the French Riviera, a major bummer. Guest Relations wouldn't even offer us a free can of Coke as compensation for a major missed port. Combined with that missed port we had three days at sea where we were on the ship all day and night. One would have expected that there would have been a good amount of things to do for these "at-sea" days. Not so. With a ship that size there was surprisingly very little to do. It seemed like every activity was somehow related to making you spend more and more money on the trip. For example, did we really need a consultation on getting our teeth whitened for $149? Even Bingo on the ship cost our family of four $66 for an hour of play. Virtually everything cost extra: bottled water, soft drinks, you name it.

For breakfast at the main dining hall we were given watered down orange juice. If one wanted the fresh squeezed stuff you had to fork over an additional $3.50 per glass. Read more