We booked our cruise in early December 2013, I had been given an April date for surgery and we felt it would be a lovely way to finish off my recuperation. This was our third cruise (all with RCL), and as the time drew nearer, we were reading reviews on here and started to worry that we had made a bad decision, that the ship would be too big with too many people, that 14 nights would be too long, people were complaining about food, entertainment, staff.. We could have saved ourselves that worry, it was the best cruise we have had to date.

Embarkation - we arrived 15 minutes before our assigned time of 2.15pm and were on board in less than 15 minutes. Our cabin, promenade cabin 6613, was perfect - just over the Cafe Promenade and as clean and comfortable as we would have expected from our previous cruises. It was slightly bigger than before, and was serviced extremely well every day by Winston. The Bay of Biscay behaved itself thankfully!

Food - what do reviewers on here eat at home, I wonder? We had decided to sit at a table for two this time around and had 6pm dinner in the MDR. What can I say, a delicious meal every evening, plenty of choice, and superb service from Teresa and Inmer. They were so friendly too, and Teresa was always very informative about the different ports. There was a table beside us, all ladies, and some/all of them were strict vegans. There was a mix up early on about how something had been described on the menu meaning I think that it was not vegan, and the chef himself came out and spoke to them to apologise. The next night a special meal was prepared for them, and two chefs came to make sure that everything was right, fantastic service to make sure that the customer is happy. We always had our breakfast at the buffet in the MDR as well, and it was fresh with a big selection. Most times we had our lunch in the Windjammer, which was very tasty every day and never any problem getting a table. Read more