My wife and I have cruised on Princess, Norwegian, Holland America, and Celebrity, and decided to give Royal Caribbean a try. We had heard good things about RCL, however our January cruise out of New Orleans on Serenade of the Seas was rather disappointing.

The good news is our junior suite was very nice, somewhat larger and better laid out than similar mini-suites and vista suites on Princess and HAL. The “production” shows in the theater were very good. And on the morning we were disembarking we really appreciated their practice of letting us stay in our cabins until it was time to leave the ship.

To put the following criticisms in some perspective, we had a good cruise. We enjoyed ourselves because we were with good friends. You can have a perfectly good cruise on RCL, but at least in our experience we think the other lines we have been on are better and at least in some cases offer better value for money. Read more