Last year my wife and I did a RCI cruise round the Med (we're from the UK) - and this was our third cruise (previous cruises were with Princess). While on board we realized that the ship was very child friendly and decided next time we'd go RCI around the Caribbean with our kids in tow. As such, we booked a 9 night cruise on Freedom of the Seas. Here's a the first thing to notice. It was advertised as 9 nights in the brochure but the first night is in a hotel (a decent one to be fair) but the ninth night is the overnight flight home! As such, it's really just a 7 night cruise. Also, I would argue that it is really a 6 day cruise because you don't get on the ship until late on the Sunday afternoon and they chuck you off early Sunday morning. So our 9 night cruise was really a 6 day cruise.
Embarkation was a pain compared to Princess. We were told to be waiting in the hotel lobby at 12noon where a coach would pick us up. The coach turned up about 12:15 and it was chaos. Eventually, it left about 12:30. When we got to the harbor we were told that we had arrived far too early and that boarding won't start until 2pm. We did point out that we'd taken RCI's transport and "Vee ver simply following zee orders". We stood around for a couple of hours feeling rather bemused - as did everyone. Eventually boarding commenced and we were onboard fairly quickly.
We headed for our rooms which weren't as we requested (the bed configuration was wrong and the connecting door and balcony were locked). The cabin steward quickly sorted this for us - he was excellent for the entire journey.