This was our 2nd cruise, but 1st on Royal Caribbean (our first was 4 years ago with Princess). For this cruise, there was a total of 8 -my husband and I, our 3 children (my son who is 24,disabled and mostly uses a wheelchair and my 2 daughters 18 and 21), my sister-in-law and her 2 children (27 and 22). This cruise was a multi-celebration event - my sister-in-law turned 50, 2 of my children were graduating from university and moving on to law school and masters studies, we figured it may be the last vacation that all of us could go on together. We had decided on Royal Caribbean cause we thought the crowd might be a younger one for all of our kids, as our previous cruise which was just myself and my husband had gone on, did have a generally older crowd. Call us insane but 6 out of 8 of us drove down all the way from Toronto Canada to Galveston Texas. It was quite the journey, driving through portions of 9 states. We arrived on the Friday before the cruise and stayed at the Hotel Galvez. This hotel is a beautiful, historical gem - we absolutely loved our stay there. It was a bit pricey, but worth it. The pool area especially with its swim up bar was a hit with our families. The 2 that flew down took a shuttle from Galveston Limousine service at a cost of $40 each - it took them about 2 hours to get to the hotel from the airport. We had a bit of a mixup with our rooms, as we had requested 1 accessible room for my son and somehow that hadn't been communicated to the hotel, but the front desk clerk was very helpful, and set us up with oceanfront rooms (1 being the accessible one)at no extra charge. We also took advantage of the free shuttle to the cruise terminal and valet parking, which at $12 per night was a good deal. It was a nice start to our vacation. One evening we ate at the Golden Corral which is a buffet restaurant and it was okay, but not great, the 2nd evening we went to the RainForest cafe, which had good food, but was very busy and crowded - had to wait 1 hr for a table. On the SUnday morning, we took the hotel shuttle to the cruise terminal, which was a very quick 5-10 minute drive. Embarkation went pretty quickly as we all had done our online checkin beforehand and we were onboard by 1pm and enjoying the buffet on deck. The ship, although beautiful is starting to show its age - new chairs for the outdoor sections of the buffet are needed, and there was some rust on our balcony and our shower. The main pool had been drained and would not be available till the next day, so that was a little disappointing. Although generally we had a great time, there were a few things that we didn't like. One was that there seems to be a lot of selling - photos, activities that you have to pay extra for (like the wine-tasting), cocktails, sales at the onboard shops, etc; On the first day, there was a raffle of various prizes and you had to go to all the info tables that were set up (e.g. - bingo, spa, casino, wine package) to collect the info to fill out on your entry ballot. My nephew won one of these prizes which was supposed to be about $300 worth of merchandise, but when he collected his prize, it meant he had to find specific stores in each of the ports of call to collect his free prizes - as we had all booked excursions in the ports of call, this limited how much "shopping" he could do, and as a result he only was able to collect about $50 of prizes, mostly T-shirts and cheap jewelry. My son did win a bottle of rum, and that was picked up onboard, so no problems there. We had also gone to the spa raffle, but we had to sit through a 45 minute presentation of all the spa services before the raffle, and I won a 50% off BMI analysis, which I never used - I can get one of these at any local gym for free! So that ended up being a waste of time. Same for the shopping session - they mostly were interested in selling coupon books for the ports of call! The other big complaint I would have is to do with accessibility issues (my son has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair for the most part) - Royal Caribbean's website specifies that all of their ships have at least one swimming pool and one hot tub that can be accessed by wheelchair users. Not true - when we found no easy way for our son to get into the pool or hot tubs, we inquired at the pursuers' desk, and I got a very lame reply that the machinery was broken, but didn't know when it would be fixed - big help that was. Fortunately, with a lot of help, my son can get up and down a few steps, but the attitude at the pursuers' desk was very disappointing. Another problem we encountered was with the tender boat at Grand Cayman - these ferries appear to be run by Grand Cayman and not by the ship, but transfer was not easy - we had to help our son down about 12 steps. We bumped into one man who used a walker who was very upset cause there was no way he could get into port on the tender and so his whole day was ruined. The good things - we all had booked balcony cabins and these were really nice - more spacious than I expected - I couldn't believe the amount of storage space. My son's accessible cabin was particularly spacious. The food was generally good, and lots of it - some of the entrees at dinner were not to our taste though - the chicken marsala for instance was terrible. My husband and I preferred to eat in the dining room whenever possible, so can't comment much on the buffet food, but others in our group ate there quite often and had no complaints. The breakfast and lunch menu in the dining room is the same each day but there's enough of a choice that it's not restrictive - we enjoyed most of what we ordered there. Dinners were usually quite good, but I have to say that the beef was not as good as I would have expected it to be - the steaks and prime rib were good but not great. The starters were what I enjoyed the most - I would often order 2 or 3 of these if the entrees were not appealing to me - the desserts were quite good too-loved the banana creme brulee! The sugarless desserts are also amazing. The snack bar in the solarium area served hot dogs, burgers and pizza till about midnite, and my children had no complaints about the food here. There was also a soft frozen yogurt machine here and outside the main buffet area, and more than 1 of us got addicted to eating these. The service at the dining room and our stateroom attendant was very good. In particular our stateroom attendant was very good - on the last nite, she went way beyond the typical towel animal, and created towel people using life jackets and various loose articles she found in our staterooms - sunglasses, hats, etc; - totally awesome. One other thing we found strange is that they kept the pools fairly cool, a little too cool. The entertainment was generally good as well - we particularly enjoyed this violinist (surprisingly our kids did too - she was quite funny as well as talented), and an Argentinean dance and drumming group on the last nite. The timing of the grand buffet at midnite was not good - the next day we were in port at Cozumel and most people had booked excursions that left very early in the am. It would have made more sense to have had the midnite buffet when the next day was a sea day. We enjoyed all the ports of call - particularly Cozumel. In Montego Bay, most of us did the Jamaica wonders excursion where we visited a bird sanctuary, banana plantation and had liquor samplings and drove through a lot of beautiful countryside. We thoroughly enjoyed this tour. 3of our group had elected to do the Canopy Tour where you swing through the trees, and walk on raised platforms in the jungle, but unfortunately it was cancelled due to thunder and lightning. They took a taxi into town, but didn't stay long, as they were constantly hassled by Jamaicans to buy this or that, and just didn't feel safe. In Grand Cayman, half of us went snorkeling which was really enjoyable, and half did a half day tour of the island, visiting the turtle farm, stingray lagoon and the town of Hell. They enjoyed this tour immensely as well. My family had lunch at a quaint restaurant near the ocean, as my 18 year old daughter found out that 18 was the legal drinking age in Grand Cayman, and she wanted a drink!! In Cozumel, we all opted to do the full day mainland tour of the Mayan ruins at Tulum, combined with a few hours at Xe-Ha ecopark. Unfortunately, half of us missed the ferry we were supposed to go on, as we heard an announcement in the elevator saying that no-one was allowed ashore until the Freedom of the Seas, which had just come into port, had been all secured. But apparently, that didn't mean people who had mainland excursions who would be quickly let off before Freedom of the Seas was secured. This announcement had been made earlier but we hadn't heard it as we were in our cabins at the time. So we had to take the second ferry in and ended up arriving at Tulum about 45 minutes later than the rest of our group. To get to our bus to drive to Tulum, we walked through the shopping area of Playa del Carmen - it was lovely and we would have loved to do some shopping here, but time didn't permit. We had to settle for a very quick tour of the ruins- the view of the ocean and beach is to die for - it's absolutely stunning. We then went to the eco-park where we thoroughly enjoyed 1 1/2 hours of swimming in the huge lagoon they have there. We had an extremely nice and helpful Mexican guide, Jose, who really made this day special for us. We all decided that this area of Mexico is definitely worth an extended visit in the future – one of the many all-inclusive resorts would fit the bill. In terms of activities, there are lots and lots. My husband and I went to the meringue/salsa dancing lessons, and had a lot of fun - we just might take some ballroom dancing classes back at home. Some of the audience-participation shows like the Love and Marriage game and Battle of the Sexes, mens' bellyflop competition were a lot of fun to watch and at times hilarious. There are so many lounges where you can just go and sit and have a drink before or after dinner and the centrum area is visually stunning, and seemed to always have either a piano player or musical group playing. Our kids enjoyed the Viking crown lounge late in the evenings for some dancing, but it could get quite crowded. The majority of people onboard were from the state of Texas, we were definitely in the minority, and in a lot of shows, there was a definite Texas/America slant, so we felt a little left out at times. So all in all, we did enjoy our cruise. We probably would take another cruise on Royal Caribbean again, but would avoid any of the gimmicky raffles and sales and just do our own thing.