On October 28, 2007, my wife and I took our three children, ages 16, 13 and 10 on the Vision of the Seas with Royal Caribbean. My wife and I have cruised once before in July 2007 to Alaska with Princess. This was the kids first cruise.
Embarkation went fairly smooth. We had all of the passports, birth certificates, driver's licenses handy for all of us and we had previously printed out our boarding passes. There was some confusion on how many times we had to show our passports and other identification, so always have them handy. At one station, my wife became separated from us, and I had all of the kids. They would not let me go through with the kids, even though I had all of their ID's until my wife found us and verified that we were married and I wasn't trying to whisk the kids off in some sort of custody battle. This took about an hour. Once on the ship, you cannot immediately go to your room, as they are cleaning (we got on the ship about 2 p.m.) So we went to the Windjammer cafe. The kids thought the Windjammer was great at first, but as the week wore on, they serve the exact same breakfast items each breakfast and the same goes for lunch and dinner. No real variety. My wife and I noticed that the food was better on Princess, but we didn't tell the kids.
The big positive of Royal is their kids programs. The are the best. All of the kids had a blast all week long. In fact our 10 year old got off the ship in Cabo, but refused to get off at the other ports, because he refused to miss the activities on the ship. The rock climbing wall was a big hit when it was open. The normal operating times are very limited and even those times are cut down if it is a little windy or rainy. Needless to say, if it is open, you better take advantage, or you may not get another change.