Myself and 3 friends took the January 26th sailing of Serenade of the Seas and overall we had a great time. This was my 6th RCCL cruise, and my second time on this ship and itinerary. We flew in the night before and stayed a night at the Hampton Inn in Isla Verde. We arrived at the pier around 1 pm and waited about 15 minutes in line to drop off our luggage, checked in and were on the ship quickly. Just an FYI about bringing beverages onboard, the duty free booze could be purchased after your carry on bags went through an initial x-ray check in at the terminal. However, immediately upon boarding the ship carry on bags went through another x-ray and all booze was confiscated. I know people who had just purchased it at the in terminal duty free were upset. No problems with water, juices or soda, but they even shook up my friends 2 liter of 7-up to make sure it was soda and not alcohol. It was fun opening that bottle later on! We did have several bottles of liquor in our checked bags, in their original packaging, and those arrived in our room no problem.

We had oceanview rooms on deck 3, our bathroom did have a bit of that sewage smell the first couple of days, but it wasn't intolerable and if you keep the toilet lid down it was much less noticeable. Our cabin steward, Hilario, was great. One note about the room, we had a room that had an adjoining door to the room next to it. We didn't know the people in the room next to us so we didn't need it, but the room is laid out so that the bed's headboard is against the left wall, instead of against the window like most rooms, so as to allow access to the door. This made the room incredibly small and hard to move around in. Since we didn't need the adjoining door, we moved the beds ourselves back against the window and just barricaded the adjoining door. This setup was much better, even though the built in headboard with the lamps was still against the left wall! My advice, don't book an adjoining room unless you really need it, very poor setup.

The food on the cruise was very good. I think the rumors about RCCL food going downhill are exaggerated. Our servers in the main dining room were Olga and Daniel, both very nice and lot of fun. They were about the same age as us and we ended up hanging out with them on the beach at a couple of the islands. Its fun to make new friends. We also ate a CHOPs one night and the service was just ok, but the food was excellent. Highly recommended. We ate there on the Antigua night, it was Caribbean night in the dining room and I don't think that is a very good night. If you are trying to decide which night to do chops I would recommend that one. We also ate in the Seaview cafe one night, great Cuban sandwich, and the service was efficient and friendly. Windjammer was fine for breakfast, this is such a port intensive cruise we never ate lunch there, we did have dinner there the 2nd formal night because we didn't feel like dressing up again, and they had a make your own stir fry which was delicious. Very quiet and nice in there that night. Read more