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My husband and I took our two daughters (ages 15 & 19) on this cruise mainly for it's cooler weather. We've taken four cruises over the past few years and last year at this time we cruised to the eastern caribbean, which my husband thought was too hot. We did have absolutely perfect weather on this cruise, with highs about 75 degrees every day.
For the age of this ship it is very clean. The cabins are small, but we didn't spend much time there anyway.
The food was fine, but nothing to write home about. We ate breakfast in the Windjammer, which is buffet style. We always ate our dinner in the main dining room. They had a good variety of selections on the menu. Our waiters were excellent, except that they were rather difficult to understand because they spoke broken english.
We had the late dining time of 8:00 and so when we were finished eating the tables at the casino were always packed. They need more poker tables, but it's too small so they obviously don't have the room unless they move out some slot machines. Unbelievably, the slot machines seemed loose! My husband won $100+ several times and we only spent about an hours time there.
Entertainment on this ship is definitely lacking. They need more variety. Carnival has them beat by a long shot in this area. RCL is big on bingo and karaoke. Actually, Carnival pushes bingo too, but they have a lot of other activities. RCL did have a fun game show for couples in one of the clubs one night called "The Quest". I thought their calypso band by the pool was very lousy and would have rather listened to anything but them.
Their fitness room is very nice with fairly new equipment. However, they need to put their air conditioner at a lower temp. and also they need to put several fans in there. It was too hot and stuffy even early in the mornings.
We visited the San Diego Zoo and wish we would have also had time to tour the USS Midway air craft carrier that was within walking distance of our ship.
Catalina Island is very nice and clean, but RCL only had one ferry boat tendering passengers to shore. We stood in line to get off the ship and then stood in line for a long time again to get back to the ship. Another ferry boat could have easily solved the frustration of many passengers.
Ensenada was awful! It's very dirty and I wish we would have never gotten off the ship. We didn't feel safe from the beginning because the first shuttle bus we got onto had a driver who kept glaring at our two teenage daughters. Needless to say, we never let them within an arms length of us. We decided to go to Labufadora (the blow hole), which we weren't told that it is a very long 45 min. trip through their filthy city, countryside and then up the side of a mountain. Our bus driver drove much too fast and it was frightening. My husband and I were relieved to get there, but it was a huge disappointment. The only way you can see the blow hole is to walk down a long path of merchants that badger you to death. On the way back we stopped to have lunch at the Habana Banana to get away from them. It was recommended by our tour guide. Don't go there! It's a rip off. It's expensive (even in US terms) and not good. We waited over an hour for our food and it was finally brought out after I went up and told them we had to leave to get back to our tour bus. Then we had to practically inhale it and go.
Another part of this cruise that I didn't like was not having any "at sea" days. Maybe RCL should just skip Ensenada and cruise to nowhere for the last day!
A part of this cruise that our 15 year old daughter really enjoyed was seeing the first woman captain of a major cruise ship (Capt. Karin) at work. We were a deck above her as she made sure we were clear to pull away from the port in LA. She looked up at us and told us to hold our ears each time before she blew the ships horn.
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