We cruised Anthem back in July for our honeymoon on a 14 night European extravaganza. Overall it was a wonderful cruise. I still give an edge to the Oasis class for a variety of reasons (notably the neighborhoods and the open space they bring, live music, and larger entertainment venues), but this is the first ship that is a true rival to that class in my opinion (I know many people like the smaller ships and I get that - this is just my opinion).

A lot of the bad things we had heard about the ship did not happen to us (service, food quality). We thought the service was excellent, with only really one night (American Icon) where we had average service. All of the other staff seemed to be going out of their way to make sure they were delivering good service and asking if we had problems. The staff did seem a bit stretched thin at various food venues, however.

The food itself was overall a solid 7, with higher rating for the specialty dining (i.e., chef's table, wonderland, Jamie's etc.). There definitely were some "misses" but it wasn't clear if those were one-off issues or not (i.e., a bad preparation vs. a bad dish), and they weren't deal breakers. Read more