This was our first Royal Caribbean cruise, we mainly go on the less expensive cruise line. This was our fifth cruise overall. This was on Freedom of the Seas. Freedom is a beautiful ship, and we especially loved the Promenade Deck. We've never seen anything like that. The plusses on Freedom over the other line are the size of the ship. It sailed much smoother than any other ship that I've been on. The balcony rooms are comparable in size but the balconies are much bigger on the Freedom. The Captain is much more assessable and we got our picture taken with him. The dining room is beautiful.

However, we felt that the crew on Freedom was not nearly as friendly as they were on the other line. We went as a couple but wanted to share a table with someone else. We go to make friends. We got seated alone night one, and when we asked to share on night two we were told that they couldn't do that, that we needed 6 people. Thankfully the two couples behind us said they'd share with us, we sat together the rest of the trip and became friends. But our waiter acted like he was totally bored with us, then asked us to give him a good rating on the survey.

Our room steward was nice enough but not outgoing, and only did 3 towel animals all week. The one exception was a young man, Vherr, from the Philippines who went out of his way all week in the Windjammer to welcome us by name. Food was okay on the ship, comparable to the other line. We will probably go with the cheapest deal next time, whichever line it's on. We only went with this line because we got a good deal. Read more