After being promised by Royal Caribbean that Anthem will be ready to go after the infamous "cruise from hell", and the damage was only "cosmetic", we set out for Bayonne. The cruise port was fine as we got there early (thank god). However, getting on the ship was a nightmare. They kept announcing on the loud speaker that they were just finishing up running through a few tests just to be sure we were good to go. We assumed that because the ship sat in port for 3 days, everything would have been ready to go and getting on board would be a breeze. We shook this off, in the grand scheme of things, it was only an hour wait.

Once on the ship, we heard from other passengers and also from NBC News that in fact the ship had damaged one of the azipods in the storm. The delay in getting on the ship was due to them still waiting for clearance from the Coast Guard. So much for only cosmetic damages. RCL blatantly lied to us.

Further exploration of the ship revealed much more than cosmetic damages. The glass panels in both the Solarium and the indoor pool were missing, the pools were drained and we were told there would be no swimming on our way south. This was a big bummer as our kids were looking forward to swimming, and it was one of the main reasons we decided to do this cruise. If we had known this, we would have cancelled as I have a sick elderly parent, had the insurance, and could easily have played this card. Read more