This was my family's fourth cruise on RC. Our previous cruises on the Freedom, Allure and Oasis of the Seas were very good. The service, food and entertainment on these ships were very good. The Anthem is nice ship, however, with all of the specialty activities (North Star, RipCord, Bumper Cars, etc.), some things that we found on the previous ships we sailed were notably missing. Warning: You need to sign up for the specialty activities before you even board the ship or there is a significant possibility that you will not get a slot. We did not ride the bumper cars because the lines were just too long. We almost did not get to go on North Star because we could not get a slot, but they opened it up a couple of times to accommodate unscheduled guests.

We have a teen age son who likes to play basket ball. That is the way he meets friends, however, basket ball opportunities were limited because the Seaplex, which is the site for basket ball had to time-share with the bumper cars, soccer, roller skating and trapeze lessons not to mention special events. With all of these events, there was little opportunity for him to play basket ball. By the way, many of the events had age limitations which further cut down availability to do your favorite activities. Other ships did not have this problem to the magnitude of this ship. The ship has one flow rider, which was also crowded and time-shared between boogie boarding and surfing as well as having age limits. In other words, activities were somewhat limited due to all of the time-sharing.

The entertainment on the ship was good but not great and seemed to us to be limited. First of all, there were only three headliner shows (The Gift, Spectra and We Will Rock You). Warning: Be sure that you sign-up for these shows well before you get on the cruise, or you may not get seats and find yourself trying to go standby. Technology wise, the shows were impressive, however, we were not impressed with The Gift and Spectra. Spectra was a little weird for our tastes but the singing and acting was good. The "We Will Rock You" show was very good and evidenced by the crowds standing ovation (which the other shows did not receive). There were two other shows that were Las Vegas-type acts; where the individuals imitated both old and contemporary singer/entertainers. The shows were good but redundant. There were a couple comedians. We only saw one of them and he was just OK. The other comedian did adult shows, but we did not see him. There was attempt to show two indoor movies on the ship, however, only one was shown due to technical difficulties. Read more