Like many people, I chose this ship for the convenience of leaving from NJ and it also helped that a friend and his wife and kids were going as well. I was going with my wife 3 year old daughter and 8 month old son, so I realize that this experience will be than different others... Getting on the ship was relatively easy and stress free, especially since I did the check in on line. Our room attendant Isha, was excellent, she did a great job with our room considering we had bottles, kids toys, and a pack and play to navigate around. I was surprised with how quickly the room was cleaned over the course of the trip. And like you've probably read the ship is beautiful and modern looking especially with Cafe 270 which was our favorite place to eat because of the ambiance. And the gym was excellent.

That being said, the food was a major let down. While I know everyone has different taste in what good food is, I think most consider chain food places like Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse, and Applebee's to be from OK to good. For the majority of the cruise the food quality was way below that. Our first night at Solarium Bistro I had the worst ceviche I ever tasted, I don't recall what my wife had but both of our entrees were terrible... And we were starving. American Icon Grill, was even more disappointing. I had the Mahi Mahi, and I've had canned tuna that was better. The waitress offered me steak because I didn't eat it the fish, she brought back a steak in one minute that looked like a microwave meal, like back in the 80's Hungryman Dinner meal. On top of that for the up to three servers we had, they seemed more interested in making silly faces at my son then making sure I had a drink. I realize that it's nice to wave and all to the kids, but it got to the point at most restaurants where I was gonna get a Frankenstein mask for my kids, so they could stop focusing on them and maybe a little more on the adults who actually paid for the cruise....I was even more surprised on how they did not enforce their attire policies. People in tank tops, backwards hats, bathing suits...just lacking the class I expected. Wear whatever in Windjammer but cmon .... Chic and Silk were both good, and Grande was the best complimentary restaurant. But we don't have Yelp on this ship so it shouldn't be on me to figure out which restaurant has the decent food. We ended up going to Jaime's Italian two nights because while I was making reservations it was the best one that had an early time for my family. The service and food at Jaime's is exactly what expecting on a cruise ship with this reputation.

And that's my main gripe with this ship. They know what they're doing, they serve you poor quality food in the hopes of you going to the specialty restaurants so you can spend more money then you already had. You can read the reviews on Cruise critic and see the "feeling like I am being nickeled and dimed to death" is a common theme. We were fortunate enough to have 9 days of beautiful weather so I won't be surprised if I see an "Excessive Beautiful weather" Gratuity paid to the sun from Royal Caribbean. Cause I think...and I am not even kidding here, there was a gratuity to the damn robot bartenders, which is entertaining for the kids, when they work. They bottleneck the Main area, think it's called the Esplanade, so you can be sure to go by their heavily advertised one hour sales that make you feel like you're at the mall on Black Friday. No Thank you overly aggressive Cartier salesman, I don't need a $10K watch... Read more