My husband and I selected this cruise for its newness and to see first hand what it would be like to cruise on a ship of this size. Even though the size was impressive and overwhelming, we sometimes found ourselves in the elevators by ourselves. However, due to the ship’s large passenger capacity (6,000) the registration, boarding and departing at the terminal was unpleasant to say the least. Having a Crown & Anchor status and arriving prior to 1 pm had no advantage. Following others, it took us a little more than an hour doing the ‘Serpentine Dance’ on a cold concrete floor before we were aboard. RCI may not be in charge of Customs personnel, but there weren’t enough Custom officers to handle the number of passengers to process for this size ship. Even if you are a back-to-back cruiser, a senior, or are wheelchair bound, you still won’t have any privileges for a speedy re-boarding. Seems we should have had some priority; after all they already had all of our information and our stateroom assignment.

The Crew/Staff by the most part were pleasant and polite, but a few were rude, indifferent, and possible attitude. Our dining on the first week was superb. We ate at 5:30 pm, Deck 5. However, for our second week we were assigned to a different time and location even though we earlier requested the same as the first week. We were placed in ‘My Time Dining’ status and it was an awful experience. Enormous lines causing delays and confusion. The dining officers were rude and uncaring, while our table waiters were thoughtful. For the first 3 nights the dining room was swamped with passengers and crew members. Crew members had facial expressions as if they had never seen this before. It took almost 2 hrs to finish dinner. The food was good and always hot, but too slow in servicing. Later as we exited the dining room we noticed longer lines waiting to enter while others were leaving to eat elsewhere.

We prefer inside large staterooms although not as large as one would expect. Our room was on Deck 10 which was very quiet and well maintained by our cabin steward. Read more