We've done several cruises on Holland American and Carnival and decided to give Royal a shot, since many people have told us that it is the 'better' cruise line. We were very disappointed. We are in our 40's and my guess is that 90% of the cruisers on our boat were over 75. As soon as we left port in Ft Lauderdale, we had to turn around and go back due to medical emergency and this seemed to be the case at every port. We've been on a lot of cruises and never seen anything like this. The entertainment seemed to cater to the older crowd as well. We are not interested in singers covering Frank Sinatra songs, listening to a violinist solo for 45 minutes, or the Beatles for that matter. We really, really missed the comedy club that has several nightly shows on all the Carnival ships.

I felt like embarkation was pretty efficient, though a lot of people were complaining about it being slow. Having never done Royal before, we were the last on the ship, but it still didn't feel like we waited more than normal. I heard that the previous cruise had a lot of illness, so they were doing a 'deep clean', and I'm totally OK with that! Disembarkation seemed to go well, until we had to be escorted off the ship. My husband bought me an expensive diamond necklace that was supposed to be a surprise, not knowing that it would be reported to customs and we would have to go to a special customs agent to discuss/etc. The salesperson on the boat knew this was supposed to be a surprise, and I assume, would know about the customs rules, but failed to inform him, so his surprise for me was ruined.

The food was disappointing too. There were many times when food was simply unavailable (3pm-6pm). Rosa's Cantina was a joke. There was one person working there, you had to go through the Windjammer buffet to get to it (so if it was open and WindJammer wasn't, it was hard to get to), and the one person who worked there was rude and slow. We ate there 3 times and each time, Juan was rude to us and acted like he was doing us a huge favor by serving us. It took nearly an hour to get one order of tacos, when there were only 2 other diners in the entire place. When I asked what was taking so long, he was very rude to me. After that, I just didn't go back, even though the food was actually pretty good. We did do the Chops Steakhouse one night and it was great -- both service and food. One thing I always enjoy on cruises is the desserts, and there were none on this trip that were any good. And ice cream machines are only in the Windjammer, so when it was closed, no ice cream! We met 2 other couples on the cruise that we wanted to have dinner with and we all had 'my time' reservations at 6:30pm, yet every night when we went and asked to sit together, they acted like it was impossible and gave us a hard time. Read more