This was my first cruise, and I went with my best friend, who was also a first time cruiser. We had such a good experience that we are both hooked on cruising after just one cruise. The embarkation experience was smooth, and we were actually allowed on the ship quite a bit before our scheduled time (we showed up really early since we had heard that traffic near the port can be CRAZY). The only problem was that it would have been nice to not have our carryons with us at the time because we weren't able to get into our rooms for a couple hours, but it wasn't a big issue.

I was surprised by how big the ship is! Even though we took time on a number of days to go exploring, we didn't see everything on board. It took a few days to get a rough orientation, and even at the end we still got turned around a bit. The ship was in very good condition, and we saw maintenance being performed little by little throughout the cruise, but it rarely interfered with what people were wanting to do (there were a couple afternoons when ice cream machines were being cleaned and a couple of the hot tubs were being drained, but not one was all that upset). The deck plan was kind of inconvenient in some cases when we wanted to get to the other end of the ship, but had to go up or down and the back to that floor again.

We did the Our Time dining, which was perfect for us. Had we signed up for a time, we would have been rushing on port days or missing our shows. We only had to wait on the first night. On 2-3 nights there were no tables open in our regular section, but they had openings in the middle, and it was fun to sit with new people. The food in the main dining rooms (so, dinner and seaday brunches) was better than the buffet food, but the buffet food was very good. We never tried the taco place, the deli, the fish place, or the pizza place, but we had Guy's Burgers twice and they were good (although the choices of toppings were somewhat limited). The Mongolian place was also excellent, and fresh since its prepared just for you. The breakfast buffet was really good, though the biscuits and gravy I had one day was absolutely terrible. Desserts were very good, and of course the warm chocolate melting cake is a must. If you want coffee that is more than basic, you have to pay for it at the Viennese Cafe, but the barista does an awesome job and she's super nice! We got drinks from there at least once a day and tried several of the deserts Read more