I chose this cruise for the ports that were visited and knowing Royal Caribbean service and food would be great. My husband and I are early 50's and this trip was for our 30th anniversary. I was not disappointed. We spent 5 night in Rome before the cruise which was amazing and highly recommend spending extra time in Rome pre or post cruise if you have not seen it before. I knew going in this was a mid sized ship with mid sized entertainment and amenities so I had reasonable expectations. I ended up being very happy with the size of the ship and passengers and would often run into friends we made and that made it really enjoyable to me. Our cabin steward Tatianna was also the best I've ever had and she brought me ice regularly to keep on my leg after getting hurt in Santorini.

Getting on the ship was the fastest I have ever seen in +10 cruises. Literally just walked right on the ship at 1:30pm. The cabin was nice and clean with plenty of storage. The ship was clean and well maintained. The staff was super nice and helpful. Having done my last 2 cruises on Norwegian I have gotten used to different venues for dinner each night so I purchased the 3 night dining package and also did the dinner murder show. The dinner show was not that interesting but we met some great people and had a great time on our own due to the free flowing wine. The dinner was in Giovanni's for the show and it was fantastic. We ate at Chops once which was great and then Giovanni's twice. We ended up preferring Giovanni's over Chops due to the variety of the menu and due to the fact we don't eat that much steak. I also think you can get more for your money there as you can order a pasta and a main dish. I had dinner in the main dining room twice and it was pretty good but the portions were really small for my husband (3 shrimps for a main course!!) and the dessert choices were very poor. We found the selection of food and desserts to be better in the windjammer then the MDR for dinner. They would bring in a huge selection of cakes and always had crepes and ice cream and other neat treats. The nightly shows were hit and miss. We saw two amazing headliners and then the rest were a bit disappointing but again the cruise was all about the ports.

I loved every port except Santorini, the line for cable car is ridiculously long so we tried the Donkeys DO NOT RIDE THE DONKEYS!! I got hurt as did half of the other people we met that were stupid enough to do the same. They are just herded up and down crashing into walls, people and other donkeys. It's just crazy. By 1:30 we decided we better check the cable car line down and 2 hours later I was back on the ship. It's not even worth getting off there unless you are taking the ferry to Oia and skipping Fira altogether. We did have 3 ships in port that day so that did not help the situation with the cable car. People were getting in fights in line over line jumpers and it was really ugly. Every other port was a breeze. There were never any lines to get off the ship and we were always able to walk right off even before the stated time. Read more