Just so you understand where we are coming from, we are a "young" couple in our early sixties from Perth, Western Australia, and this was our first cruise on a Royal Caribbean ship, having previously cruised with Celebrity and Azamara in Alaska and the Mediterranean, also a couple of cruises on Star Cruises SuperStar Gemini, so we do have some experiences to use as a comparison.
For us cruising is mostly about the itinerary and the ports of call, rather than sea days, as we like to get ashore and explore, having said that it is important to us that we also enjoy the shipboard life, the facilities, entertainment and enrichment programs available, also the crew and more importantly our fellow passengers being of a similar demographics and background.
We have found that friendships made on a cruise can be rewarding and lasting, and our e-mail address book and Christmas card list is a testament to this, as such we normally try to choose our cruises and Cruise Lines with these preferences.
Deck 6 on the Legend of the Seas is the deck below the first of the Balcony Stateroom decks, what that meant was that the passageway on deck seven was 2 meters closer to the center of the ship, and as such directly over our inside stateroom, which meant we heard every footstep of those using the port side passageway, not to be recommended.