Well, we just returned from our cruise to the western Caribbean, our first cruise and we couldn't say enough about Royal Caribbean. From the moment we stepped on board till we said farewell, we were treated like royalty. Every crew member had a smile each morning and with only one exception, I consider this bunch of Royal Caribbean employees top notch.

We had perfect weather, even though on one occasion, a squall healed the boat a bit and they had everyone in the dining room move to port side. Even so, neither of us had a problem with motion sickness even though there were a few people we saw who where really sick. We were for the most part really comfortable with the high seas and spent a lot of time just looking at the amazing colors of the water at the rail, watching for flying fish and dolphin and letting the delightful ocean breeze ruffle our hair. I think you have to be susceptible to it to have a bad problem.

Unless you really like to shop or drink, Key West, in our opinion is a complete waste of time. It was our first port of call and we were back on the ship within a couple of hours and enjoyed the fantastic sunset from our deck chairs. Some of the performers at the Sunset Celebration are very good, but in our opinion, we could've skipped it entirely. There is no sand beach there either. We were not too impressed with our second port of call, Grand Cayman, because as divers, we were expecting much more. But since we did not sign up for excursions, we had to make our own way and it is difficult to find dive shops on the day you get there that are not already booked up, so we had to settle for shore diving very near the pier and the reef there is virtually dead. We did see some tropicals and a barracuda but we think the good diving is elsewhere on that island. We didn't have time to visit the stingrays but we heard it was good. We did dive the wreck of the Calle which is just 30 yards off the shore and saw some wonderful fish and it has a small reef with colorful coral and fish, including huge tarpon(4 to 6 feet!). So our advice is to sign up for Dive Trek excursion before your sailing or the first day. Since these excursions are worked out with the cruise line, there is less trouble even though you must hang with a large number of people. It fills up very quickly! Or possibly contract with a dive shop to go out to the wall reefs, online. Kirk's dive shop and Eden Rock dive shop are clean, very helpful and safe. Read more