First the good part: the ship was VERY clean and well taken care of. To my knowledge, no one got the dreaded virus. The service was excellent, except for the bars. We had the best room steward ever---Leo in 6071. The room was small but had lots of storage space, and the bathroom was roomy in comparison. You can even turn around in the shower! Hot water was always available and great water pressure. The balcony was lovely and very private, especially compared to those on Princess. Entertainment was the usual mediocre stuff. The casino did not have any of the cutesy, fun slots. The ship's decor was rather bland---nothing very remarkable.

I have two main concerns: the food and the problems with shore excursions. I will certainly admit that I am a picky eater--I like simple things. Therefore, almost everything on the dinner menu was way too fancy. And I don't eat chicken, turkey, seafood, duck, etc. That pretty much left onion soup and ice cream. One night I thought I was going to get potato soup but then read where it contained frog legs. YUCK!!!! On most ships, if you don't want to get dressed up or if you do not like what is served in the dining room, you can go to the buffet upstairs. Not so here. There is no buffet after about three or so. All that is available at dinner time is pizza (horrible crust), pasta, and hot-dogs and hamburgers until 7. There was no midnight buffet or any real late night dining. However, the room service is good and I survived on their delicious tuna sandwiches. The lunch buffet was the same every day and consisted mainly of ethnic foods. Breakfast buffet was the typical fare.

The shore excursions were a real problem. I booked 5 of them online before the cruise and the tickets were in the stateroom when we arrived. In Curacao my friend was sick and we needed to cancel the excursion. The only way we could get the money back was to go to the ship's doctor. She forced herself to get up and go downstairs. It cost around $130 just to see the doc and the shore excursions weren't that much so we ended up losing that money. The next port was Aruba. The excursion was for 12:45. We got to the pier early and waited and waited. Around one o'clock we found someone to ask where the tour was and were informed that the time had been changed to 9 that AM and that we were supposed to have been notified. We did get our money back from that one but we totally missed getting to see Aruba. Since we had had missed two of our excursions and had 6 hours from debarkation to the plane leaving, we decided to book a San Juan excursion. JESSICA at the shore excursions desk booked us and since we had signed up for the valet luggage program (a really good thing) I asked how this worked. She told us just to follow the directions given to the valet people. We were in the cabin waiting for time to go to our assigned spot when the phone rang. It was the tour bus and they were waiting for us. We told them what Jessica and told us. The guy told us they would hold the bus, they had pulled our luggage, they would be looking for us on the pier and hurry. We did as instructed (although I kept telling my friend that couldn't be right--we had to take our own luggage through customs---but we did as they said. No one was looking for us, but we finally found the tour bus. Before I got on the bus, I asked them where our luggage was. They said that we had to get that ourselves before we came through customs. So, we explained again what had happened. They had no idea who had called us. By then, we had to go back to Customs---we insisted that Jessica accompany us and explain to the custom's official what had happened as we had already turned our forms in---and just told the tour to leave without us because they had already waited at least a half hour extra. We are waiting to see if that money was refunded. NEVER have I had as much trouble with shore excursions. In fact, I have never had any trouble with them. Read more