Background: We traveled the day after Christmas as a family: parents, myself and two brothers (26, 22, 20), my sister (28) and her husband. We had two balcony cabins and one inside cabin. We have all cruised before on a variety of lines (Carnival, NCL), but this was all of our first time on RCL.

Embarkation: Very quick and easy. We never encountered the lines that other people have complained of, which make me think it's hit or miss. We basically walked onto the ship and I would say the whole check in process took about 20 minutes.

DEcor: The ship is gorgeous and by far the nicest ship that any of us had been on. No gaudy dEcor (or at least it was quite minimal). The pool decks were nice, and we spent the majority of our poolside time in the adult's only area. There were no problems with kids being there and the hot tubs were fantastic! Quite large and the overhanging feature was pretty cool and made for a nice view. Plenty of seats, which seemed to eliminate the feeling of being over-crowded on sea days. Only problem with the pool decks was that there were no water stations except for in the Windjammer, which closed from about 4 to 6pm. So if you were sitting at the pool during those times and felt like a drink you either needed to buy something at the bar or go to the 5th floor, which was a little annoying. Read more