We're just back from the lovely Royal Caribbean "Serenade of the Seas", March 24-April 2, 2011 Exotic Southern Caribbean Cruise, fully chartered by Atlantis Events. As an adults-only charter, there were several differences to the standard Royal Caribbean experience. Among these were the suspension of the normal fixed dinner seating times and tables, going fully with open seating, showing up whenever and with who you wanted to sit with, identical to the normal Norwegian "Freestyle" experience we've come to like. Table for two or share a table with new people to meet every night. Most of the entertainment was brought in by Atlantis, with just two of the standard ship's song & dance production shows offered. This was certainly designed to be a party cruise, with continuous poolside dance parties from sail-away to the extreme wee hours of the morning. (We were out cold by 1:00am, but know that it went on for hours after if we had wanted.)Absolutely every employee was friendly, welcoming and at our service. Impressive. And it was an honor in a way to be sailing with the world's first female major cruise ship captain, Captain Karin of Sweden. We really liked our (D2) deluxe balcony stateroom, finding it to be larger than others we've had in a similar class, with more storage, closet space, enough hangers for two (!!!!), cubbies and drawers than we could fill...and we unpack and move in completely. Typical small, single compartment bathroom and shower, but not bad. Good sized balcony. Plenty of room under the bed for our empty suitcases. Very comfortable bed and nice linens. A flat-panel TV was installed; an improvement over the old picture tube TV shown in stateroom pictures, giving a little more space for "treasures". There is a child-lock on the balcony door.Our steward, Erlinda, kept the room immaculate (doing what she could around our stuff, although we did keep it pretty tidy); never a hair left in the shower, crumbs or sand on the floor, or spots on the mirror. I pre-ordered room decorations for our Anniversary (25th), and found them up and as advertised when we arrived. On the deck plan, Room 9636 shows as being right opposite the aft stairway, and we were concerned about noise. However it turned out this was a crew/emergency stairway only, behind a door, and we never heard a sound. The disadvantage was needing to walk back up the long hall to the main stairs/elevators at The Hump (Centrum). That is something to consider if you have difficulty walking. The room is far enough aft that there are no tenders/life boats below the room, meaning you don't hear the dreadful noise at a tender port as we dealt with on the Norwegian "Pride of America". Being on a stateroom-only deck sandwiched between other stateroom-only decks, there was no noise to deal with from public areas. Highly recommended! There is no coffee maker in the room, but you can order from room service. They did have the option of bacon/eggs/sausage in addition to the cold cereals and fruit you usual find, although I found the scrambled eggs to be pretty awful...the only bad food I had on board. Regular coffee, iced tea and juice is available in the restaurants, but fresh-squeezed OJ and espresso drinks were subject to extra charge. There is a coffee bar (extra charge) in the Centrum open all day. We only had dinners in the MDR "Reflections", and the food was quite good, except for the desserts, which were uniformly too sweet and cloying. I did order the optional "Chops" Steakhouse Filet Mignon (with lobster tail on lobster night) from the MDR menu at an up-charge of $14.95. It was perfect, huge and a better deal than paying the $25.00 to actually have it in the Chops specialty restaurant. I don't know if it was unique to our charter or if it is a regular thing: there was a brunch buffet from 10-2 in the MDR on the two sea days. Quite a full selection. It was probably a combination of the Windjammer's breakfast and lunch offerings, timed to accommodate the all-night partiers' delayed seizing of the day.Serenade only has two extra-charge specialty restaurants, unlike most other ships we've been on, so we never felt pressured into them, and spending more money - it's there if you want it: steakhouse or Italian. The Windjammer Buffet had a huge variety of items for breakfast and lunch; we assume the same is for dinner, but we always went to the MDR. It's very nicely laid-out and had plenty of room to sit, plus the open-air area out back. No food line out back, however, as you find on the Norwegian ships.The "Centrum" atrium rises from Deck 4 all the way to the top of Deck 10, and the glass elevators are fun. Two of the ship's production show singers sang in the atrium one night, but only for 15 minutes; we wished they go on longer.The two production shows in the Tropical Theatre were ok...not spectacular. Two of the four singers didn't enunciate well enough to get most of the words (the dancers lip-synch, which seems to be standard at sea). One was Broadway and movies, with some interesting arrangements of familiar show tunes. The other was "Vibe-ology", which made no sense as a name, and wasn't my cuppa for the music.Embarkation was a breeze, as we enjoyed Old San Juan until well after the initial check-in rush. Bags were delivered to our room during the muster drill. Disembarkation was also a breeze, but then we were in the first group due to our early flight (10:50 from San Juan). We were off the ship at 7:40. We were befuddled by a lapse in attention by the staff as to the group we had been assigned to, since we filled out a form indicating the early flight at embarkation and again updated at the reception desk; we were given bag tags for the second to last group, so I had to go to the desk and swap them for the first. I think the least efficient thing we encountered was the muster drill. We had to go out to the rails and stand under what I guess was our assigned lifeboat, rather than meet in a lounge, club or theatre space as we've done on all other cruises. At those, they check your name off as you enter, but out on the deck on Serenade, they try to shout out a roll-call by room number once most people are assembled, but not all, so they keep repeating the numbers to improve on their responses. This took a long time, compared to the laughably brief (nowadays) demonstration of how to put on the life vest. IMHO, this drill would not improve your chances of survival in a disaster.There are more features available on the room TV than we knew about, but did book a shore excursion on it and checked our folio (The Bar Bill, etc.).This was our first cruise on Royal Caribbean, and we were favorably impressed. I think I'd avoid the monster ships, but Serenade was a good, comfortable size with lots of venues, and we'd be happy to go back to it or another in its class.