Just came back from our September 4, 2011 sailing from Puerto Rico to the Southern Caribbean (St. Thomas, St. Kitts, Aruba and Curacao). We got married on September 1, 2011 and since we love cruising we figured hey, let's go to puerto rico for a few days and then take a cruise around the caribbean. I really wanted to go to Aruba so this itinerary was perfect. Hubby agreed and off we went. Upon approaching the ship, my husband immediately noticed that the ship seemed rather small compared to cruises we have gone on before. I wanted to try a much smaller ship so I expected the ship size. We checked in pretty quickly and was off to the room and then to eat lunch. We were suprised that the room seemed small, but the balcony was adequate. We liked that the balcony was covered and we knew that we would spend a lot of time on the balcony. Our room was located in the forward part of the ship so we always had to walk past the swimming pools on the 11th deck to go to the Windjammer. We noticed that both the indoor and outdoor pool seemed nice but did not have a lot of people. But we thought that perhaps this was because it was still early and everyone didnt arrive as yet. The food in the windjammer was good. There were alot of options and everything we tried, we liked.

Overall, we didnt prefer this cruise. On every cruise, I look forward to the shoes in the theater. There was a show every night and we only saw about 3 because they were horrible. So low budget, the siging was below average and it just wasent what we were used to or expected. The shows on Carnival and Princess are pretty good. Everytime we went to a show, we sat there, glanced back at each other and wondered why people actually clapped for the performance. By day 2 or 3 we noticed that we never saw the cruise director and didn't know who he or she was. Then, out of the blue, a british guy appears on the television station and then we realized oh, that is the cruise director. My husband loves competing in the pool games and basketball competitions. There were no real pool games except for "belly flop" and "sexiest man contest." They were ridiculous and often times, we combed through the cruise itineraries shaking our head by the lack of things to do. By day 5, the cruise director left early and then Mark, a short jamaican cruise director replaced him. Mark tried to engage the guests, but there was just something lacking. We found the staff on the cruise to be rather short and not always the most friendliest. We went to the movie theater once and found that the picture quality was horrible and they must of shown the Harry Potter movie ten times. We are a couple who loves taking formal pictures. We look foward to it and spend tons of money buying the pictures. We were not motivated to take any pictures, and most nights, after our 6pm dinner, we retired.

We enjoyed each port. We didnt go through the cruise line and we always negotiated tours with the locals. By day 5, we wanted a change and couldnt wait to disembark. We have heard lots of good things about the Oasis and Allure so we will give Royal Caribbean one more shot, but we are treading softly.