We were told that the Rhapsody of the Seas was overbooked as soon as we lined up at check-in. The 2 hour wait for customs and boarding was in snaking lines of people 200 metres long. We were travelling with 2 other families and there were 2 elderly people and 4 kids under 6 years old.

We were relieved to finally arrive at our cabin which was clean but dated. We found out that we were booked in permanently for the late dinner seating at a time when our younger kids would normally have been asleep. Unable to change the time, we tried to catch the nightly live show at the earlier session of 7pm rather than wait for the post dinner show at 10.45pm. We took our kids up to kids club but they would only open at 7pm at earliest. After the now usual lining up for 20 minutes, we consistently missed the first part of the live show and could never sit together with the other members of our family group as all the seats were taken by the time that we arrived.

Fortunately, the attentiveness and approachability of the main and assistant waiters at our tables was of the highest quality. The variety of our food varied from excellent (curries, duck) to mediocre (seafood)and often we would see the same or similar food being served at the buffet self-serve Windjammer cafe upstairs. Read more