We are a family of 5 and cruised with my husbands parents, his sisters family as well as my girlfriend. We flew from Buffalo to Orlando a few days before via Southwest and drove to Fort Lauder dale the day of the cruise. We dropped our rental car at a Budget location next to the port as they provided free shuttle service. We will not do this again as we had to wait an hour for that free shuttle. Next time we will drop at the airport and just pay for a taxi. We arrived at Port Everglades at 1pm which is much later than we usually do and there was a long line outside as we had expected due to other reviews on Terminal 29. Fortunately the line moved quickly and we were on board by 2pm.

We booked a Royal Family Suite which we have never had as its too expensive but we shared it with my sister n law and it was about the same price as us getting 2 inside rooms for our family of 5. Great deal!. The balcony is the best part and for the first time I finally ordered room service on my balcony because I could order eggs Benedict. We enjoyed the concierge each night but did not get to take full advantage of it as we were travelling with kids. We took them a few times but mostly left them in the room with my eldest. Another perk that worked for us is the private seating in Portofinos for breakfast and lunch. With a group of 14 we did not have to worry about finding seats together plus all the cutlery and drinks were there for you as well as an omelet station. We also took advantage of special seating at the pool and the shows. Our room steward was pleasant but our room was never cleaned until after 2pm which we did not like.

We have cruised with Carnival and Disney and we have done every class in the RCI fleet. We love RCI but we did not love the demographics of this ship for a family cruise. I think passengers looking to get away from the bigger family centred cruises are choosing the voyager class. There were a lot of seniors which is fine with me as most of my cruises are like that but a lot of these seniors were not happy to be in the presence of my children. I thought my children were well behaved and supervised but I received many glares everywhere we went from fellow passengers. We also met some very nice seniors as well and they had nice things to say to my kids however I was not feeling the love on this cruise and in the future I will save our family cruises for the bigger ships and save this class for our adults only cruise. The elevators were very busy on this cruise and became annoying very quickly. Read more