I've been on several cruises, including the Allure of the Seas and twice on the Liberty of the Seas and I always find myself looking forward to the days in port but I looked forward to being on the ship every day during this cruise. Maybe its because after being on its sister ship twice, I was able to navigate my way around-because this ship is HUGE.
My husband and I had an Oceanview Stateroom on Deck 2 and my family was staying on Deck 7. I thought staying on Deck 2 would be a problem because of its close proximity to the nightclub on board, but it was pretty quiet, never have known there are a club right above us. However, it was noisy early in the morning -you can hear the grinding as the shop docks and on days when the ship was tendered -the tender station was right outside our window and people could see us. Even though staterooms are known to be kind of small, it was really more than enough room. Royal caribbean is smart about having little nooks behind the mirror and in the bathroom and there were sufficient shelves inside the closet for all my clothes.
The promenade on Deck 5 is fabulous -lots of little shops, but we especially loved Vintages, the wine bar. We did tastings 3 or 4 nights and especially liked the dessert wine flight which was $25 for 4 wines, accompanied by cheeses, apricots, strawberries and dark chocolate. Virgilo, who worked at Vintages was very educated about wines and one of my favorite tips from him was to have a bite of their french blue cheese prior to a sip of wine to enhance the sweetness of the wine. Loved hanging out here and fortunately, it was not too crowded.