I have cruised with husband on honeymoon, with family, and with our kids. This time it was with 9 girlfriends for a while lot of fun.

I will start with the dining. Freestyle was very disappointing. The first night we went to the Indigo dining room and service was slow and not as friendly as on other cruise lines. Also, the food quality was just okay. The second night we tried Summer Palace dining room and that was terrible. We had to wait 40 mins for a table when the hostess found us as our pager was not working. When we were seated, the dining room was only about 1/3 full. The service was very slow. We missed the 9:30 show because it took so long to get our meals. We were very disappointed. On other cruises, by second night in the dining room waiters etc knew us by name and were having fun with us. We did not get this on the Pearl in Indigo or Summer Palace.

Third night we had Cagney's steak house booked and it was great. The staff was very attentive, food was amazing. Too bad we had to pay extra to get the service we have had in the dining rooms of other cruise lines. We later tried the italian and japanese steakhouse and they too were great. Food tasted so much better and service was wonderful. We were disappointed we had to pay to get that level of dining. A lot of our group said they would nopt try the freestyle dining again. Read more