This was our 7th Cruise, 1st time with Royal Caribbean, previously with MSC and Carnival. From what I'd read and heard about Royal Caribbean was expecting it to be something quite special with lots going on and although this is one of their medium sized boats it appeared to have plenty of stuff on it to keep the kids occupied. The boat was in good order and appeared to have been well maintained, nothing rattled or shook in the room. Generally everything regards service, quality of food, helpfulness of staff was good, if a little laid back compared to other lines we have been on.

Entertainment on the other hand was dreadful - maybe we'd been spoilt on Carnival which on both occasions were brand new entertainment theatres with state of the art sound lighting and video systems - in comparison the Royal Caribbean offering seemed dated and lack-lustre. The acts whilst professional and good at their particular skill were just put on stage by the cruise director and left to it - no top and tail with any of the in-house production team, and seemed to be no thought to come up with anything uplifting or varied - a guy playing a violin one night, a girl playing piano another, a string quartet, a women doing songs from what has to be one of the most depressing musicals (Tell me on a Sunday) I've ever had the misfortune to sit through, a woman's various failed relationships set to music - hardly the stuff of a fun holiday. The in-house shows were little better, dancers fine, performers drowned out by the band. Of all the shows in the theatre only the Queen tribute could be described as a good evening, assuming you liked the music of Queen! The cruise directors shows weren't much better on the promenade and were basically little more that the kind of thing you'd see bluecoats doing 20 years ago at Pontins - perhaps they would have been a bit better if the large annoying assistant cruise director hadn't felt the need to spend the half the time yelling into a microphone trying to get the crowd to join in (lets face it if you have to do that then you're doing it wrong - crowd should do it spontaneously not have to be pushed into doing it!). It was all rather Chavvy and not really what I want out of a £5000 cruise. I did query with the cruise director fairly early on if things were likely to improve, he listened, wasn't really able to offer anything to counter my comments other than he felt everyone else was enjoying it, not quite the feedback I got from my straw poll of various people I spoke to!. On the plus side Ice show was excellent, cruise directors staff were very pleasant when doing the quizzes or other activities and their time keeping was absolutely spot on everything started bang on time.

Would I do Royal Caribbean again - not if Carnival had any boats in Europe - if not them maybe, I liked everything about the boat except the entertainment - perhaps if they get enough negative feedback they might sort that part of things out or maybe if they check out what the competition is offering.