Royal Caribbean marketed this cruise as a family friendly vacation. We found it to be quite the contrary. We had planned on doing my family time dining. Upon registration at the kids club, we confirmed the time and location for pick up from the dining room. We brought the children to the designated spot at the designated time and found no one to be there on the first night. Neither the wait staff, the maître d', nor any crew members in the dining area seemed to have any idea at what we were talking about. We then proceeded to bring them directly to the kids club and found it to be closed. When we went to guest relations, we were told that the kids club would open at 8 PM. This is 15 minutes after the scheduled start time for the show. We were told we should complain to the staff at the kids club. We were very uncomfortable with the situation, as these are the people that would be caring for our children. We got to see 10 minutes of the show the first night due to scheduling conflicts with the kids club.

On the second night, the show ended at 10 PM, which was the exact time that the kids club closed. Again, poor planning, as we were to be charged one dollar per minute per child for every minute we were late picking them up. Therefore, we again missed the show. Our children were very much looking forward to the ice skating, as they have done this previously on the liberty of the seas. Unfortunately, there were a very limited number of skating sessions available, several of which took place during our dinner seating. We got closed out of the open skate sessions the first night they were available. Upon asking when the next sessions would be, we were told that it was in two days. When I asked what time we would need to be there sign up, in order to ensure a spot, I was told we would need to be there by 6:45 to get any spot at all. Being that we were seated at the 6 o'clock dining time, this fell right in the middle of our dinner. We had to tell our waiter to hurry through dinner and we left in the middle of our entrées in order to go wait on line for a spot for skating.

This is clearly not the first time Royal Caribbean has sailed this ship with this itinerary. It seems that scheduling should be down to a science by now. Unfortunately, however it all seemed very haphazard, disorganized and unaccommodating. To top it all off, at the show on the last night of the cruise, an announcement was made immediately prior to the show stating, "Parents, grandparents and guardians, please control your children's behavior!" This is a quite obnoxious and offensive way of asking for appropriate behavior in the theater. This was our second, and probably last time sailing on Royal Caribbean. Usually, our family sails on Disney cruise line. I can honestly say we have never experienced any issues like this on their ships. It was amazing to me, standing outside of the kids club on this ship, how many parents were saying that they would only sail Disney from now on. If Royal Caribbean is not interested in catering to families with children in the age group that need to be supervised, that is fine. Their cruises should not be advertised, however, as being family-friendly.