This was my husband's and my 17th cruise since 1992, and our fourth on a Royal Caribbean ship. We love cruises -- in the first 25 years of our marriage we traveled all over the world, and had plenty of adventure and drama and cultural experiences/immersion. When we started cruising, we found a different world - the chance to get around without care about logistics, largely prepaid, comfortable, even luxurious, wonderful food, great service, and the choices to do a lot of active things or nothing at all.

I recommend Royal Caribbean for first time cruisers as its always a good generic experience. But it hadn't seemed to excel in anything much, so we had tried other cruise lines. When we took a RC cruise, Brilliance of the Seas, in 2013 mainfly because it went out of Tampa (we lived in the Tampa Bay area and were moving, so we thought we really should take a ship out of the most convenient port!), we were pleasantly surprised at how much we enjoyed the ship and cruise.

I should say here that our all-time favorite cruises have been the destination ones - Alaska, New England-Canada, and Europe. The Caribbean cruises are for relaxation, r&r, being on the sea, sunshine! Read more