We do a lot of cruising. We cruised 7 times this past year and usually love it. We are not picky. We usually eat in the buffets on board, so you know that we can't be that picky. We have cruised many times on Royal Caribbean (not as good as it was several years ago), Norwegian and Carnival. The ship was 90% international travelers, which did not bother us. Matter of fact we became good friends with some German couples that we meet on board.

What bothered us the most that there is no place to eat on this ship after 6 pm unless you want to pay. From 2:30 until 5:30 or 6 pm you may get some salad, terrible pizza and some lunch meat sandwiches, but that is it. If you don't want to eat in the dining room then you starve until the next morning. Dinner takes 2 hours. The rolls must be leftover from breakfast because you could use them as baseballs. We found in the morning they are very good. It is the same menu every day in the buffet for breakfast. At least they did have an omelet station. Cold cereal is not in boxes, but dumped in a plastic bin. I can only imagine how stale the cereal is by the end of the cruise. Be aware that the difference between a premium balcony and a classic balcony on the website is that you can receive a full breakfast in your cabin for free each morning. Since we did not want a full breakfast, only coffee, we did not upgrade. Little did we know that that meant you couldn't even get coffee in your room unless you paid $7 per person. There is no place on the ship to get coffee BEFORE the buffet opens in the morning. You have to wait until they officially open the coffee pots each morning to get any. At dinner they had been charging $7 per bottle to get water at dinner. They said that so many Americans had complained on previous cruises that they provided all Americans, and Canadians, with the dinner water package. It was marked "US water" on our cards. So nice of them. That meant that you could get water by the glass, no ice, when you could get someone to give it to you. Trying to find a seat in the buffet was nearly impossible. Often we asked an officer why there was no seating to be told that there was. Our reply was, "Find us a seat then", which they couldn't. It seems that many people would sit there and drink their wine with lunch and never leave. Also, many tables for 6-8, but few for 2-4, which meant that there were many seats not being utilized properly.

Everything done on the ship was done in 5-6 languages. The boat drill was held at 10:15 at night because the ship leaves at 11 pm. This is one of the few ships that still makes you put on a life vest and stand in lines on the deck. The drill took forever because it had to be done in each of the 6 languages. Port days were a mess. There was never an announcement of where to go to get off the ship. Sometimes you would go down the midship elevators to be told when there to the forward elevators. Would have been nice to have had some information. Read more