Before I start this review I want to state that I am a pretty regular cruiser, so my review comes from experience. I read several reviews on AOS prior to leaving for my trip. I tried to keep an open mind, but I was a bit apprehensive after reading some of the issues. Let me say this was by far the best cruise I have ever taken. I been on Carnival (hopefully never again), Princess (before it was owned by Carnival) and several RCI. I am RCI loyalist.

We arrived at the port (from the airport) around 2:45PM, we were on the ship within 15 minutes...the quickest embarkation I have ever experienced. We stopped by our cabin and dropped off our carry on bags and freshened up, as best we could until our bags arrived. We walked around the ship to acclimate ourselves the layout. Then we headed for the pool deck where we easily found some deck chairs and settled in for a bit. We had early seating, so we stopped back by our room and checked to see if our bags had arrived, not yet. We sat on the balcony for a bit before heading down to the dining room (Vivaldi on deck 3). When we finally made to dinner, we met our wonderful table guest, four from PR and two from NC. All of us immediately hit it off which made dinner every night quite pleasant. We had the best table in the room and the best waiters (including our Head waiter). I'm not big on Caribbean food as a rule, but I love fried sweet plantains, which I was having a hard time finding on the ship. So my significant other (a Caribbean man), made a special request (unbeknownst to me)for fried plantains at dinner. Not only did the chef prepare us the plantains but he prepared a whole dinner around them, jerk chicken, plantains and rice. He made several plates so we were able to share with other table guest. This was repeated the next night as well with another special dinner, what a fabulous treat. This made the trip and it was only part of some of the special things that happened on the cruise. BTW, I am a picky eater, and the food was actually better than I've ever had on a cruise ship, I usually set my expectations low so as not to be disappointed. We had reservations at Portofino's, but ended up canceling them because we enjoyed our table mates and the food so much.

The cabin the perfect size for us, I was a bit worried, because we had done a JS before and I thought the D2 cabin may feel cramped, but not at all, we had plenty of storage space and the luggage fit nicely under the bed. I liked having a door on the shower as opposed to the curtain, it gives the feeling of a bigger shower. Our room steward was always right on top of things and kept our room in tip top shape. The only complaint I had was the mattress weren't as comfortable as I've experienced on other RCI ships. I usually don't sit on the couches in the strange places but the couch in our room looked to quite clean, so I sat. :) Read more