I have travelled on Holland America many times as well as Princess. I have never tried RCL. My husband and I just turned 50, and we are "younger" 50, just to give you an idea of what things might appeal to us. We did an Eastern and Western back-to-back. 15 days in all.

Ship: beautiful, spacious - I do like the other two lines mentioned better for accessing the outside areas. You have to go right up to the top decks on RCL, whereas the HAL & Princess have a promenade deck outside in the middle of the ship. Just for comparison's sake, the deck chairs on HAL are lovely, teak with thick cushions, RCL were plastic type. Didn't hurt us though.

Check in: was excellent Staff overall was superb. The dining room food was great at dinner. They served the exact same food in the dining room for breakfast as in the Windjammer Cafe. The Windjammer was good, but we found for lunch and breakfast things could use more variety. We also found the desserts (we don't care about them personally,...but lots of people do)..in the Windjammer were not really good, but on HAL they were outstanding. HAL also has homemade ice cream served with a full topping bar for free, and RCL charges for this. They do have a soft-serve for free. Entertainment was excellent, and the art-auctioneer was the best I've seen yet. Read more