First cruise with Royal Carribean, we usually cruise with Celebrity but decided to do the Maiden Cruise because it is a bit special being on a brand new ship.

Stayed overnight in Southampton in the Ibis which has a restaurant and 3 more Restaurants within 100 metres, a TGI Friday, A Frankie & Bennie's and a McDonalds. The reason I mention this is either eat at the Ibis (or whichever of the 4 hotels in the immediate vicinity you are in) do not go anywhere near the Frankie and Bennie's which is awful or the TGI Fridays which is the worst restaurant I have ever had the misfortune to eat in, great staff - inedible rubbish from the kitchen. If you must do fast food, stick to the McDonalds, it's cheaper and an order of magnitude better than the other two which should give you some idea how bad they are.

Anyway I digress - boarding the Anthem was a breeze, from taxi pickup to eating lunch in Two70 was about 30 minutes. We did have a fast track package and my other half had done all the documentation online so we were wafted past all the chaos of the boarding scrum straight onto the ship. Stateroom was a Junior Suite (which is about a double size normal outside balcony cabin) was very nicely presented and had loads of room, other than that standard cruise stateroom built in Germany as usual. Read more