Mr. B. and I have cruised 24 times, including on two defunct lines (Premier and Renaissance), once on Carnival and several times each on HAL, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity. We have gone once on Azamara and once on Oceania, both of which did not meet our high expectations. Oceania was fabulous in many details but somebody evidently decided that our sailing should serve gourmet nursing home food, so we were extremely disappointed in that respect. The food just was not seasoned! On Azamara, the food was very good but the hotel desk was so uncaring that we actually felt unwanted, on that ship.

This time, our first Crystal and our first Trans-Atlantic, we had even higher expectations than for Azamara and Oceania (for good reason).

Crystal exceeded our expectations. The big things included a dinner menu that catered to our palate, perfectly, and an enrichment program that was beyond belief. Our nine-night cruise was scheduled to have five at-sea days but ended up with six when we weren't able to go into St. John's, Newfoundland. This meant five at-sea days in a row. What did we do? On most of those days, we attended ALL FOUR of the speakers' presentations. And btw, there were actually eight different presenters on board. And if we missed a presentation (e.g., once we took a dance class), we could watch it any time throughout the day, on the t.v. I watched the missed one, at 5 pm on the treadmill! Very nice exercise room -- including interesting assortment of exercise equipment outside aft on decks 7, 8 and 9 for a bit of a different approach to fitness. Read more