July 4-18, 2015: It pains me to write this review. We love cruising (this is our 6th and we draw comparisons with Norwegian, Celebrity and Holland America) and I was counting down each of the 180 days from time of booking. I was so so looking forward to experiencing RCL and what might have been this most wonderful new ship. The good: only one thing was excellent and that was the fortune of having a junior spa suite - this was due to mistakes made by RCL prior to booking that resulted in an upgrade. Had we not had the larger space in a great location, I would say that the cruise would have been a total disaster.

The complaints: 1). The ship is not designed to handle the 4600 passengers! I have never seen such chaos and SO little room for passengers in the pool and other public areas. The pool deck chairs are so tightly packed that you can not move your deck chair a single centimeter. You are literally on top of your neighbors while trying to enjoy the outdoors. Even getting a chair is an enormous challenge. I mused to my wife that getting chairs "reserved" on the morning of a sea day was worse than getting up early to go to work. It ultimately required getting up at 6:00 a.m. to beeline to the pool to place towels or other personal effects so that we could be guaranteed some outdoor time near the pool. This was also at your own peril as fellow passengers would invariably argue about "reserving" and the understaffed pool people would have no solutions. There is not much in the way of poolside entertainment - though I do not see how they could manage poolside entertainment given the limited pool space and the number of passengers.

2). Pool deck service: virtually non-existent save for the occasional person coming around offering drinks. Pool staff (as with most other staff) are simply NOT happy. So very few had cheerful attitudes and so very few made us feel like we were on holiday. Read more