This was my 6th cruise (3 with NCL, 2 with Princess, 1 with Viking), and my first with Royal. Our trip was a get-together of 4 friends, and 2 of us brought our wives. One of the wives refused to sail on anything but Royal, so that is how we chose this sailing.

Embarkation: everything was fast until we got checked in. Then we had to sit until our group number was called. Anyone that had sailed with Royal before was allowed to board immediately, so we were a little irritated that we got penalized for not sailing with them previously.

On-board activities: there is a ton to do on this ship because it is so large. Rarely did we wait longer than 15 minutes for things such as mini-golf, rock climbing, or the flowrider. There was almost no live music anywhere on the ship, so we spent a lot of time sitting around waiting for shows or trivia to start. There's a ton of trivia, which entertained one or two people in our group, the rest of us were bored with it. The pools are heated to a very comfortable temperature so we spent a lot of time swimming. The night time entertainment consisted of an ice show, 2 different comedians, a couple broadway-style sing/dance shows, and a magic show. The ice show repeated 4 times, and although the performers are very talented, it got boring very quickly. The broadway shows were good and the performers had great voices. The comedians were bad, one did only New Jersey and italian jokes, the other talked about how complicated computers are and how he misses tuning black and white TVs. The magic show was absolutely terrible, the tricks were poorly done and tacky, and most of the show was playing videos or strobe lights. It really was the worst show I've seen. There was also the standard cruise ship game shows, and karaoke, but only on a couple of nights and it was too short. Read more