First the positive: The Equinox is a beautiful ship. This was our first Solstice class cruise and we were not disappointed in the ship. The crew for the most part is excellent. Our waiter, assistant, and wine steward were exceptional. The food was good. Our cabin was very nice. I was very pleased with the cleanliness of the public areas, especially the ladies' restrooms. Trivia with K was a lot of fun, the most we've had with any trivia host. K would make a great comedian! The lecturers were excellent, especially Dr. Diane, a psychologist. We also enjoyed the scientist's presentations.

Now for the biggest negative: If I could have rated an embarkation negative 1000, I would have. Problems began long before the cruise. I twice ordered the name tags online and had no response. My agent called twice and each time was told to tell me just to get them at the pier, no problem. I was unable to print them without printing many pages and my agent could not do this either. There should have been a separate button to print tags rather than including them in a 20+ document. The website ordering was totally non-functional. We took the hotel shuttle to the pier, arriving at 11:30 to find a massive traffic jam and long, long lines already formed. Getting the tags there cost about 100 places in line I'd estimate. Because of many ships in port that day, the Equinox was assigned to an older pier. This was known ahead of time. There were NO seats available for those who needed them. This was my first cruise post op without a sitting cane. I thought there would be no problem with that since I had no strenuous excursions planned. Wrong! We stood for THREE HOURS, reaching the room at 2:30. My foot which had been doing well went ballistic and hurt for over half the cruise, making me angry all over again every time it ached. There was also no provision for folks like the gentleman behind us who was diabetic and having problems as we stood way past normal lunch times. Our travel companions who had not sailed with X before got through the line at the same time as the four of us who were in the select/elite line. There were way too few employees checking passengers in, the least I've never seen with any line, any port.

Entertainment was mediocre at best. This was a big disappointment as we sailed twice with X last year and enjoyed the entertainment, especially the production shows. We learned last year that X had made a corporate decision to no longer use the UK production company that produced the great shows we enjoyed and to produce shows in house. Whoever made that decision and designed the replacement shows reminds me of the former JC Penney CEO who nearly took the company to ruin. Taking something that is a great asset and turning it into an irritant is not good practice. The individual performers, especially the acrobats, were quite talented. Only on the last night did I enjoy the singers' talents when they performed a song from Les Miserables. The other shows had music I did not care for and/or incomprehensible themes. The costuming was great and no doubt quite expensive. Read more