Originally we had planned a cruise in Europe, however due to work schedules, we found it necessary to push up our already paid for cruise and decided to cruise for my birthday. We had a balcony cabin on the 11th deck. Typically, we don't book a balcony or even a window, as I prefer to sleep in total dark and we spend too much time blocking out the light from the windows. Besides, my own personal opinion is that with either a cruise cabin or a hotel, I am using the cabin/room to sleep and bathe. I'm not hanging out in it all day and night. I do like to have a roomy cabin and our was just fine in that department. The embarkation process was quick and it allowed us to make our way down to Customer Service immediately to purchase the passes we wanted. A few hours after boarding, the announcement came that we could go to our cabins. Almost all of our bags had arrived and shortly after our case of water was delivered. I'm disappointed to hear that they are going to stop letting people bring cases of water onboard in the near future. I'm surely not going to pay $25 for a 6 pack of bottled water from them.

Our cabin steward, Michael, was not the best that we've ever had. We always tip $50 at the beginning of our cruise and then give another $50 the last day. We did not give him the 2nd $50. We asked him twice to empty the liquor out of the refrigerator 2 days in a row and he didn't empty it. We had to go to customer service on Deck 6 to let them know a circuit breaker had blown and at the same time asked to have the fridge emptied and finally it was. For the most part he did a good job in cleaning up, replacing towels when we wanted them replaced. We've had previous cabin stewards who were totally amazing, I cannot say Michael was.

We had reserved Teppanyaki, Cagney's (twice), LaCucina and the Illusionarium for specialty dining. Of all, Teppanyaki was the best. Illusionarium was a bit of a disappointment, we found the magic act to be average the the food they served was below par. We booked floor seating for twice the price of banquet seating, except the banquets were just a few feet behind us! Definitely not worth double the price. Cagney's on my birthday was great and we enjoyed Cagney's again on the last night of our cruise with new friends we had met. Penny and Ellie from England and Daryl and Kathy from Kentucky. In fact, we made many new friends on this ship in our own private club. It was wonderful. Jeffrey, our bartender went above and beyond to make sure everyone had everything they needed and Ricky was outstanding. Read more