Our previous cruises were all on Carnival ships, so the elegance and 'dignity' of the Riviera was a very pleasant change, as was the smaller ship with fewer guests. We noticed no loss of pleasant attendance by a reduced number of crew (from the larger ships). The four specialty dining venues at no extra charge were lovely, although we did not know to make reservations BEFORE the cruise and therefore could not visit them all.

The bed and bedding were luxurious and the veranda we had divine. I spent a lot of time trying to master the WiFi and a laptop computer, and so the width of the room became narrowed between me in the chair and the coffee table and couch. Not a real problem, just an irritation as I spent much longer trying to use the internet than should have been needed. Chalk that one up to user error.

Even though I had told our charge card company that we would be travelling, I was unable to log into my account to look at transactions made during the trip. This was very frustrating, as we thought we had been cheated by one merchant and could not find out. The company wanted us to call them because of possibly fraudulent login attempts (mine), but we had no phone. Read more