My husband and I are 42 and 40. We did a Windjammer sailboat cruise for our honeymoon 20 years ago that we absolutely loved. It was a 200-foot tallship with a passenger list of about 60 and a crew of about 30 or so. No pool on board, just a gorgeous teak deck and a huge ship's wheel. Bunkbeds in our deluxe stateroom (a surprise but funny now). Charming ports of call in the southern Caribbean, a different port every day. It was a fantastic trip.We've not done any kind of cruise since then and in general are not big crowd people, big sun worshippers or big formal/fancy people. So I was not overly excited to go on this luxury megaship (Freedom of the Seas), billed as an excellent choice for family cruising with incredible service; however, this was a gift trip from the in laws to celebrate their big anniversary, so...off we went. Our group was 5 adults (grandma and grandpa, my bachelor brother in law, my husband and me) and my husband's and my three children ages 8, 13 and 15. I have to say, the issues that frustrated me were really adult issues. My kids were absolutely clueless to most of the hassles and loved the cruise 100%. However, for me as a parent/adult traveler new to luxury cruising, these were the things I found really frustrating:0. The travel agent had booked us into one night before the cruise at the Royale Caribe in Orlando. The facility was nice enough; however, it was packed with 3,000 middle school kids who were there for some sort of convention. As such, the pool and restaurants were overrun. Not a relaxing start to what was supposed to be a relaxing vacation!1. The ship is huge, gi-normous really (the largest cruise ship on the seas until RC's Oasis debuts in December). I spent the first two days feeling like all I did was walk the ship end to end and walk up and down stairs trying to find our room or various activities. The elevators took forever and were often packed because the ship was sold out, so there were 4,000 guests on board. By the end of the week, the confusion lessened, but it is still a huge ship and my mother in law's bad knee was pretty aggravated by the end of the week from all the stairs/walking just to get to meals/activities and to our rooms.2. Royal Caribbean puts out a ton of information in the daily Compass. However, when I needed to ask a staff member a question about a program or service, I discovered that 50% of the time the staff person (usually Guest Relations or a bar/wait staff person) either didn't know the answer and couldn't/wouldn't get me the information OR they gave me misinformation just to get rid of me. This often resulted in me hiking all over the ship to wherever the staff person had directed me only to discover that I'd been giving wrong information. This grew increasingly frustrating as the week wore on. I was particularly ticked off when, on Saturday, I went to the Guest Relations desk to ask for a feedback form (I'd been given one at my request earlier in the week but now needed more) and was told repeatedly by the person working the desk that the best thing to do was just fill out the survey that would be appearing in my stateroom that night. She refused repeatedly to give me a form. The survey is scantron/fill in the dots with 3 small lines for comments. Not what I needed. I did fill out that survey but noted I would be posting a review on CruiseCritic.com.3. The day that we went to CocoCay, the Compass had listed the on-island lunch time as 11:30-1:00. However, we did not bring our Compass with us, and the signage that greeted us when we got off the tender indicated lunch was from 12-2 p.m. We were enjoying ourselves snorkeling and planning on a late lunch. When we got over to where they'd been serving at 1:40, we discovered there were no plates, no plasticware, no drinks and only a small amount of cold, leftover food. The staff seemed very irritated that a handful of people were still trying to get lunch and eventually came out to the line and started throwing cold hot dogs on people's plates while saying, "Lunch is over. Lunch is over." We had one plate for our family, so my youngest got two cold hot dogs, no buns. There was nothing for my vegetarian daughter or the rest of our family or other folks in line. Not a good way to end our time there. Plus the line to return to the ship on the tender was huge, and it was a full hour before the last tender was scheduled to depart. All in all, an unpleasant way to end the day on a very nice, private island with great snorkeling.4. The day we were supposed to dock in St. Thomas, they had indicated an early disembarking due to early Excursions (we were on one of the early ones). We figured we'd get ahead of things and go down a little early since the line on Monday had been long. We took the elevator down to 1 and when the doors opened this staff person stepped forward and shoved her hand in our faces and said, "We're not ready. You can't get off. The line starts on the second floor." So we went back up to 2 and got off to discover a mass of people piled up in the hallway by the stairs, which had been roped off. We stood in the elevator lobby area. As more and more people were rerouted up the elevator to the second floor, that area became tightly packed, as did the main hallway. There were no staff people present to give information or control the crowd or make sure no one got shoved down the stairs. I really felt there were major safety issues with all those (hot, irritated) people crammed in that tiny space with no information on the delay or when we'd be allowed to leave.We were kept waiting there for at least 30 minutes. When we proceeded down the stairs, the same woman staff person who had stopped us on 1 held up her hand as I stepped off the bottom step, barring my daughter from following me (she was behind me) and yelled out, "Okay, I have to stop the line here." I immediately said, "These are my kids. I need to stay with my kids." She took issue with that and made a huge production of saying, "Hey, calm down, ma'am. I'm not trying to break up any families. I just need to stop the line. I wasn't going to separate you. Don't get so upset!" She kept going on and on in a very loud voice making me feel stupid for trying to be a responsible parent. I felt she was really rude and out of line.5. The Swim with the Dolphin Excursion offered by Royal Caribbean in Tortola was the most bizarre, creepy experience I have ever had. Before booking, I had checked out the company on their web site, and my mother in law had swum with the dolphins in Cozumel with the same company. She said this experience was totally different. Basically, the water we had to get in to "swim" with the dolphins was so murky and brackish you couldn't see your hand 6" under the water. The dolphin appeared healthy enough; however, everyone was so creeped out by the water and the sliminess of the metal platform we had to stand on that our enjoyment was much diminished. You should see our group's faces in the 5-minute, $35 DVD we bought. Sad! People look horrified.Then while we were eating lunch (which was burgers, one giant bag of Doritos that everyone was sticking their hands in to self-serve and a foil-covered Corningware dish of who knows what that some worker carried in while we were lining up...I chose not to eat and wouldn't let my kids have the Doritos), all of these black Hummers with tinted windows kept driving into the complex. Guys in 3 piece suits and shades kept getting out of the Hummers (like 5 or 6) and taking big banker boxes of files with them into a room at the back of the complex. Health inspectors? Auditors? Lawyers? All of the above?? Unsettling to say the least.Then on the way back, we had to stop in St. John to go through Customs/Immigration. Everything was going smoothly, but then we were kept waiting when we thought everyone was back on board. Eventually a ferry worker got on the loudspeaker and said that a guest (the ferry was 90 Freedom of the Seas guests) had an issue with her green card and Customs was trying to resolve it and that we couldn't leave until it was settled. After another 30 minutes of waiting, they finally allowed the woman to reboard. By now it was 5:55 and the ship was scheduled to leave at 6:15. All I could think was, "Thank goodness my husband told me to put my American Express in my passport because I'm going to have to buy a hotel room somewhere tonight."  We got back to the dock about 6:20. The ship had waited I guess because there were 90 of us and it was their stupid Excursion. What a joke! Shame on Royal Caribbean. They should have caught the issue with the woman's green card when we checked in on Sunday.6. The constant hawking of drinks was really annoying, especially by the end of the week. And, we'd been led to believe that you could get free lemonade/ice tea/water at the bars, as well as in the restaurants, but that wasn't true. So we spent a lot more money in drinks than we'd anticipated.7. On the plus side, the Adventure Ocean kids program staff were awesome. My 8 year old absolutely loved the activities and meeting/playing with other kids his age. My older two didn't use any of the teen programs but did like the climbing wall and the shows, as well as being able to hang out in the bar with us at night and listen to music.8. My husband's and my stateroom attendant (Carolyn) was wonderful, very sweet and attentive. Our kids (in an adjoining room) had a different guy. We never saw him, and his service was the bare minimum it seemed. Their room also smelled awful. We finally discovered it was the end corner of the duvet and top sheet on my daughter's bed. I don't know what got spilled on it (from a previous occupant, not my daughter), but it made the room reek! I left a note asking for the guy to change out the sheets/duvet, which he did and then the room smelled better. Still, do they not wash/change the linens in between guests?9. I would also suggest bringing post it notes so you can leave notes for family members if you're traveling with a big group. Beepers would be a great service to add to Adventure Ocean since once you drop off your kid, they have no way of contacting you if there are any problems.10. I'd read several reviews with bad comments about the food. I thought the main dining room staff was wonderful (only had one waiter who was a little pushy...we did My Time Dining and our waiters/tables changed nightly) and the food was excellent with normal size portions. The buffet dining room food was okay. I wasn't overly impressed, but it certainly wasn't bad. We also really enjoyed Sorrento's which had pizza and Italian deli salad options (all free, didn't know that until Wednesday), as well as Cafe Promenade (free coffee/cookies/pastries). Had a great dinner at Johnny Rockets in lieu of formal night (we're not formal people). Didn't mind the $5/person service charge.11. The shows were very good. Once Upon a Time was incredible!! Richard Spacey (left after our trip, will be Cruise Director on Oasis) was very funny, and I liked the way they incorporated videos and other media into the shows. Ice show was okay. Could have skipped it. Live music throughout the various venues was great!Overall, though, I couldn't wait to get off the ship. Apparently luxury cruising is not my thing. I thought maybe given RC's reputation I would be pleasantly convinced otherwise, but their poor customer service on board really stressed me out and made me not want to go again, regardless of the positives.