I read a lot of these before our cruise and found many to be very helpful so I thought I should throw my 2 cents in to see if it can help you.  Our cruise was booked about a year ago as part of a 15 "quincianera" celebration for our goddaughter so we knew we had a lot planned for us, but we were determined to still make it a great family vacation.  Our family of four consists of 2 40 year olds, a 12 year old girl, and an 8 year old boy so my comments are all made from their points of view.  We've cruised on Disney and NCL with the kids and on Carnival for our honeymoon (before kids); this was our first on RCI.I'll start out with the ship, the Liberty is BIG, you can read all the specs all over the place.  We were really worried about the size of the ship, too many people, too many lines, too many times.  What we found was a pleasant surprise in part due to our research.  We avoided the big crowds by getting off the ship at later times, without missing our excursions, and by eating late breakfasts or light breakfast at the coffee shop.  We got to the terminal just before 11am so check in and boarding was very quick, we were on the ship in about an hour, about 15 minutes after boarding was announced.  One of our friends got there later and said it was very crowded.  We hung out on the top deck, made some spa appointments, and walked around (no crowds).  The cabin was a little bigger than NCL's, smaller than Disney's, but well appointed for the 4 of us.  The sofa bed was bigger than we expected, although the kids still missed the bunk beds (no fights for the top bunk).  The balcony was nice, especially since our friend's were next door so we opened the divider door for an extra large balcony that made the entire cabin seem bigger.  The bathroom was not bad for a cruise ship, although the shower leaked all over the rest of the bathroom forcing us to always use extra towels on the floor.

The public areas of the ship were incredible.  The Promenade is a great place to walk, eat, shop, and just hang.  The only time the Promenade seemed crowed was during the "street" parties, but with a great atmosphere and different themes.  The Flowrider is awesome (says the 40yr. old-and the 12yr old too).  We did the 8 person semi-private lesson so we had a lot of time to learn to ride the "waves".  The other times of the day were very crowded we heard of 45 minute waits just to ride for 1 minute.  Due the lesson for $60, or if you have just 5 people you can have it for an hour for $300.  The mini-golf was fun also.  We didn't do the rock climbing but it looked much higher than I expected.  The theater had a couple of good shows, our favorite was the "ABBA" concert with a tribute band that even looked like the real ABBA.  The Casino was big of course, and conveniently located in between the theater and other places so you found yourself walking through it a lot...there went another $20 (we're not big gamblers).  The ice skating rink and show were great, both bigger productions than we expected.  A "ticket" system for the ice show meant that there were no crowds during your show and everyone had a seat.  That seemed to be the case everywhere, well spread out events for various interests which meant no one area seemed overcrowded.  The only time you saw the crowds were by the pool during the days at sea.  We avoided those crowds also thanks to having our own pool at home and knowing that we can just put our shoes down in a corner and let the kids run around the nice H2O Zone (missing the slides that other cruise lines have).   The spa was pretty nice, my wife and I got a couples massage/float treatment on the last day of the cruise to help us heal our bumps and bruises (WHY NOT adventures can be painful).  The only complaint about the spa is the STRESS-causing product sales pitches you get at the end of your nice treatment (even Disney did this).

The food was OK in both the dining room and the buffet.  The service at the main dining room was good, not great.  Our assistant waiter remembered that our son had milk with his meal but it took him 3 times to remember that the rest of us like a lot of diet coke so we had to wait for refills.  That reminds me of the "soda plan", I would suggest 2 soda plans and 2 water plans for a family of four.  The water is bottled, they actually bring you 8, 12, or 24 bottles of Evian water to your cabin.  It took an extra day to get the water so we had to negotiate with our cabin attendant to not charge us for the water we consumed the first night. Read more