Chose this cruise because friends have given us flack for years for cruising Carnival all the time (friends aren't cruisers); we thought we'd try the "upgrade". If we could do it again....we would NOT...we've never been so glad for a vacation to end (and we all got the flu last year in Cancun!) RCI was a huge disappointment.

Cabin review follows below. The ship was due maintenance for sure. Worn carpets throughout. The kids splash area (1/3 of the entire pool deck) was out of commission and roped off the last two sea days with no explanation. The spill over into the other pools left the pool area uninhabitable. Towel service needs to be revamped. I stood in line fifteen minutes to return ratty, threadbare towels that they make a point to tell me on TV that they will charge me $25 for if I don't make sure that I followed the return procedures....ONE towel exchange location on this huge ship for everyone. No towel exchange done in your stateroom like Carnival...you know the fluffy soft towels that start in your stateroom at the start of your cruise....with your soft bathrobe.....BTW RCI doesn't give you a bathrobe. (They will collect the one you brought from home with the towels and apologize for losing it....they'll replace it with "loaner" that has holes in it and threads coming out everywhere...but you can't keep it even if you wanted to.)

So many things bothered me about this cruise. The food in the Windjammer was horrible. Breakfast was the only highlight. Pans of orange vomit disguised as curry or some other cuisine filled most of the buffet for lunch and dinner. Gross!!! Meat textures that were so unnatural that RCi needs to tone down the use of MSG as meat tenderizer. Jade dining strip was a joke. Main dining room options were not great. Usually we have difficulty deciding between two or three good options....this cruise, we found ourselves deciding between the lesser of two evils. The push to spend money in the specialty dining rooms is huge...give cruisers nasty food long enough, they will spend money for one good meal....ours was in Johnny Rockets....great service, fantastic onion rings, and okay hamburgers...for $33 for four of us. We ate there three times. For us, we couldn't rationalize $160 for Chops or $120 for Italian or Mexican....who does that without being driven by bad food choices that we already paid for....desperate people that's who! Read more