The Serenade of the Seas is a beautiful ship. It is clean and well maintained. We were excited about our Scandinavian Cruise. We had spent two weeks on a river cruise through Russia (St. Petersburg to Moscow) but were still excited to visit St. Petersburg again. Our transfer from the airport to the pier was booked through RC and I called several times to confirm the arrangements. Even though I had talked directly to RC, our names were not on the list. Fortunately, I had printed off our confirmation receipt. Once the greeter showed us the bus, that was the end of any instructions. When we got to the port, no one seemed to know what to do and our driver spoke little English to help us. Were you to take your luggage or go get in the embarkment line and RC would take your luggage off. The embarkment process was as smooth as it can be when over 2,000 people are getting on board in an extremely short amount of time. Our cabin, 7154, was spacious considering it was a cruise ship and our balcony was lovely, although a lounge chair would have been a nice addition to the two straight chairs, especially for those who need to use a balcony at night when the sea is not being kind to their stomach. It would have also been nice if there was a clock somewhere in the room that could be seen at night from the bed. Even though we had a large balcony and the sun set at 10:30 PM and came up at 3:30 AM, the curtains were excellent at making the room dark. Watch out! Housekeeping will move your things around. The first day we had an Easter egg hunt to find things. Three adults stayed in the cabin and there was plenty of room, although we did store one suitcase on the balcony once we emptied it. The room entertainment system could use a little help. Instead of using the same DVD for those preprogrammed channels every day, have 7 different DVDs for each day. I know all the lines in certain episodes of 2 Broke Girls, Big Bang Theory, Mike and Molly, Mom and Person of Interest. The same ones were shown EVERY day at least 3 times a day. One in our party had the airline lose their luggage and fortunately, Jasper was more than helpful. Thank you for the emergency kit to help while we waited. Fortunately, we got the luggage about a half hour before we left Helsinki. Our dinner dining experience was wonderful. Prince and Katia took excellent care of us. Prince had our dinner beverages at our table within a minute of us being seated at the table and our glasses were NEVER empty! Prince was ALWAYS smiling and always showed a genuine interest in making sure we were enjoying our dinner. Prince also waited on us in the Windjammer at lunch. We enjoyed our conversations with him. Katia always gave us her personal recommendation and was able to answer any questions we had. She also was knowledgeable about the port for the next day and gave us tips on how to navigate the area. We had the 6:00 main dining experience. It was unfortunate that there were special activities at 6:30 that we missed....Russian Bazaar, vodka informational talk with tasting, etc. If you want to take part in the evening on board activities, take the later dining time or plan to eat in the Windjammer. We were not appreciative of crew always trying to sell us a special dinner as we were leaving the dining room every day. Breakfast times in the main dining room need to be studied further. The times need to adjusted according to the excursion start times. Also, in the main dinign room for breakfast, there are two lines, buffet and ala cart. The people have selected which is their preference by the line they are in. There is no need to ask them when they get to the front of the line. The buffet line was always shorter and when people quickly got to the front of that line, they were asked and told the hostess ala cart. This did not make happy passengers who waited more than 15 minutes to get seated because they got in the correct line. Lunch times in the Windjammer also should be looked at. Since the Windjammer is the only option for a real lunch and many of the excusions were during this time, the Windjammer should extend its hours for lunch. As stated above, we were not able to enjoy many of the onboard entertainment due to the fact we had the earlier dinner time. We were able to view them the next day on the TV in our cabin. Those that we saw looked like they were well done. Wish we could have participated in person. The shore excusions were very well done and the guides were extremely knowledgeable. Somewhere it should be reiterated that tipping these guides should be done and the rates. The shore excursion staff on board should be more helpful and kinder in the way they treat passengers. We felt like we were cattle being herded to buses. We were grateful we did not purchase a tour of Stockholm on our embarkment day. Our original travel plans had us arriving in Stockholm at 7:30 AM which would have given us a good amount of the day to explore. There were problems with our first flight out of IAD. We were rebooked on another flight and did not get to Stockholm until 12:05 PM. If it appears that you will have a lot of time in Stockholm, there is a Hop On, Hop Off bus that comes to the pier and you can purchase tickets the day of your embarkment. We did go to guest services a couple times but we quickly learned and was told that since we did not book directly thoough Royal Caribbean, they could not help us. We should call our travel agent back in the US for help. In our decades of traveling, I had NEVER heard that from a tour company or cruise line while we were using their service. We are experienced cruisers. We have done large ocean liners and small river cuises. This is the first cruise ship where when we came in contact with a crew member, we were not greeted with a friendly hello. Many crew members would not even look at you and continue talking to each other. We usually had to say hello first which I found unusual. The captain was very entertaining with his public announcements. When you get your disembarkment information with luggage tags, carefully look to make sure you are given luggage tags that coincide with your airline flight times and if you paid RC for a transfer, make sure you have that tag as well. Once again, we were given independent tags instead of RC transfer tags. Another trip to "Guest Services" which is in an extremely noisy part of the ship and it can be difficult to talk and hear to the staff. Fortunately, we had printed out receipt and presented this to the staff member. She was not happy that we were not on the list and acted like it was our fault. As I stated before, I contacted RC directly to make these trransfer arrangements and talked to Louis and Alex. On the day of our disembarkment, this is organized chaos, at best. Everyone gathers in a lounge and then all they do is say, go to deck 2, find you luggage and get on your bus. Over 100 people, with carry on luggage and personal bags try to travel down 4 flights of stairs at the same time. Once you get to deck 2, retrieve you checked luggage and then try to get someone to tell you which bus to get on. Absolute craziness. If we ever do a Royal Caribbean Cruise again, we will think long and hard. It was a lovely cruise and the itinerary was the closest to what we wanted. The ship was beautiful and well maintained. A friendlier and more helpful crew plus feeling like ALL passengers are important no matter how you booked the cruise, I would have given this cruise a 5 rating.