We booked this cruise because of the recent upgrades on it and the number of ship-board activities for our children. The ship is nicely finished and does have quite a few things to do on board for people of all ages.

However, the food and dining service is simply awful. Dinners in the main hall would take 2 hours for very mediocre food and it was hard to even get a glass of wine. The buffet/"windjammer cafe" was very low quality food like make-your-own hot dogs and mashed potatoes with a few other options thrown in, but had generally been sitting under heat lamps for too long and did not taste good. "Formal" nights in the dining room that are typically very nice evenings did not enforce any dress code and people showed up wearing old t-shirts, etc. and were still served. And, the food on those nights was no different from any other - nor was there any attempt to nicely decorate the dining room. Tables were very crowded together and service was poor. Many different occasions when we went to use one of the dining facilities it was closed for a private function for several hours forcing you to go elsewhere. Food at the premium restaurant was decent, but I have never paid for premium dining on any cruise I've taken before and most of them had as good or better quality than this ship's premium dining in the main hall.

As for the shipboard amenities, the stateroom was functional though small. Stateroom service was excellent. The ice skating rink was open for only a few hours on one morning of the 7-night cruise. Often the rock climbing was closed and the pools were kept quite cold for a cool cruise like alaska. The kids club staff was excellent, though the kids club hours are broken up into 3 hour segments unless you want to pay $7/child/hour for the 2 hour gaps between those segments. This made it very hard to enjoy the adult entertainment on the ship. The rest of the ship was extremely crowded and it could take 20 minutes to just get an elevator from time to time. Read more