We had cruised six prior times with Royal Caribbean; however more than 20 years ago. All our cruises were in the Caribbean and this was our first trip to Alaska. We chose RCCL because of our enjoyment on the prior Caribbean cruises.

Since it has been so long the booking process has changed dramatically from personal service via telephone to on-line booking, which I found very impersonal. I booked our cruise well in advance to insure we might have a better chance at finding the stateroom we wanted. Following my initial foray into the RCCL website and the initial booking process including the deposit, I found almost no follow up from RCCL. I had to search and search on the website to find information on dining, optional activities on board, more information on the ship. We received nothing from RCCL saying welcome aboard and here is information to help you know more about your upcoming cruise.

We arrived in Seward and the boarding process should have been a breeze as we were there in plenty of time; however, all RCCL computers were down and we waited in line with about 400 other early arrivals for the computers to get back on line. After about 40 minutes of just standing around with little information from RCCL (we finally found out about the computer problem by one of us wandering around asking questions), the boarding went fairly smoothly. Read more