We chose this cruise because we were travelling to Europe and thought it best with 2x children to do a cruise rather than Eurail with our limited time. Lots of people recommended Royal Caribbean as the ship to cruise with if you have children. However, I found that since we were out of the US and European school holiday times, there wasn't much catering done for the children, in that no-one in their age group were at the Kids' Clubs and so the kids were left to their own devices to entertain themselves.

I found the ship itself to be a bit old and tired; I was more than happy to get away from the smell of damp, wet, mouldy carpet because of the constant leaks that seemed to occur. (Not very reassuring when you're at sea to have a leaky ship!)

I was really discouraged to find that the itinerary ports of call (Rome, Pisa, Florence) were actually 1.5 to 3 hours away from where the ship docked, and if you travelled with the RC bus, they were charging us US$200 (minimum) for our family, just to get to these destinations (this didn't include a Tour - just transport). Read more