We decided to try our first cruise to celebrate a close friend's daughter turning 21. There were 8 of us--2 sets of parents and 4 young adult children. All 8 of us were disappointed with our cruise on Royal Caribbean's Majesty of the Seas. The dissatisfaction started with information available (or the lack thereof) prior to the cruise. We called RC several times in advance to get basic information--and in most cases, came away with questions still unanswered. On the last call, we were totally shocked to learn that the customer service representative attempting to answer our questions had never even gone on a cruise!

The cruise itself was just as bad. First, upon arriving on the ship, rather than have customer service reps available to point you in the right direction, they instead bombarded us with "sales" people--trying to sell us everything from drink packages to internet to private parties for New Year's Eve. The pre-cruise "pitch" that the price of our cruise was "all-inclusive" was a joke. You couldn't even have coffee or a soft drink with your meal without buying expensive drink packages.

Food on the cruise was mediocre at best. The buffet menu was like a school cafeteria--food sitting out quite a while--and the quality and choices poor. The main dining room wasn't much better. "Premium" menu items that you had to pay for should have been standard. Food took a long time or in some cases never came (5 of our party of 8 left one night after waiting 15 minutes for a souffle dessert that never came). The taste, quality and choice of food (hardly any fish was available and when it was, it was bland such as "cod" fish) was poor. Read more