We have traveled on many cruises -- this was our 9th RCCL cruise and second one on a Freedom class ship. We traveled last year on the Liberty and noticed a big difference in the experience.

First the good things.... we had a wonderful room steward who worked hard the entire cruise to take care of our needs. We also thought the kids' programs were excellent this cruise and the cruise director was very entertaining. The shows were much better than usual (we went to two of them) and I loved all the Christmas extras (like having Santa hand out gifts to the kids and gifts for the table attendees at dinner on Christmas eve). All these were all wonderful memories. We also were impressed with the Captain's ability to avoid the rain and we were fortunate to have some sunshine in Belize (when originally we were supposed to have rain all day). The port days were a blast & we loved going to Christmas mass on the ship!

The biggest disappointment, however, was the food- RCCL's MDR food used to be fairly good. We noticed a decline in a cruise we took this past summer on the Monarch but we figured it was just a fluke. Unfortunately, the MDR food this cruise was even worse. We actually decided to eat one night in the Windjammer and two nights at the specialty restaurants because none of us (two adults and four kids) thought the food was half decent in the MDR. My husband and I have traveled on so many cruises and really are quite flexible with food but this was really unacceptable. One night I ordered chicken marsala - it was the worst meal of the trip and the chicken seemed like it was old and dry. Even my 16 year old who loves food was really disappointed. Looking at other reviews for the Independence in December 2009, we were not the only ones who thought the food was a problem. RCCL has a problem on this ship at least and needs to take care of it. Read more