We chose Freedom because it had more to offer our grandchildren. We were pretty happy with RCCL and their excellent service. The boat was actually nicer than we expected, but a lot of extra walking due to the larger size. It is actually great exercise for big eaters, but if you have a bad back, feet or other walking issues...it can be a problem which is true of any large ship. We read all the negative comments on the food, but found it to be very good in the dining room. We enjoyed the food in Windjammer, but it was so spread out you had to work for your food and with a full ship with a record number of kids...the lines were pretty long. The entire staff on that ship was exceptional! They all worked hard to make everyone happy. The guest services desk was very knowledgeable of every aspect on the ship and quick to resolve issues...even to allow me to phone the USA to discuss an issue with our booking company. We saw two musicals and they were great. The ice skating show was the best show of any kind that we had seen on our six cruises over the years. They had so many activities it was exhausting!

What we didn't enjoy was allowing so many people on the ship. Where as most cabins have two occupants, the cabins on our cruise probably had an average of 4-6 per cabin. We have been on Spring Breaks before, but the ship was seriously over crowded. Parents would save deck chairs for the entire family and the kids never used them. On the nine days at sea we were only able to get chairs on the deck one time, and ice cream one time! The ice cream machines had lines of 20+ kids at all times with a long wait. I am certain that this is not normal, but I wonder if we would have had enough life boats for all.

We were also discouraged when we arrived to check in the first day that they put the gold members in the long lines with the new to RCCL cruisers. This goes against their promise to never wait in a long line again after your first cruise with them. Half of our excursions were cancelled by RCCL. They offered others, but we had a couple of folks with limited mobility. Our biggest complaint was with the online RCCL agents who were totally ignorant of the excursions they were trying to sell. They desperately need better training! We ended up going on a couple of private ones and RCCL's Land and Sea for San Juan (which we found to be great on the Sea and extremely boring on the land tour. Read more