This is my second cruise with Royal Caribbean, and other recent cruises have been with Celebrity. I've also sailed about 8 with Princess many years ago, one with Special Expeditions, and one on the QE2 back in '92. My husband and I booked this cruise in November (2 months in advance). We were intrigued by the ports that we had never been to: Roatan, Hondurus (a small island off the coast unaffected by political turmoil); Colon, Panama; Puerto Limon, Costa Rica, and Grand Cayman. Almost every port was interspersed with an at-sea day, which made for a nice variation in schedule from day to day.

This particular cruise was apparently rife with confusion from its initial scheduling. When first scheduled, its itinerary included a partial transit of the Panama Canal. Then, in October, the cruise disappeared off Royal Caribbean's schedule altogether, and some passengers were rebooked on other cruises. Then the cruise reappeared, but with a significant change in itinerary - no partial canal transit, and the addition of Roatan, Hondurus, a port that this ship has never sailed to before and, (we're told), is not scheduled to ever stop at again. (Interesting turn of events, as the Panama Canal transit costs up to $100,000 per ship, so this appears to be a significant savings for RCL.)

Embarkation: Not the quickest we've ever experienced. (Celebrity was quicker and included snacks and drinks, which Royal Caribbean did not have.) We waited in line for about 20-30 minutes, catching the rush at midday. Then we boarded and walked around exploring the ship, which is lovely. The crew maintains it beautifully - there is not a scuff or a stain to be seen (except on the plastic cups in Windjammer, but that's a different story). The artwork is quite modern, with lots of fluorescent lighting and bright colors, so this was not our favorite. (Liked Celebrity's better... yes, this is going to be a theme.) Food: This was our least favorite aspect of the cruise. Like many others have said, RCL's food has gone down the tubes gradually over time (although the food on this cruise was quite similar to an RCL we took two years ago). We actually hypothesized after the first few days that the chefs are paid to purposely make the food mediocre so that passengers wouldn't eat too much and RCL would save money! After a few days, they finally started serving a really good dish here and there - some excellent lamb and an intense chocolate ganache dessert in the dining room (Yum! best thing i had all week). But then they had a spectacular looking midnight buffet in which they served prepackaged cakes (made obvious by the overly sweet, chemically icing)!! In general, desserts were sub-mediocre. There were so many of which we took one bite and then discarded - it seemed all cakes had been infused with air to take up more space and then tasted like styrofoam. very few decent chocolate desserts (exc. ganache, above). Read more