A short summary: It was a good cruise overall, but I did not feel it lived up to the standards of past Royal Caribbean cruises. As an older ship, it felt they hand waved a lot of issues and just shrugged. For first time cruisers, I would recommend a newer ship.

This was my fourth Royal Caribbean cruise. We were traveling with a group of family for this cruise. I like the line because I feel they have a level of standards above other cruise lines in the same class. The cruise itself was mostly smooth and enjoyable. It was nice to relax and have fun. This particular cruise has a lot of days in port. This was good for me because I prefer to stay on the ship often and feel a little more special (very few people on the ship while in port makes it feel like I have more freedom about the ship).

Embarkation was a smooth process, although there was a family all over the place on their getting ready for a quinceanera trying to carry on too much stuff and causing a backlog. This was not the ship's problem. We also got on board just as muster was being called. This was a problem. Our muster station was complete chaos and we had our carry-on luggage with us still. It seemed that the process for checking in people at muster was broken, so they were doing it manually. Read more