There's a lot of good things about Anthem of the Seas, the ship is in great shape and the food is quite good. Best of all, all the staff we met are first rate and take great pride and care in your trip and making things nice for all. But as far as entertaining and making the trip interesting, this particular itinerary was actually quite poor. First off, the flow of the ship is very awkward. Most of your activities will be on the 3,4,5 level and on the 14,15 level, so if you are constantly shuttling up and down the ship. If you have any patience to wait for the elevators, then its no issue, if you are an impatient New Yorker like me, you will be doing a lot of stairs. Good exercise, but after a while it gets old. Secondly, the shows on this ship were terrible. After seeing 'The Gift' I thought I would never see such a complete mess of a show until the next day I saw 'Spectra' Cabaret, you will surely debate which is worse and it may be a running debate in your family for decades to come. "We will Rock You' was a good production and you will like it for sure if you like Queen music. It does run for 2 hours without a break and is about 30 minutes too long and most people walked out before the final act.

Now for the Sports/Activities. This is an issue if you have older, teen aged children who like sports. Unlike Harmony of the Seas which has a dedicated sports area that is nicely woven into the teen room, Anthem makes a complete mess of this by sharing its Seaplex for activities such as Bumper Cars and Roller Skating. There were several days where the bumper cars and skating occupied the Seaplex for 6 to 7 hours a day and teenage kids literally had nothing to do except wait for long periods of time for the 3 ping pong tables. It also meant that little kids and adults were in the teen area, which is obviously not something teens want. Its a great example of RC trying to make everyone happy and thereby making no one happy. There are so many kiddy pools and other areas to make the under 12 crowd happy, your 12-17 year old will not like this cruise. Both of mine did and they loved Harmony of the Seas. So very limited basketball, soccer and virtually no volleyball (one day for an hour). The Vitality Gym is very nice and they also offer pay for classes if you are interested in cycling and other classes. The jogging track is kind of silly unless you do it very early in the am. Its in the middle of the lounging area, so once everyone is up and deckside, you can forget about running as its just chaos.

Overall, Anthem is a nice ship and if you are with a big group and just want to hang out and eat and drink, this is a probably a good choice. If you are more of an active traveler who want to see things and have an active vacation with some competitive sports, its not a good choice at all. Read more