My fiancE and I were looking to get away from the rain and cold of Seattle for the week of Valentines (and President's day). We ended up choosing the Serenade of the Seas based on the fact that it went to the greatest number of ports in 7 days amongst its peers. That said, we very much enjoyed the ports, but were let down with the activities and entertainment the ship had to offer.

Cruise Activities and Entertainment: The cruise director, Dennis, was obnoxious and had a poor sense of humor (often relying on racial jokes with the air of a game show presenter). If you do not have Dennis coordinating your cruise, the following problems likely won't be an issue for you. However, on our cruise, the biggest complaint was a lack of activities offered. Sure, we went to five ports in six days of cruising. But when we got back to the ship at around 4:30 every day, we would head to dinner at 6, catch the evening show at 9, and then that would be it. The few "dance parties" the cruise hosted did not interest us. There was a "disco night," a "dancing under the stars night," and a "farewell dance." Each dance had few people show up and when you heard the music they were playing, you could understand why. Disco is self-explanatory, and I suppose would have been more fun if there were more than a couple dozen people. The dancing under the stars night was simply a series of line dances (i.e. "Macarena," "Electric Slide," etc), which are reminiscent of junior high school dances which I would rather not live through again. And the dance on the last night had all of 5 people show up in the first 45 minutes.

The entertainment during the cruise was less than excitable. I will admit that we did appear to miss the one night of entertainment that was actually worthy - some famous comedian. However, after the first two nights with the cruise director making his racial slurs and the "Royal Caribbean Singers and Dancers" butchering some of my favorite musical songs, we were unmotivated to attend that third (and apparently reputable) night of comedy. We did, however, see the two remaining comedians, one of which worked magic tricks into his act and was a decent performer, and the other who had his show at 11:45 (for adults only) and performed to a nearly empty and silent audience (silent due to lack of any humor whatsoever). Another performer was "El Gaucho" whose entire act consisted of twirling ropes and making egocentric cracks at the audience (normally that they weren't applauding enough for his ability to crack a rope on the ground). Needless to say, the entertainment left us more than somewhat disgruntled. The one redeeming show that we sat through was, ironically, the one that the audience put on - or rather, three couples from the audience. A show called "Love and Marriage" where a couple of 65 years, a couple of 20 something years, and a newlywed couple were selected to answer questions about their spouse the way they think the other would answer. We suffered through the cruise director (hosting the show) to hear hilarious answers and cheer on the couples who guessed correctly. That was our favorite activity throughout the cruise. Read more