I've been on a number of cruises from various cruise lines and keep returning to Royal Caribbean. Especially on a long cruise like this one, you need a ship with enough happening to keep you occupied on the at sea days. Although this ship is not one of the newer super ships the RCL operates it still has the Rock Wall, Mini-Golf, Workout Room, Basketball Court, Table Tennis, Shuffleboard, Pool tables, etc for people interested in more active days. They also had a nice selection in their library, multiple Trivia type quizzes, music from dawn to late night, educational programs and other activities for the armchair athletes.

Two of the best activities and interesting programs were presented by the Cruise Director. Our Cruise Director cam with a very impressive educational background and a deep interest in the sciences. The first program I attended with him was a Star Gazing event. It was held on the top deck and they cut the lights for us.We were in the southern Caribbean and had a prefect night to see the stars. sue to our position both the Northern Hemisphere constellations and some of the Southern were visible. He then did something I had never seen before. He was able to use a laser pointer on the sky to point out the stars and constellations. Due to the nature of the sea air, the pointer was plainly visible as he pointed out stars and outlined the constellations. By far the most impressive part was his ability to name every major star and the important galaxies during his 30 minute lecture which was none stop. He stared with Orion and its stars (by name) and then showed with the pointer which stars to align to reach the next one, on and on. Short of my college lectures I've never seen a person more knowledgeable on the sky. The second lecture he gave, again an original presentation which he had prepared, was on mathematics in nature. In particular the "Golden Ratio", the Fibonacci series, and Fractals. A fractal is a pattern that is composed of multiple smaller instances of the same pattern which in turn are made up of the same pattern. As he touched on the each of these topics he had examples that we see in every day life. He had half the attendees asking for a copy of the lecture. Although he had nothing to hand out, he did have a recording of the lecture that he had done previously and agree to create CDs for people which had requested one. Without a doubt these 2 presentations, for me, were the highlights of the "entertainment".

In general I was happy with the ship and cabin. Both were very clean. They enforced the use of hand sanitizer when entering the restaurants. My room steward would always stop anything he was doing if he saw me and walk down with me to my cabin, unlock my door and let me in, then go back to work. I never once interrupted him cleaning my room. He ask and learned my schedule so that he could get in to clean it in the morning and then to a touch-up and turn down in the evening. I requested to have some white shirts cleaned and they appeared "magically" in my closet when promised, spotless and pressed perfectly. At the end of the cruise I left him an additional gratuity over and above the standard. Read more