We have taken 9 cruises as a family. 6 with royal Caribbean 2 with princesses and this past cruise on the ncl bliss. It fell short of our expectations mainly because of the ship design and setup. The ship was clean, the quality of the food was good and the service was excellent, but if you are traveling with children you may not be happy with the bliss. Our young children always enjoyed the kids club on the royal Caribbean but on this ship after the first day they refused to go back. They said the counselors in the kids club were mean and not fun. So for the rest of the cruise they tried to enjoy the pool and the slides but they would get bored after 30 minutes, now the ship has go carts and laser tag but you have to pay $9.95 each time you use it and if you don’t reserve it in advance prior to your cruise you may never be able to get in. Our children did get to go in the laser tag but after a few times the cost adds up.

Another problem we had with the ship was the actual layout. In the main pool area there are two pools, one dedicated to adults only and one for children which was fine but you never find a lounge chair available unless you wake up at 5am to reserve the chair another problem was the hot tubs. They are located one level above the pool level on deck 17. There are 4 hot tubs (2 on each side) and they are so small that literally 4 adults fits in each and they of course were always full.

They have dedicated another portion of the ship to an adult only sun deck which has another hot tub, but also in this area lounge chairs were scarce and we could not be there because we were cruising with young children. Read more