We chose this cruise for the itinerary and price (first time cruisers!). The ship has just been redone in early 2019 and all the furnishings are new, clean, and comfortable. No problems at all with our cabin (other than the weird smoke thing which I mentioned below.)

Dining: We mostly ate in the Oceanview Cafe (buffet) for breakfast and lunch and the Metropolitan (main dining room) for dinner. We didn't feel the need to pay extra for the specialty restaurants. Overall the food was very good. Lots of variety at both the buffet and the main dining room. Great service at both. We are foodies and so we found that there were a few dishes we had that were misses (for some reason most of the cakes we tried were extremely dry; also they didn't have a good selection of salad dressings) and a few things that were obviously cost-cutting (an appetizer of "scallops" was a single scallop sliced into four thin discs). But overall most things we ate were delicious and interesting and I loved the variety available. There is truly something to serve every palate on board!

Entertainment and activities: We skipped most of the daytime activities as we were in port most days. We did notice that a lot of the ones that appealed most to us (like yoga class) had a fee attached which was disappointing when we already paid so much for the cruise. We went to the show in the theater every night which we really enjoyed. The singers and dancers put on three shows, a 70s themed one, a random "good vs evil" song and dance revue with modern songs, and a Broadway revue. The actual singers and dancers were very talented but the shows that were written for them were sometimes not great. By far the most successful show was the Broadway revue which was just singing and dancing with no lame storyline. There was also a show with Russian acrobats which was incredible and got the only standing ovation of the week. Also two comedians and an a capella group which were all very enjoyable. Overall we loved the night entertainment. We also went to some of the live music on board which was generally very good but sometimes a bit too much "soft jazz" for us. Read more