My family and I embarked on this ship on August 17th, 2019 for a 6 night Canada/New England cruise. This was our 5th cruise overall, but our 2nd with Royal. Our first cruise with Royal was back in 2005 on the Voyager of the Seas for our honeymoon. Since then, we have tried a couple of other cruise lines, and we must say it was fantastic to return to Royal this time around and find out for ourselves that we still enjoyed the Royal experience as much as the other lines we have tried in the past few years. The service was impeccable, beginning with our room steward, as well as with the main dining room staff. We are a family of 4, my husband and I and our 2 children sailed with us, ages 9 and 11. Our stateroom was #1690, which was an aft balcony. We spent much of our time here, in between busy mornings either out on an excursion on a port day, or participating in onboard activities. The balcony was spacious, and the previous reviews I had read about soot from smokestacks leaving residue on the aft balcony did not bother us one bit. Mid way through the cruise on a port day the crew actually notified us they would be cleaning the balcony, of which they did. The sail away views from each port were breathtaking on our balcony and made the experience in having booked this stateroom worth it. Based on reviews we had read about complaints that the main dining room quality of food had gone down, my husband and I disagree. We have sailed 2 other lines in the past 5-7 years and we feel that all the lines are moving towards the same changes, but we do not feel quality of food has gone down in the main dining rooms. In fact, we were quite satisfied with both quality of food, amount of food choices, and quality of service in the complimentary dining venues onboard this ship. Ports of call included Bar Harbor, St. John New Brunswick and Halifax, Nova Scotia. We did 2 shore excursions through the cruise line on this sailing and neither disappointed. We did the Acadia National Park and Lobster Bake in Bar Harbor. This was a fantastic taste of the area being it was our first time here. A beautiful port. We did the hop on/hop off pink bus tour in St. John, as our time in port was a bit shorter than what we had hoped for. We left port by 3pm and so had to be onboard for 2:30 that day. Regardless, the hop on and hop off bus gave us a nice taste of the major highlights of the area. We did end up visiting the reversing rapids and paid extra to experience the SkyWalk which was neat.Overall, we were satisfied with this entire cruise, the ports, and the service. Again, despite certain signs of the ship showing its age, and despite the fact this ship is a bit smaller than the megaships we have sailed in the last 5 years, we felt we enjoyed this cruise very much. Even our kids agreed.