This was our first cruise on Royal. We’ve never cruised on RCL before but we got an excellent deal and the timing was right. Overall we enjoyed ourselves and thought it was a good value for what we paid. If you haven’t read my stuff, I like to separate my reviews into ‘the good’ ‘the bad’ and ‘the ugly,’ so here goes:

‘The good’ – The food and main dining service were by far the best part of this cruise. The MDR had excellent prime rib two out of four nights. The regular menu was also very good with plenty of variety. The servers learned our names the first night and followed us throughout the cruise. We did one upcharge restaurant- Itzumi on day 2. Very good and very entertaining. I felt the chef over did it on the garlic and oil but the food was tasty and well prepared. Wind jammer buffet was also good with plenty of variety. This was our first post-pandemic cruise and we were not used to having the servers get our food. We were told there were only 1100 passengers on board so ½ of the wind jammer was closed. You could still get seating on both sides but every other table was left unoccupied for social distancing so despite the fact that the ship was only about 1/3 capacity it was still hard to find a table at peak times.

The cruise director and staff were a lot of fun. We participated in several trivia events and also a selfie scavenger hunt on our sea day. We enjoyed the ice show in Studio B but did not go to any other main theater shows. The lounge acts were all good although I felt they were all a bit loud, so much so that they were hard to enjoy. Read more