Family Get-together on Grandeur OTS 14AUG11

We flew from the UK 2 days prior to sailing and stayed at the Melia Palas Atennae Hotel, on the harbour front... lovely.

On sail day, we had a leisurely breakfast, saw the ship docked on the quayside - a fair distance from us. We swam in the hotel pool, then showered and got a taxi to the Port to embark on Grandeur OTS.

As a surprise for our daughter and family, our son had booked a single cabin to join us on the cruise, he travelled independently and checked in an hour before we did... a very smooth transition, plenty of staff at the Port of Palma, queueing was very efficient and we were on the ship in next to no time.

We found out daughter and families stateroom very easily and sat in there showing our grandson where everything was, knock on the door - there stood our son, so all the family had a group hug.... Holiday to begin.

Our cabin was on deck 3, with an Ocean View... same size cabin as our daughters, just with a window. Our son's cabin was also on deck 7 along with the daughters... we were all quite spread out, but not a problem.

After reading the negative views on Cruise Critic, we had an open mind.... A holiday is what you make it... we had a fantastic time, the food was good, the staff were lovely, only upset we had was that the onboard trip to Barcelona Neu Camp Stadium and Familia Sagrada was cancelled due to it being a bank holiday in Spain - they said they were closed... which we found out during the trip was not so... other passengers had taken a taxi and it was open - one very upset son in law and grandson... who wanted to do that trip!!!

We have cruised RCCI quite a few times - but never in the school holidays - I did find that 500 children were far to many for this ship! The Hot tubs were always full of children - the rule 'Children under 16 should be accompanied by an adult'was not adhered to!! Also on sea days the pool was absolutely full..

Ports of call, we had been to all these ports before, so just did our own thing.

Overall - we had a fantastic family holiday and wouldn't hesitate to do it all again.