First the good:
The ship is huge and awesome. Felt like we were in a large hotel. Minimal sway on the “rough days”. Room a Central Park balcony was clean and had plenty of storage. Zero wind and nice music in the evening from the band playing in Central Park.
Some random things I really disliked in no particular order:
Upon unpacking, our cabin steward told us they no longer ...
We chose this cruise as we are Diamond Class on Royal Caribbean and so far they have never disappointed. We wanted to try this ship as the only RCI Southampton based and needed to sample before commiting to other sailings. For us this ship is too big and even though it was not a School break there were 500 children on board. We had a balcony but also a young family either side, when they were ...
Chose this ship as we loved Oasis and other RCL cruises. This one however was torturous with the amount of noise around the pool decks from the really loud amplified music to the blaring screeching voice on the microphone. Even in Central Park 5 decks down we could not escape the noise and even the brass band could not be heard over the voice commentary from deck 15. The promenade deck had ...
Cleaning of rooms only once a day.
You can choose either in the morning or in the evening.
Very poor desserts, both in the buffet and in the restaurant on the 3rd floor.
We tried breakfast at the restaurant on the 4th floor. We won't do it anymore.
There was very small selection of food.
Price of drinks includes service charge.
The quality of the food, not like in the past.
...
We booked this cruise in part to celebrate a 50th birthday and because the previous two we'd tried were cancelled due to COVID (more of that later).
This was the third cruise with RCCL, having sailed on Independence in 2016 and Explorer in 2019. We adored Indie, everything about that cruise was incredible, and couldn't fault a thing, Explorer was also great, albeit being a slightly older ship ...
We booked this cruise as we have wanted to visit a bit more of Spain plus Islands. This cruise only went in August. We were quite satisfied with the ship although looking out from our balcony in the middle deck 9 the lifeboats got in the way. We had what seemed to be a very noisy cabin. Metal banging and scaping that went on for hours from 11pm to 4 am every night we only got about two hours sleep ...
We sailed on Anthem from Southampton in July 2023 for 14 nights around the western Mediterranean - predominantly Spain but we did have two days in Lisbon (Portugal).
Embarkation in Southampton was pretty sleek and quick as it normally was and it as also nice not to have to go through the additional Covid requirements that we needed to do the last time we cruised as a family. First impressions ...
We chose this cruise because we have sailed with Royal Caribbean several times before and had taken a break and tried MSC and P & O. However, for various reasons we did not want to go back to them so we went back to Royal Caribbean.
We went for our Foster daughters 18th birthday. I have to say I was really looking forward to this as i (Mistakenly it turns out) The biggest ship we had been on ...
We have been loyal Royal Caribbean guests for many years, and this was our 3rd post pandemic cruise with them. We chose this itinerary and ship prior to deciding to change cruise lines, so went with it. The itinerary was very good - all the highlights of the Western Mediterranean coast, plus Rome, and most of our time was spent off the ship as opposed to the Caribbean itineraries. Symphony is ...
This was a 12-nighter to the Canaries, including Vigo Spain and Lisbon, Portugal. GREAT CRUISE overall!
Cabin - A standard balcony located on a hump end where the balcony had an angle, giving more space. Cabin Very clean. Great cabin steward, outwardly friendly, very efficient.
Dining - Massive improvements, bravo to RCL on this. Fantastic menu and meal choices from the last time we sailed ...