Thoughts.com

A great cruise and a fine ship. Don’t think anyone will be disappointed with the itinerary, ship, food, or service. For us the northern part of the cruise offered spectacular never before seen scenery.

No problems with noise or vibration on the ship from us, although we did have breakfast with a family that has an inside cabin that said they had a consistent noise that keep them up all night. The first few days of the cruise we did feel some vibration in the dining room second floor but it was not too bad, it then went complete away for the remaining 5 days.

This was my first time cruising with Royal Caribbean and so I thought some might find a comparison between Royal Caribbean and Carnival useful.

Dining. The dining room and meals are on par at both cruise lines. Service is excellent and food is about the same. Our waiters and head waiter where excellent and we always enjoyed the entire meal every night. I do recommend you buy the wine package as this saves you quite a bit of money and believe me you want to have some wine with the great meals they serve. For some reason they don’t allow our to buy the package except before the first dinner. This is a little inconvenient because it’s one more thing you have to do when you first board the ship. The buffet food while close is a notch better on Royal Caribbean.

Ship activates, thing to do shows are all very close to the same thing. On this cruise I would give the entertainment an edge to carnival as this shows while varied and all ok to good just not on par with Carnival ships. The scenery more than made up for this shows.

Now the only bad thing. If you are not a smoker be prepared to inhale 2nd hand smoke and not let it bother your vacation. Royal Caribbean is much more smoker friendly then Carnival. Carnival while they allow smoking has fewer designated areas that are more out of the way then Royal Caribbean. The Rhapsody allows smoking on one of the two sides of the entire ship on every outside deck including the pool area where children are present. They also allow smoking in the main lounge/bar area in the back of the ship. Many of the activates take place inside of the main lounge/bar area and so you have to be willing to inhale smoke or not participate in the activities that are held in this area. With ½ of the entire outside decks being allocated to smokers you end up having to mingle with smoker outside as the ship is not big enough to get the entire non smoking guests on one side and still see all of the views.

We had two bad experiences along these lines on the cruise. We had to leave a scheduled evening activity function one night that took place in the back of the ship as we were driven out by a cloud of smoke, choking and eyes watering.

The other bad experience was a dinner one night when it was very cold outside, a lot of smokers gathered just outside the dining room on the outside deck to smoke. Every time the door outside door opened and closed a cloud of 2nd hand smoke to inhale would come into the dining room. This was only problem on one night as it was cold and the door was purposely opened and closed a lot by smoking guests to stay warm. Bottom line if you are a smoker go on Royal Caribbean, if you are not and don’t like to inhale 2nd hand smoke go on Carnival. But do go to Alaska.