Illini_Fan

We will be on the Symphony in June with our then 15yo DS - so I very much appreciate the extremely detailed and very well written and funny review.  thanks very much for doing this.

NOPE - at least not on Anthem. Had I purchased the drink package I would have been unhappy. At least the poor selection helped me keep my cost down. Not craft, per se, but no Sam Adams and only the pub had Guinness. I was talking to one of the staff about the poor selection and he made a funny comment that the crew bar has much better options.

We figured this out late in the cruise that they were available on the TV. We never found them near any of the MDR restaurants and I dind't see a spot on the app to list them (but I might have missed it). We were on the Anthem.

Not to steal the OP's post, but....We were also on that cruise and we had a great time, like the OP there were things that RCI (or maybe just the Anthem) can do better seemingly without too much extra effort. We've sailed Disney five times before and this was our first RCI cruise so my only other point of reference is Disney.

I thought the ship was overall in great condition, although I was surprised that most of the chairs in WindJammer had cracks in their seat cushions. The embarkation process in Bayonne was a snap and outside of Homeland Security only having 3 stations open upon our arrival back port, we though disembarkation was really easy and quick as well.

Our 14 year loved the climbing wall and the seaplex area. I wish the activities like the climbing wall and the flowrider had longer hours. Each activity only needed two staff to operate.

We were not happy with the limited amount of evening entertainment. Other than Day 8 (Thursday) there was very little going on after the late dinner that was to our liking. Lots of music options, so this is a personal preference thing, but on DCL they would typically have an "adults-only" session of one of their headliners nearly every night or an "adults-only" version of the newlywed game.

We are not particular about the food, and used the traditional dining (late) option in the MDR. We really liked the food each night and our waiter was great, the asst waiter tried hard and was friendly, just needs to keep working on her language skills. The pizza was not a hit with anyone. I really liked the brats for the DogHouse (when it was open)

We had wished there were more food options open late or open on the pool decks. The hotdog place seemed to have strange hours (like not open for lunch on a couple of port days) and unless you walked into WJ, there was no spot to just get a quick slice of pizza or fries without venturing into the ship.

For a ship this size, they need more ice cream dispensers and I never could understand why they had such short hours - most days 11am - 6pm. I remember one day it was open late (9pm ish), but why cut it off that soon?

As we expected, the lounge chair saving was in full force every sea day. Although RCI posts that after 30 minutes your stuff was subject to being moved to the pool towel area, I'm not the type of person to time someone's chair just to get a seat, but from our view, there were more chairs saved then people on either deck 14 or 15.

Those are really minor items and outside of the specific purpose of being critical, didn't have any material impact on our enjoyment. We would sail RCL again. We will just do a better job of looking at each ship's activities (i.e. the posted cruise compass') before we select a ship.