Good, but not great

One of the reasons we chose this cruise was for its dining options. We've cruised before and found the rigid dining times often meant we missed dinner. So, when we saw that we had a variety of restaurants available and no set time to go, we were excited. When we got on board and saw that all of the restaurants we wanted to go to charged some sort of cover we were a little surprised - nothing we read in the cruise literature before boarding indicated that these restaurants charged. We went anyway and the food was generally excellent. The teppenyaki was a fun show with excellent food, the steakhouse was absolutely divine, and the Mexican restaurant, Salsa, was delicious. The Italian restaurant, Impressions, was okay, but nothing to rave about. However, each of those restaurants charged a cover - between $10 and $25 per person. It's worth it, but be prepared to pay for it. As for the rest - bar food and buffet food - good, but nothing to write home about.

The ship offered different entertainment every night, and sometimes two different shows each night. It felt like there was something for everyone every night. We only saw one show - Second City - but it was excellent. The balcony area where we were seated had only a mildly obstructed view of the stage, but we didn't miss a thing and the sound quality was excellent.

The staff was excellent overall. They were attentive without hovering, pleasant, and thorough. There were a couple of exceptions, but they were all the more notable because the service was so good overall.

The layout was confusing - navigating from our aft stateroom to some places located forward required getting off on deck seven, crossing from aft to forward, and riding another elevator down. Also, we frequently had to walk though restaurants to get to another location on the ship. Not the best layout.

We had a balcony stateroom. The balcony was wonderful - room for two to sit and watch the sea. The rest of the room left something to be desired. The bed was literally two twin beds pushed together, which by the end of the night had separated and left both of us with aching backs. There literally was not room for more than one of us to move anywhere at the same time - one of us had to be seated or laying in bed for the other to go anywhere. The bathroom, though was the worst. The toilet portion of the bathroom was partitioned off from the rest of the bathroom area with glass doors. That partition made it very difficult for us to use the bathroom in our stateroom - it was difficult to use the facilities and clean up afterward. It was bad enough that we made a point during our cruise to use the bathrooms around the ship and avoided using our own.