We usually cruise with P and O, but were told by our travel agent that P and O had no cruises going to St Petersburg this year, so ended up booking with Royal Caribbean. We later found out that she had made a mistake, and P & O did have cruises to St Petersburg, but we didn't really mind as we thought it would be good to try another line. Boarding the ship was easy, and we found our stateroom, very good, and we liked the ship and its layout very much. The quality of food on board was excellent throughout all the eating points. The staff are very friendly and obliging and are determined that you are going to have a good time. The ship is well designed and laid out, plenty of lifts, stairs and toilets. We found that the Royal Promenade was always crowded with tables selling things, and it was difficult to pass through. Sometimes the music in various places was so loud that we could not talk, but after commenting on this it did seem to have been turned down a bit. Some of the entertainment was very good, but we did not think it was as good as P and O. We thought the surf rider, wall climbing and sports activities was wonderful for younger people, and we liked the golf putting course. We found that drinks were expensive and had we not had a drinks package included in our package, we would not have had many alcoholic drinks. It was disappointing that at most bars we could not have a coffee or tea as an alternative to alcoholic drinks. We only found tea and coffee in the Windjammer and the Promenade. Items on sale in the shops on the Promenade seemed very expensive. The ports of call were good, but we had to pay for a shuttle into town where we had not booked a shore trip, and this added up to about £100 over the whole trip. We have always had the shuttle provided free on our P and O Cruises. Disembarking from the ship at the end of the trip was easy. Disappointingly on sea days, although there was a huge list of things to do, most of them seemed to be trying to sell us expensive items, spa treatments, art sales, watch sales, auctions etc, and the cinema was at the pool side, which was not good on a cold windy day. We ended up spending a lot of time just wandering round the ship or watching television in our cabin.