Positives: Beautiful, functional ship, and gorgeous suite. Outstanding dining options--6 restaurants to rotate among for dinner. Meals, with a couple notable exceptions, were excellent. Beautiful dining rooms, and very fine service from dining room staff, room stewards, butler. Wonderful guest lecturer gave 8 afternoon talks (mostly on days at sea) all related to our ports and destinations. A woman from Panama gave great narration as we traversed the canal. We liked the pool and pool area and used it often, especially on our warm and sunny sea days. Waves pool restaurant (hamburgers and sandwiches etc; also breakfast items and ice cream station) was heavily used and I believe enjoyed by everyone. Warning: in the Terrace buffet, the grilled-to-order grilled food was very good, but the buffet food was sometimes lukewarm and not appetizing. Great fresh fruit selection in the AM though! And we liked sitting outside aft when eating at the Terrace. Overall, we thought the ship ambiance was ideal. Note; we did not see guests, with very few exceptions, under age 60. Zero children. We are in our 60's so that was fine for us; but be cautious about booking if you are younger.

Cons: People in destination services were not helpful, nor friendly. If you hadn't booked a ship excursion, they had no interest in helping. They had no knowledge of ports. No help at all for those who wanted to explore on our own. We were disappointed in that. Nightly entertainment: some good to excellent, some poor to mediocre. Regarding the piano bar, house band, pop band, etc., times listed in the ship newspaper were often not accurate--we showed up and they didn't. Also, events would be announced (like a band playing in the afternoon at the pool) that just did not happen, with no explanation. Whoever manages these events is evidently not detail-oriented. Another minor beef: the cookies were uniformly awful--and we spoke with other guests who agreed with us. Decent-tasting cookies are not hard to bake! There were two showers by the pool. One was scalding hot and the other freezing cold--go figure. Not adjustable. So we could not shower before/after pool use. Regarding tender ports: the ship gave priority for tenders to guests with ship-purchased excursions. Nevertheless we were granted tender access quickly each time--lucky? The tender boats themselves are awful--hot, crowded and uncomfortable. We had an embarkation problem. Our key passes were not ready for us--don't know why. We were delayed 20 minutes while a staff member went onboard to get the keycards. Then they were the wrong color (designating what type of room you have) so we had to get them redone. Minor annoyance, but not a good start.

My con paragraph above is longer than my pro paragraph, but that is just because i went into more detail on the cons, to warn folks about the negatives. But the pros easily outweighed the cons; overall, we enjoyed the trip. The suite, meals, and butler service were SO good. We will sail the Marina again, and in fact already have another voyage reserved. (Roughly 5% discount by booking onboard.)