We chose this particular cruise because we had always wanted to see the Panama Canal and Aruba, both of which we got to see. As usual though, the highlight of our trip was meeting other guests and the wonderful staff members. From the Sea Bar bartenders/servers to the Caneletto servers and Maitre'D, to the Casino workers and the Tamarind servers, it was top notch customer service. All were friendly, personable, hardworking, and remembered everyone's names immediately.
Seeing the Panama Canal was really more interesting than I thought it would be. It was on my husband's bucket list (not really mine) but seeing in person the locks and how they worked was really interesting. Watching our ship go through the locks (wake up early and don't miss this!) was another highlight of my trip. The passage on either side of the Eurodam was just inches, and it was fascinating how they do they navigate this. The engineering of the damn itself was also fascinating to read about, along with the history of how it was done and what discoveries were made to help not only the completion of the dam, but future generations from diseases like malaria.
Onboard entertainment as a whole was very good. I loved the BB King's Band. They were constantly high energy and fun, as well as being extremely talented. The comedian was funny, and the BillBoard piano singers were also entertaining.
We didn't realize we were going to have an empty lifeboat for the cruise outside of our window. It looked ghostly, sitting there empty, so we kept our curtain closed the entire time. Sort of eerie looking, really. We should have just paid less and booked an inside room, because it was hard to see anything beyond the lifeboat.