We cruised on Anthem in December. It was my husband, myself and our four kids ages 15,13,10,8. We've cruises extensively with RC but that was our first time on the Anthem. Overall I would agree with most of this review. My biggest complaint was that we really wanted to do the Escape room but unless you were there immediately after boarding it was sold out the entire cruise. Most of the times it was not staffed, so it seems to me that they could eliminate that problem by having it staffed more often. Like the above poster, we tried to book it within an hour of being allowed on board and it was already sold out. I called multiple times to see if anyone cancelled and still could not get in to do it. We were able to do the Ifly but we got lucky. They closed it down right after us and I was told by the staff that happens VERY frequently on the last day and that they almost always have to cancel that day. That seems a bit of a bait and switch to me, if it happens that frequently they shouldn't book people for that day, in my opinion, especially since you are only allowed one Ifly per cruise. (though if you go to the wait line, if someone doesn't show up they will let you take there spot) So if you want to do that, I would not book for the last day. My kids enjoyed the bumper cars, the roller skating, the circus/trapeze activities and we did have to wait in line but overall that was ok. Just try to get there early. Kids club was terribly understaffed. My kids really wanted to go to the PJ party. Put on their Pj's and I walked them up there only to have the staff say that since they only had 3 staff members they could only accommodate 40 kids. when I asked how many kids were on the sailing I was told 700. So there are 700 kids aboard and you can only accommodate roughly 5 percent. They only had one kids room open even though they have three rooms available because they didn't have staff to open the other rooms??WT*?? My kids didn't want to go back again after being turned away when they were so excited to go, so we never used it again. Some of the staff was great, ( our servers for instance) and some seemed both rude and unkowledgeable about thier own ship. There were at least two times when at guest services, that I was able to give another passenger information that the staff was not aware of... We enjoyed it but like this poster, I'll sail the Oasis or Freedom class before sailing this again, even though it is far more convienent to MD. We are sailing the Navigator in April for a transatlantic and I'm hoping it will be awesome, but as another poster said, I'm not home cooking or cleaning so any way you look at it it's bound to be enjoyable.
My Anthem of the Seas ~~ LONG review
in Royal Caribbean International
Posted
We cruised on Anthem in December. It was my husband, myself and our four kids ages 15,13,10,8. We've cruises extensively with RC but that was our first time on the Anthem. Overall I would agree with most of this review. My biggest complaint was that we really wanted to do the Escape room but unless you were there immediately after boarding it was sold out the entire cruise. Most of the times it was not staffed, so it seems to me that they could eliminate that problem by having it staffed more often. Like the above poster, we tried to book it within an hour of being allowed on board and it was already sold out. I called multiple times to see if anyone cancelled and still could not get in to do it. We were able to do the Ifly but we got lucky. They closed it down right after us and I was told by the staff that happens VERY frequently on the last day and that they almost always have to cancel that day. That seems a bit of a bait and switch to me, if it happens that frequently they shouldn't book people for that day, in my opinion, especially since you are only allowed one Ifly per cruise. (though if you go to the wait line, if someone doesn't show up they will let you take there spot) So if you want to do that, I would not book for the last day. My kids enjoyed the bumper cars, the roller skating, the circus/trapeze activities and we did have to wait in line but overall that was ok. Just try to get there early. Kids club was terribly understaffed. My kids really wanted to go to the PJ party. Put on their Pj's and I walked them up there only to have the staff say that since they only had 3 staff members they could only accommodate 40 kids. when I asked how many kids were on the sailing I was told 700. So there are 700 kids aboard and you can only accommodate roughly 5 percent. They only had one kids room open even though they have three rooms available because they didn't have staff to open the other rooms??WT*?? My kids didn't want to go back again after being turned away when they were so excited to go, so we never used it again. Some of the staff was great, ( our servers for instance) and some seemed both rude and unkowledgeable about thier own ship. There were at least two times when at guest services, that I was able to give another passenger information that the staff was not aware of... We enjoyed it but like this poster, I'll sail the Oasis or Freedom class before sailing this again, even though it is far more convienent to MD. We are sailing the Navigator in April for a transatlantic and I'm hoping it will be awesome, but as another poster said, I'm not home cooking or cleaning so any way you look at it it's bound to be enjoyable.