Madeira and the Canaries October 2014

My wife and I have sailed with RCL many times before and on the Independence once before and thoroughly enjoyed it as we did this time also. We hadn’t sailed to the Canaries before and unfortunately the weather could have been better and we had to miss out on our visit to Lisbon altogether because of the heavy swell. I guess that Royal Caribbean made a bigger profit this time by way of no port charges at Lisbon and casually going at half speed on to Lanzarote ! ! Just a pity that they didn’t see fit to replenish my on-board account ! !
Over the whole cruise however we did enjoy the ports of call but felt that we could have had a bit more time in some ports.
It’s a great ship with a first class set of officers and crew ( special mention to the Cruise Director and the Captain who were both pretty “visible” ).
One little downside re RCL is that we and others we have spoken to have seen a decline in certain standards over recent years and also cut backs on silly little things that previously had added to the pleasure of our cruising experience. We won’t be abandoning them however as the ships are first class and still offer us a great holiday.