We used cruisesonly for our first cruise and it was just fine! The cruise lines you mentioned will ALL have lines and crowds. You need to go to the higher end lines like Crystal, Seabourn, SilverSea, etc. You might try Regent as it is all inclusive (as are the ones I just mentioned) and I believe not quite as crowded. Do go to cruisecritic and do your homework. I personally will try to avoid Royal Carib in future as our last cruise on that line was soooo crowded but, of course, it was a big ship. We are doing HAL over Christmas as it had the dates and itinerary I wanted. I wanted to do Regent but the dates were wrong.