Oh, thank you for giving me the chance to give my opinion about Abeka! ;) we have used Abeka for 5 years now so I can give you a pretty good opinion on its strengths and weaknesses. And by the way, EVERY curriculum has weaknesses.
Abeka is very traditional. Like school. Like others have said. Some say it's boring, I think that just depends on personality. I like it, my daughter loves it! The biggest weakness, I have to agree, is there's not a lot of critical thinking. Just because something comes out of a "textbook" and not a "living book" doesn't make it evil. I think the "living" part comes through the person teaching. Not every part of Abeka is 100% fun, but there are some things in life that just need to be done. For someone looking at Abeka, here are my recommendations-
K5-1st 100%
After that, I would change the readers to Sonlight or Veritas. They're simply more interesting.
Abeka's Grammar stays solid, but one could use Shurley if so desired. I haven't seen Shurley, but I would sub all of Abekas writing for IEW (institute for excellence in writing) starting in 3rd grade.
Abeka's Arithmetic is solid at least until 5th. I sometimes feel it needs some deeper critical thinking, but it is still rather advanced. One could supplement with Singapore or Miquon. OR Singapore has math cd-rom games that would be fun.
As far as science and history goes, if you assume the student will hate it, they probably will. I would rather use Apologia/Sonlight/Veritas Press but I just didn't have time for so much collaboration this year so ds (7) and dd (9) did Abeka DVD and both enjoyed science and history.
Hope that helps someone. :)
Holly
Wife to Daniel, mom to Susanna (9) Ethan (7) Molly (3) Gabriel (2)
Bookkeeper, piano player, gardener, etc.