The Cruise - it wasn't fishing this time

Here is my cruise review of the "Explorer Of The Seas", Royal Caribbean, Dec 14 - 23 2007

• Background Information

There were 7 in our party embarking from Bayonne, NJ… Cape Liberty. We had 3 staterooms: 2 on deck 7 with the balconies, 1 on deck 2 (a late addition ;) ) Besides my wife, Nannette, and myself, we were accompanied by our four children, ages 19, 23, 25 and 28, as well as one of our daughter’s boyfriend, age 35.

Strangely enough (to me), although booked together, the adjoining balcony rooms had 2 separate stateroom attendants. Not a problem but just a curious division of labor given that the rooms were connected.

My wife and I had been on Carnival back in 2005, embarking in Miami, on a 5 day cruise to Jamaica and Grand Caymen. My children went on Norwegian out of NY City May 2006 (my wife and I enjoyed the time alone AT HOME :D :D) This was therefore our first experience with Royal Caribbean and the Explorer.

• Ship Info

The ship is huge at over 1000 ft in length and holding over 3000 passengers and 1200 staff and crew. Besides the compliment of hot tubs, pools, and recreational facilities on the upper decks, there is an entire “Main Street”, called the Royal Promenade, replete with shops, café’s and bars. The main dining rooms have a grand staircase and fine appointments. There is a main theater, called The Palace, as well as an ice skating arena called Studio B for some unknown reason. Studio B also hosted their “Dancing with the Stars” activity/competition. There are also several music clubs, dance clubs, of various sizes and persuasions. Of course, there is also the cruise-mandatory Casino as well.

• Activities

I alluded to the various adult activities in the Ship Info above, however, there are also a host of activities for children, including a kid’s “camp” for the youngest, and teen oriented rooms, activities etc. for the tween and teen groups.

• Service

It seemed that perhaps due to the overlap of the 2 ships on the day of departure, our crew wasn’t in top form for a day or 2. Hard to pinpoint why, but an example was at the dining hall, serving a salad with no dressing…having to get from “level 3” (we were on level 5); not serving cocktail sauce with cocktail shrimp, things along those levels. But after a couple of days everything seemed “seamless”. The room attendants, though good, didn’t give us questionnaires at the end, and we seemed to miss a couple of Compass inserts during the week. As stated earlier we had two different stateroom attendants for the 2 deck 7 rooms, and “ours” seemed better than the “other room’s”. Room service was ok, but the menu they leave in the room is not complete. In fact, you can order essentially anything available in the dining room, but you have to write it in if you want to leave out your order the night before, useful for early departures. It took us a couple of days to figure this out.

• Shore Excursions

We had 7 persons, usually doing different things at each port.

At San Juan, my wife and I took the old/new city tour, which was perfectly fine, a couple of stops… some nice chatty commentary on history and politics… and overall a good short tour with a dropoff near the shopping district of “old” San Juan. Two of our children signed up for the ATV excursion and loved it… hands down. However, our other children signed up for Horseback riding through the rain forest. This turned out to be a disaster since (1) our late arrival in port, and the horrendous disembarking delays plaguing the entire trip guaranteed most of the ride to be in total darkness. (2) the horses “knew” they were supposed to be back “in the barn” and gave all the guests a hard time about continuing on the trail (3) there were too few guides for the number of guests and (4) the darkness prevented any useful “guiding” through the rainforest, and they cancelled the planned stop at the river. In short, the excursion should have been cancelled. Although, posters on this site state that the cruise line can take no responsibility for shore excursions, I disagree. The cruise line is charging a fee for this service… as such they must be held partly responsible when something they offer is sub-par. Obviously there are limits as to what they can do, but they should have enough experience to know or help guide when someone should or should not participate in a shore excursion based on planned times of arrival/departure etc. This should be a relatively simple scheduling service… guests signing up for the excursions do not necessarily have all the information they need to make an informed decision… that’s where the cruise line’s service should help.

At St. Thomas, 2 daughters, my wife and I went by taxi to Sapphire beach, which turned out to be absolutely lovely. I chose this beach based on an internet port review and it was great for snorkeling, swimming, relaxing, and no crowds. Just a fair number of hotel guests and some cruisers. Plenty of elbow room. Our other children had delightful underwater adventures using helmets via excursions… they saw many beautiful fish, then took taxis to meet up with us at the beach. We were able to do some nice snorkeling right from the beach as well… not as spectacular as that accessible by boat, but still very nice.

At the Dominican Republic, 2 of our children took the Bayahibe Beach excursion and absolutely loved it; 3 others went on a Catamaran snorkel trip… the snorkeling was very bad due to (a) too many jellyfish and (b) too much human garbage (diapers, sneakers, clothing, etc….) washed up on the island and distributed around the otherwise pristine waters of the island the catamaran took them to and (c) the boat cut even the beach time they had planned very short, perhaps due to the presence of (a) and (b)!! Finally, my wife and I went to Altos and found it to be a total waste of time…well perhaps better than just sitting on the boat… but not by much.

At Labadee, Haiti… we all had a wonderful time… some on the Zip lines, one on a Waverunner, and the rest just on the beach. Great port, lots of fun.

• Stateroom – nice but nothing fancy. All I can say is everything worked and once we got used to the arrangements, it was delightful. I say that because I had assumed a different bed arrangement based on the RCI web site’s description and pictures of “our room”…. In the future, I’ll make sure I discuss my specific (planned) stateroom’s features with someone familiar with the specific bed configuration in advance. I’ll chalk up my “surprise” to a limited web site, and not RCI per se.
• Dining – I read reviews that say the dining is “stale” or “not like the old days”. I will say being relatively new to cruising, I found the food and service on the explorer (sans the exceptions noted above in ‘Service’) very very good.. at times bordering on exceptional. Portofino’s is well worth the extra per person fee as well.
• Entertainment – entertainment overall was good. Singers were “eh” “ok” like everywhere other than on Broadway, New York J. Dancers were very good. Ice Skaters were exceptional.
• Disembarkation – better than embarkation by a long shot… but it was easy to beat that mark J! I missed the signup for express disembarkation much to my party’s chagrin…. Won’t make that mistake in the future as the PORT has no security for your luggage. In fact, one of my bags was grabbed mistakenly by another party of 10, and it wound up in a different part of our home state of NJ. Thankfully that party called me (and given the number of bags we had, I didn’t even know it was missing when they called… my mistake… RCI does recommend using a bag-count coming and going) and we made arrangements for the swap!
• Summary

In short, a nice trip. A few glitches along the way. Room for improvement, but hopefully by reading this review, you can plan your next trip with foreknowledge and avoid some of the pitfalls that may beset you.