Explorer of the Seas Review
Rating by category
Additional details
We decided to sail out of Cape Liberty this year to allow my daughter's fiance and his daughter to come along. Sailing on Spring Break isn't an ideal time to go but my daughter works in a school so while this isn't new for us we found that there was a lack of parental supervision on this sailing. The cold rainy weather may have contributed to this problem. Saving money on Airfare didn't turn out to be the benefit we hoped for this year.
The Explorer needs some refurbishing. The wear and tear was obvious. We did hear that that will be happening and that Port Liberty will be getting an upgrade.
Having sailed on RCI lines (16 sailing in all), RCL, Celebrity and Azamara, in the past we have become accustomed to a higher level of service and this year found it to be lacking. Cost cutting measures were very apparent from quality of the food, staff size, service and entertainment. While our personal waiter and cabin steward were great my daughter had a triple on the 2nd deck (I won't even get into that experience) had an unusual issue, a deaf mute cabin steward. I think it's great that RCI would hired a deaf cabin steward but then they didn't provide the cabins a way to communicate with him effectively. Actually No pens or paper were found in any of our 3 rooms.
Cabin Review
Junior Suite
Junior Suite 9608 has a good amount of room as was Cabin 9610 right next door. The cabin steward was excellent. Storage was optimal compared to some cabins we have been in. They both could stand for my refurbishing. This cruise both of these rooms had some issues with plumbing which was fixed right away.
Cabin 2546 was not as good. While the size wasn't bad, the cabin steward couldn't communicate (deaf) and when we set sail the window was blocked for safety reason (we were heading into a storm). You had to go up to go down in order to reach certain areas of the ship. On sailing day that had to reach their room through a crew area. While people may find it economical to be on that floor, its poorly situated for easy access to other areas of the ship.