My husband and I cruised to the Western Caribbean aboard the Navigator of the Seas on December 9-16, 2006. This was our seventh cruise and the best one so far. After sailing with Carnival (once), Princess (once), Norwegian (twice), and RCCL (three times), we are certain that RCCL is the way to go. RCCL consistently provides a high level of service and innovative ships, which have enough activities to keep us entertained during the day and night. Following is a review of our cruise, from embarkation to disembarkation and some afterthoughts.

Embarkation:

We were staying in Ft. Myers and chose to have a Royal Caribbean bus (Cruise Connection) pick us up from Ft Myers and take us to Miami Cruise Terminal. We'd done this once before and found the experience to be easy and relatively quick. This was no different - we were picked up at 7:45 am and arrived at the terminal a little after 10 am. By 10:45 am we were waiting to board the ship and by 11:30 am we had dropped off our bags in our stateroom and had gone on to lunch. An interesting point - rooms were not ready until 1 pm and guests were not allowed to enter their staterooms before then. We didn't know this until we went to our room to change and our stateroom attendant came by and told us the rooms are not ready, please use the public facilities on the other decks. We wanted to leave some things in our room, like our laptop and video camera, but were nervous to do so as we were instructed to keep the cabin doors open. Once we left, the staff then closed all the large doors, blocking access to the staterooms. This wasn't a big deal but something we had not experienced before. Read more