We sailed on the Explorer of the Seas on Jan. 4th to Jan. 13th from Cape Liberty Cruise Port in Bayonne NJ.

Warning, this is a long review, but I wanted to give everyone our opinions of the trip. I had read a lot on these boards about the Explorer and how things have "gone downhill", but we were very happy and surprised to find that we didn't find that to be true. We were a group of 10 adults ranging in age from 27 to 59. We had 4 first time cruisers, 2 who were new to RCCL, and four of us who had sailed on Voyager previously. We enjoy fine dining and participate in many activities around the ship. We drink moderately and do not do the nightclub scene too often. We cruise to relax and don't sweat the small stuff- just to give you an idea of the type of cruisers we are. Also, we went into this cruise realizing that this was not Cunard or Celebrity or a higher end cruise line. Overall, we, as a family, felt we got a phenomenal value for our dollar.

Embarkation: We arranged for a car service to drive us from our home in ocean county, NJ to the cruise port. Luckily, the car service was able to push back our leaving time by 4 hours due to the ship returning late. On the sailing before us there was a medical emergency and the ship had to turn around to get close enough to San Juan for a medical evacuation. In any case, we arrived at the terminal at 3:15pm to utter chaos! People were still trying to leave, and we were all itching to board. Porters checked our luggage, but gave us little direction about where to go from there. We waited in a line for about 15 minutes and then were processed and handed our seapass cards and were given #22 to board the buses to the ship. Note: A couple in our group who decided to get there at 1:30pm because they couldn't wait, were processed, but were not given their seapass cards because they were too early. They had to wait in line a few hours later to get them. For the next 4 hours, we waited in the terminal. There were plenty of seats and an abundance of food and snacks and drinks provided free for the delay. We were really surprised at the amount of food they kept bringing out (hoping to avoid a mutiny from the crowd) - there were sandwiches, hotdogs, pasta and sauce, cookies, soda, water, and coffee. It was a nice touch to a rotten start to the cruise. The waiting was VERY long and there was very little information about boarding times. We finally got onto the ship at around 7pm. By this point, we were tired, cranky, hungry, and just wanting to get going already. The dining room was open seating for the night and was only until 8:30pm, as the muster drill was scheduled for 9pm. We were able to get a table for 10 that turned out to be our regular table! We had a good laugh the next night when we found our table and had the same wait staff as the night before. The dining room staff was phenomenal - they got us in and our in an hour - well fed and ready for the muster drill. Actually, the whole cruise, our waitstaff of Wirawen and JoRhonda were amazing! Read more