Having been on a few cruises out of the NYC area I have come to really really like the idea of no flying. It was great to see Royal Caribbean having cruises this winter as until now Norwegian was the only choice and to me that is no choice. When the price dropped dramatically in November 2010 I jumped at this.

This was my 20th cruise and I was concerned after a year ago spending an incredible 2 weeks on the Paul Gauguin that the Explorer of the Seas would be a letdown so I lowered my expectations. I had been on a Voyager class ship in 2004 and thought it was mediocre. Well folks, I needed to re-adjust my expectations even lower as this ship was pretty disappointing.

Embarkation was insane - once I got to the cruise port it took 90 minutes to get on board. Evidently a lot of this was due to a large wedding that was taking place before hand. Even traffic to the port was unusually heavy. Read more