Navigator of the Seas Review

Nice Family Cruise could be great with a few improvements

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Navigator of the Seas
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indygreg
2-5 Cruises • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Apr 2011
Cabin: Junior Suite
Traveled with children

First the good parts: - The ship is really great. great size, not too crowded, smooth sailing except for a small shimmy when it is running at top speed(feels like a prop out of balance). - Rooms are nice for a cruise ship. we had a jr suite and it is like a nice hotel room on land. very big closet, large balcony. we also had a regular balcony stateroom which was ok except the shower is miniature. - Headliner was a comedy team that were kind of a modern abbot and costello (in fact they did an updated version of who's on first). we really enjoyed them. Not too corny. - The staff was great. everyone really tries hard. My wife has severe food allergies and they cooked special meals without any issue, etc. Royal obviously works hard on this aspect of guest experience. - Food was not the best i have ever eaten but for a place that serves 3000 people a meal it was very good. we had lobster one night and some very nice deserts. - i really like the windjammer. we never have a problem getting a table by the windows and the view is spectacular. the most expensive restaurants in the world could never compare to the view. the food is predictable and i find the cheeseburgers to be surprisingly good (they are soaking in some kind of au jus). maybe it is just me but i could sit in there and look out the window all day. - labadee was really nice (other than the 3rd world bathrooms). i could have spent several days there to do it all.Now for THE BAD - Excursions desk is a joke. they only open for a few hours at a time and there is a huge line. they really need to put a LOT more information out there about the excursions so you don't have to stand in line to ask simple questions like "how long is the bus ride" or "do they have parasailing on this beach". the snappy little descriptions that the marketing department write are useless. - the convenience store. unbelievable that it is only open certain hours. if someone has a headache and needs an aspirin they don't need to wait until 5PM when they get around to opening. last cruise they had NO childrens Tylenol on the ship. - They nickel and dime you. i totally expect to pay for alcohol or any gifts i buy but orange juice in the windjammer? seriously? you can get the crappy concentrate watered down with ice cubes or for $3 you can pay the guy to push a button on the automatic oj machine that squeezes a glass in 10 seconds. then you wait another 3 minutes while he writes up a paper ticket, takes your room key across the room to the bar, rings it up and comes back so you can give him a tip. i would look at my wife and say "now this cruise cost us 8,003 dollars". just charge me an extra $30 and advertise that everything but alcohol is included. - Explorers was not for us - i posted on this elsewhere but for our 11 year old explorers was pretty boring. he gets enough art crafts and science lessons at school. we want him to have a blast with his friends on vacation. - Information flow - they really need to offer better info. how about the dining room menus for the week so we can decide ahead if there is a good night to eat elsewhere? the kid's compasses don't tell when each activity is so they have no idea when to go to the room or not. Our weekly planner the first day said which days were which attire then the daily compass disagreed with it. according to the cruise compasses there never was a smart casual night so finally on the last night i wore a jacket cause it was what i had left. - Dress code - i guess the smart casual thing doesn't matter since there seems to be no dress code on this ship. shorts on formal night, etc. simple solution seems to me that you seat all the people who are too cool to dress for dinner on one side of the dining room. they can all tell each other how it is their vacation and they ain't dressin up for nobody. then we could end this debate and rcl could advertise it as My Way Dining or something like that. - the air conditioning in the room never did really do the job. had maintenance in and the fiddled with it but i think it was just how it was. - The towel folding demo seemed like a great idea and indeed it was packed. they had it in the schooner bar where there is no stage and it was jammed with people who could not see anything. noone handed out towels to teach people how to do it so it was over in 10 minutes. on the way out i hear them announcing that the art auction is in ixtapa lounge which would have been a great location for the towel thing but i guess it doesn't generate revenue. - at times it felt like a flea market. they would set up tables in the most congested areas of the ship outside windjammer and around the pool to sell tshirt, gold chains and other crap. - the adult comedy show is a great idea but it is at midnight the night before a shore excursion day. we would have loved to have gone but it wasn't worth it. - we signed up for a paid "fitness evaluation" that turned out to be a $50 infomercial for some ridiculous detox pills. zero discussion of diet, exercise, or anything that most of us would consider fitness. it may not sound like it but we had a very good time. it is just frustrating to see something that could be so good and misses on really simple things to correct. like having much better information available would reduce their staffing cost and make the cruise better for the guests. or eliminating some of the nickel and dime stuff they could advertise that they are the only line that is truly inclusive and add a few dollars to the room charge while decreasing their labor. put an RFID in the seapass and eliminate all the paper receipts. anyway, it was a good cruise and we signed up for alure for next year but it is not a luxury cruise for sure.

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Junior Suite

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