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Our family of 6 had our first ever trip to America beginning with 2 nights in New York followed by a cruise on the Explorer of the Seas. New York was wonderful although we'd have loved longer there and our caribbean cruise was as good as we had anticipated.
The size of the ship was huge. HAving previously only cruised on the 9 deck Island Escape, we knew this would be big but weren't sure it would be quite THIS big!
In our 9 days, I'm sure there were parts of the ship we didn't see but we did our best to see it all and particpate in as much as possible as there was always something going on. We had kids with us of 17, 15, 12 and 11 and they all found something they enjoyed. So did we! The food and drink flowed. The soda package which we did for all of us before we went was well worththe price and we probably got our money back within the first couple of days.
We expected the shops to be expensive but were very presently surprised by the price of some of what was on offfer particularly my favourite - the $10 days!
We had expected to dine mainly in the windjammer cafe and we had our breakfast and lunches there but after our first night in the dining room with our excellent waiters Venice and Andrea, we went every day except the one when we used our complimentary passes to go to the Portofino. While the food there was excellent, it was a bit too upmarket for us and we enjoyed our return to the main dining more.
Our holiday was enhanced by the dinner guests who had been nominated to our table. Diana and Terry made excellent company and it was fantastic to be present when he asked her to marry him - how romantic - especially on the day we'd been to my favourite port on the journey in Saint Thomas.
We pre-booked excursions for each of the ports and enjoyed them very much. Saint Thomas and Saint Maarten were picturesque and fairly unspoilt while Bermuda and Puerto Rico were also good places to visit to observe different tpes of lifestyle.
While this isn't the type of holiday we can afford regularly, we are hopeful we'll be able to cruise again in th not too distant future and would recommend this type of holiday to anybody. 5 stars out of 5!!!
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