We were vacationing with very good friends from New Jersey. They wanted to try a cruise from Bayonne to save the airfare. It made no difference to us as our purpose was spending time with our friends and not specific ports. The vast majority of the cruisers were within a 5 hour drive of the port. The benefit besides the plane fare was that by driving they had no luggage restrictions.

The 9 night cruise only had 4 ports scheduled and because of reduced speed due to a mechanical problem the time in two ports were adjusted. We set sail at 4 p.m. on a Friday and arrived at our first port on Monday Morning, We left our last port at 11:30 on a Thursday morning and arrived back in Bayonne on Sunday morning. The time in ports was lessened slightly by a mechanical difficulty but even without that we would have only had a part day in San Juan.

Because of the number of sea days the activities on ship became important-as well as the ship itself. The explorer does not have a retractable roof over the pool like the Jewel. This means on the first and last full sea days the pool was too cold to be used. On the other two sea daysthe reserved lounge chairs for suite cruisers and the folks who staked our a lounge in the early a.m. left very little for the rest of us. I tried to use the exercise room on several occasions during our sea days but found the equipment to be old and many of the treadmills and bikes were out of order. We did participate in a couple of the crafts, a couple of the Trivia, the Bingo, and roller blading but was disappointed that there wasn't more choice available. We loved the convenience of the coffee shop on the promenade, we loved that the library was actually a usable space and not just the alcove it is on some ships. The roller blading was difficult as you had to contend with the wind. We did find that the casino was busier than on other cruises and that the alcohol consumption appeared to be up. Our sports fanatics were disappointed that only the semifinals of the final 4 were broadcast. Read more