My husband & I reside in NYC but traveled w/ my Houstonian parents, sailing from Galveston.  This was my 3rd cruise, 1st on Royal Caribbean, & DH's 1st cruise EVER.  He had been hesitant to cruise for a long while but had a change of heart when he heard my frequent-cruising senior citizen parents raving about their upcoming cruise on Voyager of the Seas.  Intrigued by their enthusiasm & ship description, we booked the same cruise as my folks.  I am so grateful we did... our trip was incredible!  We were highly impressed w/ the service, the food, & the ship itself.

The Ship:  A.  The Voyager of the Seas is LARGE & beautiful!  Wow, where to begin??  There is so much stuff to see & do, plus plenty of places to hunker down if you don't want to do much at all!  DH & I were fortunate (or fast) enough to do a quick overview of most of the decks before the safety drill. The Promenade - a street-like, mall-like lane of shops, eateries & bars - was sort of the "center" of a lot of onboard activity, on deck 5 w/ interior promenade view staterooms for several decks above overlooking it.  There is some trickiness involved in traveling to other areas of the ship... the 14th deck (location of High Notes bar, which had activities in the day & our favorite band Synergy at night) is only accessible from one bank of elevators on one side... you kind of feel your way up there... by the time you master it, the cruise is over!  Same goes w/ accessing certain areas... when going to our Carmen dining room from our stateroom on deck 8, we had to cross the length of the ship, THEN go down to the room on deck 3 (if we went to deck 3 first, we had to go up, then down a level, to get to the room because of other areas of the ship preventing a straight shot).  Also, w/ a ship this size you have to budget in your commute time... time to travel to where you need to go & a little extra time to navigate any of the trickiness I just mentioned!  Note that once you've gotten the main excursions & lively activities out of your system, that deck 4 is a lovely oasis to relax in - the outdoor lounge chairs are shaded, there's shuffleboard & you can go to the neat-o helipad via the stairs.  Overall, Voyager of the Seas really was like a resort on water, w/ a different feel/mood/adventure in every room & area! 

Stateroom:  A.  We had an Inside Promenade Stateroom, which has a window overlooking the Promenade below.  It was cool to have that view of the action below (& the "Just Divorced" sign in someone's room, LOL).  And even if there were events going on outside (usually when we were out & about in the evenings anyway), the noise level was nonexistent to very low in our room, it was fine.  Even though there was a Promenade window, it wasn't difficult to reach total darkness in the room at night, the shades worked great for that.  The Royal Caribbean TV channel was terrific in that it broadcast interesting ship info as well as some of the shows/activities we didn't make it to.  Overall, very comfortable room! Read more