"Italy’s ark" or My review of Navigator of the Seas(pics;NOS Eastern Med sail Sep 23)

[Verfai]

For word:

 

What did according to the legend Noah say when he build his ark? Something in the sort of “two of each kind”?

 

Well translate this into, let Royal Caribbean’s ship Navigator of the Seas depart from Rome and the ship transforms into an ark of Italy!………Dear of dear and this whilst this was NOT a so called immersion cruise!?

 

Oh well we did the cruise so here we go than we the review you guys deserve it :p. I will first give a few insights on what the major good & bad points were according to me (backed up by the overall opinions of the Cruise Critic members onboard this sailing btw)

before I start going more into detail on the different days, ports of call and posting pictures…That way if you don’t want to read all the boring story telling I will be doing, or just look at the pretty pretty pictures, at least you will get the main pointers I want to share with you in this review.

 

I read most of the reviews of this ship before we booked and yes there were quite a few bad ones amongst them, but also good ones. So I usually take everything with a serious grain of salt and make my own conclusion out of all the good, the bad and the ugly…However I must sadly report that this review will be more to the dark side of the force as this ship has some serious issues with it, especially if you are not Italian, FYI we are from Belgium ;)…

 

The good :) :

 

The food!!! We immediately tasted at café promenade when we got on for a quick snack that there was a difference in food taste compared to Liberty, this was defiantly the better one. This ship, and as we had on Liberty, still has the old menu for dinner…But except for one day were dinner was an absolute disaster, I would give to food quality and taste on Navigator, not only for dinner a good to excellent rating, kudos to the Dutch chef (<-this is a strange thing for a Belgian to say trust me ;) )!!!

 

The bad :( :

 

-The Italian (over) influence onboard

 

*I want to point out first that we did Liberty 3x out of Barcelona, so I really do have a clue what it means when a ship departs from a European country and that things change onboard catering to the usually majority of passengers coming from the embarkation country…However on this cruise.

 

Where on Liberty, the adapted schedule is Spanish and on all 3x we were on, the Spanish were defiantly the majority onboard or at least top 3. Whilst on Navigator the Italians were only with 500 so faaaaaar from the majority onboard…Yet it felt, not only by their own doing that 90% of the ship was Italian…Was this a good thing? One strong and hard “NO” as an answer to that!!!

 

For this cruise the winners where the English and don’t really remember all the country’s onboard but there were a lot, even the Belgians got a mentions as we were with 24 onboard :D (woop woop).

 

Dear Royal Caribbean, If you should ever read this: It is good that you adapt some things to cater to passengers coming from the cast away country, however changing near everything to a latin based theme, crew and cruise director included is NOT a good thing for all your other passengers, especially when most of them where from other countries than Italy & Spain!!!

 

It started when the ship casted off on the first day, where the pool deck sail away party is usually the ship DJ playing some tunes and maybe the animation team and the DreamWorks characters doing a show…Here it was a live latin cover band playing music.

It was a set of 10 songs, with some of the cruise director staff dancing and about 20 guests…However during the remainder of the cruise, you would hear these same 10 songs (in the same order every time), and the same 20 people dancing to it over and over and over and over and over…Did I mention, and over…one more…and over…Okay, good for those 20 passengers, mostly Italian girls, nice to look at for sure (once, maybe twice) but what the devil with the other 2000+ passengers onboard huh!? And this was like some Latin, Ricky Martin plague spreading all over the ship…You heard the same songs everywhere. And when they dared to insert another CD it was mostly older music that came up…To us it felt like the ship was stuck in an 80s latin time loop that she could not get out of…So no party venue for us, BOOOOOOOOO!!!

 

Same goes with so many things to do being in Italian at prime times

And then there is their mentality, I am not a native English speaker, but them just speaking only Italian, thinking everybody understands them. Starting fights when addressed in English, or not reacting to anything in English (muster instructions, when applause is requested, etc) is just over doing it…I ask myself, there are two major Italian cruise lines, MSC & Costa…Why use Royal Caribbean and whey does Royal go out of their way to cater so much to them??? I never saw one of them giving any extra tip and the staff were certainly not happy people that for sure.

 

-The staff

 

As above already mentioned, what a bunch of unhappy people!? Something is very wrong with the atmosphere on this ship! Except for a few, a lot of the staff had a very hard time to put on a smile, do some small talk or just be happy doing their job.

The worse was the wait staff at MTD, they were so stressed that it was just taking orders and handing out food (fast passed)…They did their job up to specs, but something was wrong with the way they did it they just did not look happy at all.

Room attendant, our room was just dirty, after showing him the dirt (literally) still not really a difference.

Other staff, just could not smile or stop for a second to say something extra rather than “hello, what can I get for you”…Somethimes the words “thank you” and “please” where hard to get over there lips.

More on this later on in the review.

 

-Overall cleanliness of the ship

 

This was just bad, not because the ship looks a little worn-out (this was not that bad actually), no because she just was not clean enough, a lot of people were saying this, some even found surprises under their bed etc…More on that later on to.

[Verfai]

-The review, we booked everything “Do It Yourself” online, so no travel agency was used.

 

Day01: Getting to Rome and the pier in Civitavecchia

 

Flew in with Alitalia from Brussels to Rome FCO on the same day as embarkation at 6:15am, it was a rather new Airbus 321 which was a pleasant surprise as must charters tend to be old rust buckets…We flew over the Swiss alps and after a completely uneventful flight, during final approach Navigator popped up whoooooooohoo.

 

Notice how the tops are missing snow, not a good sign at the end of September

 

Sry for the quality, it’s with my smartphone, forget to take the camera with me on the plane

 

Arrived at 8:20am and for one of Europe’s largest & busiest airports, Rome FCO really looks dated in my opinion.

 

We got off the plane and they had to get, rather stick, the entire plane into two coaches, which was a disaster! Everyone was packed up to each other like sardines…Anyhow finally got into the terminal in one piece safe and sound.

 

We booked the Royal Caribbean transfer to and from the pier, and as expected straight away someone holding up a Royal Caribbean sign was waiting for us.

 

He did not find us at first on his list, luckily I had a printout of the transfer from the vacation documents with me and were instructed to get our bags and meet him at the exit of the baggage claim. By that time he had found us on the list, apparently we were on his supervisor list, why we do not know.

 

Got escorted to the bus, which left after about 25 minutes later, so overall I guess we spend about 50 to 60min at the airport before we were off to Civitavecchia.

 

The trip took about 1h15min amongst some beautiful country sides and then…there she stands tall, Navigator of the Seas.

 

 

 

[Dorset Cruiser]

This typeface is sooooo small, it is unreadable.. Shame as the piccies are great!

[Verfai]

Check in and getting onboard.

 

As we were already at the pier at 10:30am, there was hardly any queue to go through the check in (which was opened up at 10am). They had all the priority lines that you expect at any terminal.

As we were gold level C&A and had a junior suite booked, we had choice enough what line to take.

 

However, the terminal is packing with ground staff and we were asked for our set sail papers very quickly…We got instructed to take the suites line, and we were the first one to check in at that counter today.

 

Check in went as excepted without any problem. We booked JR 9558 and received two silver cards.

 

 

 

As the ship was not yet opened up, they have a system of handing out numbers in which order you could board the ship, we got number one…Whooooooo.

 

We had to wait for 30 min at the entrance to actual pier, where at around 11am at that time and our number was called together with the people that needed assistance. It was great as at that time there were give or take 300 people in the terminal checked in and waiting to board, so we could get up and walk past everybody to walk to the ship.

 

So we were very literally the first ones onboard! What we immediately saw was that NOS is really a mini LOS :-), everything was almost on the same place just a we bit smaller, so we felt right at home.

 

We asked when the rooms would open up, and got a firm reply at 1pm sharp…So same drill as on any ship.

 

Went to café promenade for a quick snack and a coke (we booked the fountain soda package).

 

Went to the open decks for a stroll until it was about lunch time, peaple were now really starting to pour in…Went to the windjammer for lunch, plenty of free tables.

 

(pictures are not from first day)

 

 

 

 

 

I was very surprised by the look of the food, you could see that this was better presented than on LOS. I had a burger and then the surprise was even better, they actually go it very right. This is when we really started concluding that there might be a chance that food is better on this ship.

However it was when we were sitting at the windjammer we stated to notice that the ship was not properly cleaned, between the windows and the floor she was just dirty, full of crumbs and food remains probably still from the last disembarking passengers.

[Verfai]

This typeface is sooooo small, it is unreadable.. Shame as the piccies are great!

 

I am using the normal font!? What do you see as small?

[xxHadleyxx]

It is big enough for me. Hard to read as the large photos make the whole post wide and I have to scroll back and forth on each line, but that is doable and I have the same issue when I post photos so I really can't complain.

 

We sail on the Navigator Sunday, so I am very interested in the review. Thank you.

[cruztheworld4fun]

I think it's our expectations that we want to board the ship right after the other passengers have left but we expect it to be cleaned up too. How can they do that if the people are still there?? I am sure they are doing their best but can see how we might be asking the impossible. We would be upset if they didn't let us use these rooms because they are cleaning them.

[Verfai]

The room JR suite 9558

 

At something passed 1pm we went down to our room, we have done a balcony twice and a promenade room, so we were very excited how the JR suite would be…And how very amassed we were when we opened the door for the first time, the room was huge compared to what we are used to. The girl especially liked the bathtub and I loved to bigger balcony.

 

However we, started to unpack we noticed that the first wow feeling turned into a less enthusiastic modus…The room was far from cleaned properly, the shelf’s at the desk were full of remains like hair, chocolate sticking to the bottom and loads of dust. The space between the balcony and the room was filthy and same goes for our bathroom, finding hair on the floor and behind the toilet seat after we were in there for 30min this could not have been from us.

The table in the room was cleaned by a single wipe from a moist tissue as you could count the one stripe on it same as the TV.

 

On that note of the TV, all JR suites had flat screen tv’s, other rooms we saw still had an antlike CRT screen

 

So we concluded that we should have a chat with our room attendant later on.

 

 

 

 

 

[Verfai]

I think it's our expectations that we want to board the ship right after the other passengers have left but we expect it to be cleaned up too. How can they do that if the people are still there?? I am sure they are doing their best but can see how we might be asking the impossible. We would be upset if they didn't let us use these rooms because they are cleaning them.

 

Trust me, the rooms and ship on LOS which had near 1000 more passengers where cleaner, also including the public areas. And like I said in the for word, we were far from the only ones saying this, including one with over 700 cruise points. More will follow on the cleanliness.

 

And for what we paid, I do not want to find other people pubic hair in a bathroom of a Jr suite, any room for a fact...

[Coolcruise02]

Great review and pictures! Can't wait for more. :)

[Verfai]

The pre ordered fountain soda cups and the requested bottle of American fizz where all delivered to the room before we got in.

 

We opened up the fizz on the balcony to officially start our vacation!

 

 

The room attendant came knocking at that time to introduce himself…

HOWEVER, the first thing he said after hello, was literally demand that we close the balcony window for the air-conditioning.

The way he said it was just over it and rude.

I promptly replied that we are turning platinum in the middle of this cruise and that we know the drill, than even more promptly I went on that I set the temperature well within the red zone, so the airco would not turn on, and then even more than more promptly, if I want to open to window to hear and see the sea that I will do so that’s one of the reasons we cruise...

 

He did not apologize, but he was saying “OK if that is what you want”, so I went on and took him to the drawers and the bathroom, at first he did not see the problem until I literally pointed it out to him…I said we are not generally fuzzy but that this was unacceptable.

I also mentioned that I preferred to say it to him directly rather than complaining to an officer. He said he would clean up the mess, which he did, but later on we really noticed that he was not doing his job. Our room was never really dusted during the entire cruise, same as wiping the table.

One day I spilled toothpaste next to the sink, I cleaned it up as well as I could in a rush to go on an excursion, assuming that the room will be cleaned later on the day…Only to find the same stuff sticking to the sink in the evening, whilst all towels were cleaned up so he was in there, just the cleaning was done extremely superficial every day…Sad, and bad points on the questionnaire for him.

We did mention it mid cruise to guest relations, had no effect except he was a little friendlier.

 

Other cruise critic members even found a garbage bag full of empty bottles under their bed and plenty more stories like this going around on the ship...But I will leave it at that. Conclusion a bad level of cleanliness overall.

[poncho1973]

I was on the Navigator out of Italy in 2010 and they didn't seem to cater to the Italians at all.

 

My cruise was like 50% American and 25% UK, though. Maybe that was the difference?

 

The announcements were in 10 billion different languages and took forever, but there wasn't a single time ON THE SHIP where I spoke English to someone and they replied in Italian.

[Verfai]

Sail away

 

After the debacle with the room attendant, we had arranged a self M&M with the Cruise critic members at the cosmopolitan bar. All wonderful people, sadly we were not able to meet up more as they all had early seating and we were on late…But when we bumped into

each other, loads of fun.

 

At 4:30pm it was time for muster, as always what a disaster with people just not showing up…Also the muster was not electronically, so taking the names from persons took ages. Here is where we started to notice the Italian influence, they did not react at all the English commands even laughed with it…You would hope for better after the Costa Concordia tragedy.

Anyhow after standing in the heat for 30 minutes the captain finally completed the muster drill…And then still people were arriving, so I have my doubts what would happen in real emergency.

 

Off to the top deck for sail away!!!

 

We were joined at the dock by the German TUI (Thompson; Jet Air) Mein Schiff II and NCL Spirit

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bye Bye Rome see you in one week!

 

[Verfai]

Day02 Messina Sicily:

 

After a great night of sleep, we woke up passing by the straight between Italy and Sicily, so the tip of the boot of Italy, nice to see it in real life except for on a map.

 

 

As you can see we had some bad weather, and this continued in the form of rain in Messina to.

 

 

 

 

 

This was also the second embarkation port for some passengers, I would think maybe about 300 to 500 passengers got on in Messina.

[Verfai]

The two churches you see in the above pictures can be done on foot, they are very close to the ship.

 

 

The bell tower of the lighter collard one on the left has a show that starts at 11:45am, it is worth it, all the statues that you see above have a pattern that they will go through…Sadly I could not take any pictures myself due to the heavens gates open up and it rained soooooooo much it would have ruined the camera.

 

 

 

Later on in the day, the sun was finally there so time to try out some sun beds.

 

 

[Verfai]

Later on it was the 70s party onboard.

 

We went to the champagne bar for some pre dinner drinks, you can get complimentary caviar in this bar with your drink.

 

 

After dinner it was party time, 70s style!

 

 

 

 

Cruise director Simona in action

 

 

[Verfai]

Time for a break, more to follow :D

[Verfai]

We met up with some people that were living a true love story, she was from Ukraine and he was from Greece, they both live in Spain now and met as staff on a cruise ship, this was their first cruise as passengers, consider them recruited for Cruise Critic :D.

 

As it was a sea day the next day, we hit the dancing called The Dungun on NOS.

After having to hear the complimentary Latin hour AGAIN, the DJ started to play normal everyday radio music around 1am…So we didn’t last long.

 

 

We ordered a room service breakfast for the next morning via the interactive TV…Worked great and all was delivered on time. All hot and very decent portions…Not to forget a view like below, hmmmmm love it!

 

 

[Verfai]

First formal night on the first sea day

 

This was very surprising, at first I thought not really a lot of people would dress up…I went down to café promenade for a snack before we got in our formal attire. This was around 6pm and as a lot of people had early seating for dinner so there were a lot of people already dressed up…But a lot like me, still in my swim wear, looking like they were going for dinner dressed like that…

 

But surprised as we were when comming down around 7pm…There were a lot of people properly dressed up, at all I would say 80-90% of the ship dressed up.

 

Went to the champagne bar again, afterwards the captains reception and then dinner (we had late seating but at my time dining)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Verfai]

Day 04 Kusadasi Turkey

 

Woke up and saw that we have parked next a boat load of ships (pardon the pun lol).

 

We were very close to Ruby Princess, the newly renovated Splendor of the Seas and an Ieda ship.

 

I think nearly the entire ship went off to go to Ephesus, but as we lived in Jordan for 10 years, I have seen my share of sites like these (Petra)…So we just got out to see the city and get some pictures of the ships.

 

This is a perfect port for just wondering around, the harbor comes straight into a lot of shops and bazars, there is also an nice promenade where you can do a long walk and snap some great pictures of the ships.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Verfai]

 

 

 

 

 

[Verfai]

When we got back onboard we did Johnny Rockets for lunch…Hmmmm burgers were gooooooooood!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[wantocruisemore]

Keep it coming! Brings back some wonderful memories of our NOS Eastern Med from last summer. And I really like seeing the photos.

 

We really loved NOS! Saw our Aft Balcony in a couple of photos.

[peteukmcr]

I've been waiting with baited breath for your review and photos. Thanks for sharing. Such a shame about the state of Navigator. So different to our sailing on Mariner which was only a few weeks ago out of the same port.

 

I see you're moving up the cabin ladder! You'll be in a GS next :D Glad you enjoyed the space in your JS though.

 

I await the next instalments!

[villauk]

We were on Navigator last month and while we had no problems with the cleanliness, we did feel the overwhelming focus was definitely on the Italian cruisers. TBH, we were quite disappointed with Simona, the CD, as we felt she didn't mix and mingle with the other passengers. This was especially evident at some of the top tier events. On the other hand, the Captain was lovely and tried his utmost to engage where possible.

 

The strange thing is we did the exact same itinerary on Navigator last October and that cruise had definitely a different feel to it. We felt this cruise was very similar to a cruise we did on Liberty during Easter week, however that was catered towards the 85% of Spanish people on board. I'm sure this would be the case sailing from Southampton, the majority being British (btw, it's one reason we do not sail from the UK as we prefer a mix of nationalities). Perhaps it's due to interporting that the ratios have suddenly changed :confused:

 

Btw, great review and the photos are bringing back some lovely memories. Just need a pic of the afternoon tea: scones with jam & cream......my favourite :D.