Navigator of the Seas *LIVE* 11/23/2018 - 12/2/2018

[FionaMG]

17 hours ago, wannalottadough said:

I'm also wondering about the 10 drink card, if it was available?

 

 

16 hours ago, Rogueperson said:

i did not see this offered, but i didnt look.

I don't remember seeing this either. On our Serenade cruise last year it was advertised in the Compass, so it should definitely be on there if it was offered on this one.

[FionaMG]

8 hours ago, Rogueperson said:

I also want to thank Fiona for contributing and making this probably the first dual live thread in Cruise Critic history.

Thanks for inviting me to be a contributor. This was my first ever live thread and I really enjoyed being part of it. 

[Rogueperson]

As I promised, I would share my final impressions of the Navigator of the Seas and our vacation to the ABC Islands.

 

I would have to easily state that this was probably one of the worst cruise I've ever been on, however, it had nothing to do the ship or staff or activities, or lack thereof, or food quality, or any of that.  Of course, the primary reason why, was the fact that I missed close to half the cruise and 1 and a half port of calls because of it (I don't count Labadee as a full port of call).  However, the secondary reason, was...many of the passengers.  I did not mention this at all, because I was fairly certain there were many followers on this thread and I didn't want to out anyone, or cause waves while on board.

 

As I've mentioned, this was my first diamond cruise and we absolutely loved the Diamond lounge.  If i had net access up in that lounge, it would be perfect.  However, some of the people up there were absolutely miserable.  My wife bore the brunt of it more than I, but there was more than one time, we got the distinct impression that we did not belong.  This cruise, unfortunately, we were met with a bit more racism from passengers than other cruises for some reason.  We also met a whole heck of a lot of newbies to Royal Caribbean who did nothing but complain about how this was the worse cruise and that it was boring, and there was nothing to do and they would never return to Royal Caribbean blah blah blah.  One or two of them had valid complaints (one did not give his children charging privileges, but the ship still allowed the kid to charge at the arcade regardless and refused to refund them the money).  I almost went to them "did you get quarantined, cause try that!!!  The ship and staff were absolutely accommodating to me.  They may treated me like a leper during quarantine, but did backflips to make it as smooth as possible.  I still enjoyed this cruise regardless of my incident. 

 

My take away on the quarantine is this.  It is self imposed.  If i had my own immodium, I would probably have felt better by day 4.  I did not initially report, partly in fear of being quarantined (or being charged for the visit), but my wife insisted, and the Maitre D, Justin, who was looking out for my well-being (and probably his job as well), escorted me to the Medical station where it was pretty much automatic that I was quarantined.  I had pretty much self-quarantined when I was sick.  I found out later that there were about 20 - 30 cases reported, but anecdotally, I heard that many of them got nailed after day 2, at near the same time I did, which points more to food poisoning than norovirus (and quarantine is useless obviously) and more than 1 of them complained about the beef carpaccio like I did.

 

Embarkation:  Terminal G needs an upgrade.  They haven't maintained it, so things are breaking down, and those breakdowns are causing problems with embarkation.

 

The ship.  I would sail on Navigator again.  I feel that it is the perfect combination of megaship and small ship.  I loved the open spaces on the top deck.  I love the promenade usage.  It was not so big that they decided to keep things in the middle of the promenade which chokes off traffic in favor of marketing sales, but big enough that it allowed people to flow through easily. The staff on this ship is wonderful and accommodating.

 

The food.  Other than Sabor and the special quarantine menu, I loved everything about this ship.  I'm not sure about the buffet in the MDR tactic.  In conjunction with the Windjammer, it feels, extraneous.  Chef's table is great, but I'm fairly certain there's a way to get a better venue.  Another thing I did not mention, because I was unsure of the nature of it and did not want to make waves on my own cruise by outing something during the cruise.  There's a special menu in the MDR.  I'm not sure if its a religious one or whatever, but it was a changing Indian theme...which was absolute amazing.  Probably the BEST food I've ever had coming out of the MDR.  I only had it on day 2, but apparently, you could get it every day.  There was some issue about pre-ordering prior to the meal, or pre-authorization or something from the Maitre D, which was why I didn't mention anything while on the cruise.  You can ask your waiter about it and they should know.  On Day 2, I had a curry shrimp dish as well as some kind of fried onion dish, and they had naaan (that indian bread) come with it as well.

 

Activities.  It was a little bit light, but that's what I expect on Royal Caribbean.  I did my own thing, I relaxed, AND I MISSED THE FLOWRIDER AGAIN!!!!  I've missed it three times now (Independence, Anthem and now Navigator).  I like the fact that they offer the amenities on the ship many times over the course of the ship.  We did manage to go ice skating, which was a first.

 

Entertainment.  This is the first cruise where I missed most of the shows, mostly from being sick.  I caught 2 of the 3 production shows and I was a little underwhelmed by this set.  The juggler was okay, but I think you gotta really have to have something special to be able to turn juggling into a headliner show.  This guy didn't quite have it.  I caught a short show from the comedian at the farewell show, and he was pretty good, and I'm sad i missed him. 

 

Ports.  I loved Aruba and Bonaire.  Couldn't tell ya about Curacao because I was quarantined.  Those islands are the just the most welcoming islands I've ever been on.  I want to go back and experience them without being sick.

 

Debarkation.  Same thing as embarkation.  Escalators can't go down if you're trying to offload 3500 people into customs.  Although customs was a breeze.  I don't remember having to grab my luggage off a carousel before, has that always been the case?  I just looked back at my cruise history and I haven't sailed out of Miami since 2009.  I've starting to see a trend here, my worse cruises seem to start out of Miami (I sailed on the Jewel for the first time then) and that was a bad cruise too.  

 

Overall, I've said this is probably the worse cruise, but most of those reasons were out of my control and this ship however, did its best to correct what they could and that pushes it above the worst cruise ever.  Don't get me started on why the Jewel was the worst cruise ever.  Anyways, despite all that, this was probably the MOST relaxing cruise as I was pretty much isolated from a lot of the distractions that would be normally be pulling me in different directions.

 

I hope you've all enjoyed my live thread.  I enjoyed writing it and was very happy that the internet was stable for much of the cruise.  I think that's probably the only reason I survived quarantine and being sick because the internet worked as well as it did.

 

I only have 1 cruise booked at the moment and that's not until December 1, 2019 (A WHOLE YEAR!!!!) on the Allure.  It will be my first time on the Allure, and I will probably do the live thread thing again, because, its a lot of fun and I don't get to write like this often.  There's a slight chance I may cram a cruise in April or May if my wife and I can swing it, (or if a certain someone can commit to cruising YEAH YOU ED!!!)  Until next time.

Edited December 3, 2018 by Rogueperson

[FionaMG]

Well, we finally made it home 28 and a half hours after the final ding. We are exhausted and the cat is ecstatic. 

I will add my final thoughts to complement Rogue's at some time tomorrow when I have a clear head.

Good night all.

[death_star]

On 12/3/2018 at 11:18 AM, Rogueperson said:

 

 

I only have 1 cruise booked at the moment and that's not until December 1, 2019 (A WHOLE YEAR!!!!) on the Allure.  It will be my first time on the Allure, and I will probably do the live thread thing again, because, its a lot of fun and I don't get to write like this often.  There's a slight chance I may cram a cruise in April or May if my wife and I can swing it, (or if a certain someone can commit to cruising YEAH YOU ED!!!)  Until next time.

 

Hah another dual live thread! 🙂

[FionaMG]

My brain is still a fogged-up mess after the long journey home but here's my bit about debarkation and post-cruise hotel.

Our debarkation was smoother than Rogue's.

I had booked our post cruise day room at the Pullman for arrival between 9.30 and 10 am. On the Accor Hotels website where I booked it, you had the chance to guarantee arrival for up to 30 minutes later by putting in your credit card details and the booking could be cancelled at any time free of charge up until 6 pm the day before. I did not guarantee the arrival because at the time I booked I wasn't entirely sure if we going to go ahead with it or book a post-cruise excursion instead. Then in the end I thought if I looked like we weren't to make it in time I would just call the hotel to let them know we were running late.

Anyway, with this in mind I ticked the 9-9.30 am departure time on the preferred departure time form and we were given tag number 17, which had an estimated debarkation time of 9 am. Perfect.

As it happened, it was actually 9.15 when we dinged our final ding but we did not encounter any of the issues in the terminal that Rogue did. I think the escalator might have been working when we got off; I don't remember walking down the stairs, but I'm really not sure.

Our luggage came out very quickly and just as we arrived at the CBP line the agent marshalling it sent us to a new one, so we bypassed the people that were already waiting in line and were seen immediately. The CBP agent asked us just two questions - where was home for us, and if we would be departing the US that same day - before waving us through. There was no line for taxis either we literally walked straight out of the terminal and into a taxi with no waiting.

The taxi cost to the Pullman was $32 and change and we arrived well within our booking window. We were checked in in no time by the friendly front desk agent.

The room was more than fine for what we needed.  It was a corner room with one window overlooking the runways at the airport and the other overlooking the lake. There were toiletries in the bathroom and free water and a coffee maker with coffee supplied in the room. The public areas were very nice too.

Once we had rearranged the stuff in our bags we headed out to the little strip mall just a few minutes walk away. There was a nice-looking brunch place called First Watch in the mall where we thought we might get some lunch before heading to the airport but we had to think again when the host told us there was a 45-minute wait for a table. I guess that must mean it's pretty decent. In the end we got a couple of grab-and-go salads and some fresh fruit at the Publix instead and took it back to the hotel to eat in the room.

Our flight was due to depart at 4.45 pm so we caught the 2 pm hotel shuttle, which we had all to ourselves. It was punctual and the driver was friendly although I found it a bit hard to understand his Peruvian Spanish! We were dropped off at the appropriate entrance for our TAP flight at 2.15 pm.

Too tired to continue now tonight (I am too old to recover quickly from so many hours without sleep ) so more on the flight tomorrow.

[JamesEM]

Rogue, concerning your Diamond Lounge experience, this past May I was on the Harmony and was treated like a leper, passengers were arriving before 3 pm to stake out "their space."  Yet I was on the Allure last month and it was like old home week, everyone was very friendly.     

[sgmn]

Thank you to both of you for this review, doing the ABC islands in February so very interested in this. So sorry you were unwell Rogue, especially if it was because of food poisoning from something you ate on board. Fiona, can you say how much the post departure day room was, trying to decide weather to do that or hire a car for the day, our flight is at 6pm.

[FionaMG]

2 hours ago, sgmn said:

Fiona, can you say how much the post departure day room was, trying to decide weather to do that or hire a car for the day, our flight is at 6pm.

Sure, it was 55.37 USD including tax. I booked it on the Accor Hotels website (I am a member of their loyalty club and Pullman is a partner hotel) and it gave me the option of booking for 3 hours or for 9 hours (9 hours would have been 100.57 USD). Nine hours was too much for us, as our flight's scheduled departure time was 4.45pm, so I booked the 3-hour option. That would have had us checking out at 12.45pm but I asked the receptionist on arrival if we could keep the room until just before 2pm and he said it was no problem and there was no extra charge.

[sgmn]

12 minutes ago, FionaMG said:

Sure, it was 55.37 USD including tax. I booked it on the Accor Hotels website (I am a member of their loyalty club and Pullman is a partner hotel) and it gave me the option of booking for 3 hours or for 9 hours (9 hours would have been 100.57 USD). Nine hours was too much for us, as our flight's scheduled departure time was 4.45pm, so I booked the 3-hour option. That would have had us checking out at 12.45pm but I asked the receptionist on arrival if we could keep the room until just before 2pm and he said it was no problem and there was no extra charge.

Thanks, that's a really good price and the hotel looks lovely. We've stayed at quite a few Accor hotels in Europe

[FionaMG]

9 minutes ago, sgmn said:

Thanks, that's a really good price and the hotel looks lovely. We've stayed at quite a few Accor hotels in Europe

You're welcome. 

If you happen to have any Accor loyalty club points you might be able to use them against the booking at the Pullman. I remember someone else commenting at some point on these boards that they had done just that. (I didn't have any.)

[FionaMG]

So, our flight home.

Our flights were booked with TAP Air Portugal for a question of both convenience and price, since we live in Portugal. The scheduled departure time was 4.45 pm but the flight was delayed due to late arrival of the incoming aircraft and the actual departure time was around 6.30 pm.

We had booked and paid a supplement for exit row seats but a last minute change in the actual aircraft meant we didn't get them, which was annoying, and as a result the flight was a lot less comfortable than we were hoping for. TAP resolved the issue within 24 hours of my contacting them about it by issuing credit vouchers for the amount paid for the services not received. I don't really agree with this approach - I think they should be refunding the money - but it is clearly stated in the terms and conditions of sale that we accepted when we made the booking. 

TAP have upgraded their in-flight entertainment system since last year and alongside the seat-back screen were video sockets, an iPad port and a USB port. The screens are not touch-screen, however, but are still operated by a bulky and not very responsive remote control, although the location of this has been moved to just below the screen itself rather than set into the armrest, which is much better than before. The entertainment on offer has also been upgraded, with a huge choice of films, TV series and games, as well as music and stuff for kids.

The in-flight meals were edible. We have found that meals on this route tend to be better on the westbound leg than on the eastbound, and that continued to be the case, but there was definitely an improvement in the quality of the eastbound meal this year and, in fact, the dessert was a very good cheesecake. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take pics of the meals on the return flight, only on the outbound one.

The transatlantic section of our journey took just seven and half hours. It was a bit bumpy at times with tailwinds of 150 km/h. We arrived into Lisbon to discover it blanketed in fog, resulting in the cancellation of many flights, including our connecting flight to our local airport. This meant we had to wait seven more hours for the next one. We were given vouchers for breakfast and lunch, but no compensation is due since the issue was caused by bad weather.

When we finally arrived at our local airport and collected our luggage we noticed that the padlock was gone on one of our cases and had been replaced with one of those plastic tie things. We had actually done a DIY repair on the zip tabs where you insert the padlock prior to travelling so we thought that the padlock must have got caught up in one of the belts and pulled off, and that some kind bag operator had noticed and secured it with the tie.

Not so. When we opened it, we found a notice from TSA saying they had opened the bag to inspect it. To say we were shocked and disturbed is putting it mildly. While we understand that safety is paramount and applaud proactive measures in this respect, we have never heard of this before and consider it to be a gross and unwarranted invasion of our personal privacy. How can these people be allowed to do this? They knew where we were from the destination labels attached to the bag by the check-in agent and there was a completely visible and legible tag on the bag with our name, address and phone number, so we should have been contacted prior to them opening the bag so that we could open it for them and be present while they inspected it.

We are not sure whether we should contact them to express our disapproval. Is there any point and might it actually be detrimental to us for future trips to the US? Thoughts, anyone?

[NateUpNorth]

I wouldn't do anything about the bag check.

Like it says on the little form "required by law". They've got all the bases covered allowing them to do this.

I wouldn't be too concerned, it's a pretty common occurance.

We cross the US border very often from Canada, being in a border city. They could demand and search my cellphone if they wanted. You just gotta be OK with the idea that at customs you pretty much give up all your privacy rights for the privilege of entering the country.

(and let me tell ya, we've had some ornery and disgruntled customs agents!!! LOL)

[FionaMG]

26 minutes ago, NateUpNorth said:

I wouldn't do anything about the bag check.

Like it says on the little form "required by law". They've got all the bases covered allowing them to do this.

I wouldn't be too concerned, it's a pretty common occurance.

We cross the US border very often from Canada, being in a border city. They could demand and search my cellphone if they wanted. You just gotta be OK with the idea that at customs you pretty much give up all your privacy rights for the privilege of entering the country.

(and let me tell ya, we've had some ornery and disgruntled customs agents!!! LOL)

That's kind of what I thought. We were just so shocked, never having heard of this before. Thanks for the feedback. 

 

Are you packed yet? 

[Paulette3028]

1 hour ago, FionaMG said:

Sure, it was 55.37 USD including tax. I booked it on the Accor Hotels website (I am a member of their loyalty club and Pullman is a partner hotel) and it gave me the option of booking for 3 hours or for 9 hours (9 hours would have been 100.57 USD). Nine hours was too much for us, as our flight's scheduled departure time was 4.45pm, so I booked the 3-hour option. That would have had us checking out at 12.45pm but I asked the receptionist on arrival if we could keep the room until just before 2pm and he said it was no problem and there was no extra charge.

 

The only time we had to 'occupy' ourselves following a cruise and might need to consider a 'day hotel rental' was when we sailed from San Juan on Jewel doing the Southern Caribbean.  RCCL had an excursion that took care of your luggage (even your carryon) and had it meet you at the airport after the excursion.  The only requirement was that your flight had to leave from the airport AFTER 2pm or maybe it was 4pm.   We were off the ship easily without much fuss at all and off to our excursion.  Ours wasn't until 6pm so we had no problem.   It all went rather smoothly.

[NateUpNorth]

8 minutes ago, FionaMG said:

That's kind of what I thought. We were just so shocked, never having heard of this before. Thanks for the feedback. 

 

Are you packed yet? 

 

99% done.

Leaving work in another 2 hours.

Last check of the suitcase before loading into the car, next stop airport!!!!

 

One last thought on the bag check I forgot to mention......... they used to do it and not even leave the note!!! Really left people wondering who took the lock off the bag. I think they started leaving a note when people started accusing the airlines of going through their stuff.

Edited December 5, 2018 by NateUpNorth

[FionaMG]

1 minute ago, Paulette3028 said:

 

The only time we had to 'occupy' ourselves following a cruise and might need to consider a 'day hotel rental' was when we sailed from San Juan on Jewel doing the Southern Caribbean.  RCCL had an excursion that took care of your luggage (even your carryon) and had it meet you at the airport after the excursion.  The only requirement was that your flight had to leave from the airport AFTER 2pm or maybe it was 4pm.   We were off the ship easily without much fuss at all and off to our excursion.  Ours wasn't until 6pm so we had no problem.   It all went rather smoothly.

That's what we have done in the past and would have preferred this time too, except that only two were offered, one to the Everglades, which we have done before and didn't want to repeat, and the Miami hoho, which we thought was too expensive for what was included given that our flight was scheduled to depart at 4.45pm. The money we saved by not doing the excursion paid for our lunch and meant we were able to go to the airport a little bit later.

You would think that a company like Royal would be able to come up with a better selection considering how keen they usually are to take advantage of revenue opportunities! 

[FionaMG]

1 minute ago, NateUpNorth said:

 

99% done.

Leaving work in another 2 hours.

Last check of the suitcase before loading into the car, next stop airport!!!!

Yay! Enjoy! 

[Paulette3028]

6 hours ago, JamesEM said:

Rogue, concerning your Diamond Lounge experience, this past May I was on the Harmony and was treated like a leper, passengers were arriving before 3 pm to stake out "their space."  Yet I was on the Allure last month and it was like old home week, everyone was very friendly.     

  

We have notched enough cruises to know that on any cruise you can and will find obnoxious cruisers.  Our first 9 day cruise was to the ABC islands on Navigator over a year ago.   Because it was a longer cruise, it had almost no children.  It had a great number of upper level CAS members and some of them do have their nose in the air (NOT many).  By night 3  you know who to avoid.  As we personally become D+ on our next cruise, I hope I never/ever get that feeling of entitlement that some cruisers have gotten.  I will say, that I did MISS having some children on board, that was weird.  Navigator will go through a refurb that will give her the waterslides and not having lots of children maybe a good thing, since it would give someone like me more available time on them (LOL).....but Royal has Navigator changing itineraries, not long after her refurb when she will be doing the 3/4 Bahama cruises.....and kids aplenty will abound again.

[FionaMG]

Finally, final thoughts.

 

We were much luckier than Rogue. Neither of us got sick so we were able to enjoy our cruise to the full and it was great.

I'm going to follow Rogue's outline for my final thoughts because that will make it easier to make comparisons between our experiences if anybody is interested in doing so.

 

Loyalty status: We did not get to use the Diamond Lounge on this sailing because we did not hit the required number of points for Diamond until three days into it, so we were considered Emerald for the whole sailing. We think this is unfair and commented on it in the questionnaire. There is a loyalty ambassador on board with full access to your entire cruising history with Royal. They should have the power (in our opinion) to up your status as soon as you have obtained the requisite number of points. I suppose we could have approached the LA on board and asked but since I know the rules I did not feel comfortable about putting him/her (don't actually know if it was a man or a woman) on the spot and forcing him/her to choose between turning us down and breaking the rules. We will look forward to taking advantage of it on our next cruise, particularly with regards to the coffee machine and the three free drinks in the evening, which will cut our on-board spend to practically nil.

 

Embarkation: When we arrived the cameras were not working and everybody was being given wrist bands to alert the security people at the top of the gangway that they needed to take pics there. This caused a bit of a blockage but not overly so. This was about 1 pm, so it could have been different at other times.

 

The ship: We too would sail Navigator (or the other ships in the same class) again. We particularly enjoy the Royal Promenade just to sit and people watch while having a snack in the evening or a drink at bedtime. We did notice that some noise seeped from the promenade into our promenade view stateroom on deck seven, especially when the singer was performing in the pub, which was right opposite our room. I think for future sailings in one of these staterooms I would look for one towards one of the ends. The view from the room in the centre of the promenade is not sufficiently amazing to make it a must-have location. We too found the staff to be extremely helpful and friendly although I was seriously underwhelmed by the Head Waiter in the MDR who never even took the trouble to introduce himself to us, let alone ask us about our dining experience.

 

The food: This was our very first experience of specialty dining and I only pulled the trigger because there was a BOGO offer in the cruise planner that worked out to a dollar equivalent of 14.50 per person per meal. We are not foodies and have always found the food in the MDR to be sufficient for our needs but at that price we reckoned it was worth giving it a go. We had Chops on the first night and Giovanni's on the second night. Chops was good but Giovanni's was outstanding. Nevertheless, we would not do either again without a special offer rate because we just don't think it's worth it for us. Obviously YMMV.

For the remaining seven nights we ate all of our dinners in the MDR and although it was a bit hit or miss sometimes it was satisfactory on the whole. There is no doubt that quality is waning in comparison to our early days of cruising (our first cruise was in 2001) and we were not impressed with the new menus. On a couple of evenings we (Fernando, especially, since he is a bit of a picky eater) were stretched to find something we fancied. We did have to send a couple of dishes back: a roasted meat dish that Fernando had ordered and was mostly fat, and a NY strip loin that I ordered medium rare and which came out still kicking in my plate.

I was very disappointed that there was no chocolate soufflé for dessert any night (unless it was offered on night 2, when I don't think either Rogue or I got a look at the menu) as that is one of my all-time favourite desserts on Royal (my top favourite is baklava but I can't remember ever seeing that on a menu on a Caribbean cruise).

On a couple of nights I resorted to the desserts from the kids' menu, which then started our table mates doing the same. 

I liked the idea of the buffet in the MDR both at breakfast and lunch, as a complement to the cooked to order menu, because the MDR was altogether a more civilised experience than the WJ. We did not actually use the cooked to order menu at all.

The food in the WJ was pretty decent on the whole. The curries were very good and so were the desserts. I had curry and two desserts whenever we had lunch there. I just didn't like the layout of the place though and it was a complete zoo at peak times, so we did our best to avoid those times.

 

Activities: Totally agree with Rogue that the offering was a bit thin on the ground. I had found copies of the Compass from the corresponding 2017 cruise online and there seemed to be a lot more going on on that cruise. It wasn't a big issue for us because we don't usually get involved much in the activities but I can see how some people would be disappointed in this respect.

We missed most of the shows too, mainly due to the timing. Anything that is scheduled to take place in the two hours prior to the start of late seating dining is essentially going to be a non-starter for me because that's my gym time. This meant we missed the upper tier event too, which was scheduled for 7.15 pm on day 7. As a still lowly Emerald (grrrrr) and a non-drinker, this was definitely not worth giving up my work-out for.

Also agree with Rogue as regards the juggler. I enjoyed the parts of his act where he had a "volunteer" from the audience on stage with him but the middle part, which presumably was meant to be comedy, fell flat for me.

 

Ports: We visited Aruba and Curação last year on our Serenade cruise and were particularly looking forward to Aruba's Eagle Beach, which is exactly what we like in a beach, long and sandy, letting us go for a long walk along the water's edge. Blue Bay Beach in Curação disappointed us a bit but that was because it was the wrong type of beach for us. I can see why others with different tastes rave about it. We had never been to either Labadee or Bonaire before. We enjoyed Labadee as a relaxing beach day but again it's not a patch on Eagle. And Bonaire, the little island tour was nice enough and interesting but the beach was a disappointment (albeit in this case expected to some extent), so it would not be on our list of priority ports for future cruises.

 

Debarkation: I pretty much covered this in my earlier post about our post-cruise experience but for anyone who didn't read that, we were given tags that corresponded to our desired debarkation time and everything went very quickly and smoothly for us.

 

Overall, we had a great cruise. We don't have any more booked at the moment but I have already started looking.  We would like to go back to St Thomas so, funnily enough, we are also looking at Allure for December 2019, but the week after Rogue.

 

I have really enjoyed being a part of this live thread, so thanks again to Rogue for inviting me along. If there's anything else we haven't mentioned I'll be glad to try and answer, if I can.

 

 

 

Edited December 5, 2018 by FionaMG

[bobmacliberty]

Thanks to both Fiona and Rogue for this live review.  Very interesting seeing a cruise from the perspective of 2 different people.  I'm interested in seeing both of your comments about lack of activities.  I made the same observation on a recent cruise but wondered if it was more about me...been on enough cruises that some activities no longer interest me and I skip right over them on the cruise compass.  The cruise compass does appear to be smaller than it used to be.

 

Thanks again for a great review.

[Rogueperson]

I should add one final point for disembarkation.

 

I flew out of Fort Lauderdale, which I normally would not do sailing to/from Miami.  So its a farther ride to the airport (about 45 minutes).  I chose SAS Transportation.  For $15/person (+3 dollars if you use a credit card), they provided EXCELLENT service.  The instruction on the email was to call a number before you enter customs, which i did.  He told me to call back after I got out because his guy was still around.  I got another call maybe 5 minutes later from the actual drive who told me to call his number instead.  I got out of the terminal, called the number, and boom, he pulls up and picks us up and away we went to Fort Lauderdale.  Easiest transport ever, and even cheaper than Uber (which costed about 40-45 bucks i heard).

[cruisinfromtampa]

10 hours ago, FionaMG said:

When we finally arrived at our local airport and collected our luggage we noticed that the padlock was gone on one of our cases and had been replaced with one of those plastic tie things. We had actually done a DIY repair on the zip tabs where you insert the padlock prior to travelling so we thought that the padlock must have got caught up in one of the belts and pulled off, and that some kind bag operator had noticed and secured it with the tie.

Not so. When we opened it, we found a notice from TSA saying they had opened the bag to inspect it. To say we were shocked and disturbed is putting it mildly. While we understand that safety is paramount and applaud proactive measures in this respect, we have never heard of this before and consider it to be a gross and unwarranted invasion of our personal privacy. How can these people be allowed to do this? They knew where we were from the destination labels attached to the bag by the check-in agent and there was a completely visible and legible tag on the bag with our name, address and phone number, so we should have been contacted prior to them opening the bag so that we could open it for them and be present while they inspected it.

We are not sure whether we should contact them to express our disapproval. Is there any point and might it actually be detrimental to us for future trips to the US? Thoughts, anyone? 

 

It is quite common, and completely random.  I would say my baggage gets searched 1 out of every 5 trips I take.  You would be wasting your time by calling...they won't care.  Love it or hate it, they are well within their rights to do it based on current policy.

 

 

[SteelMagnolia9]

FionaMG, I live in the US and my bags are opened and inspected occasionally with the note inside from TSA, even on domestic flights. Part of flying post 9-11. Very common.

 

 

[Rogueperson]

For those of you who enjoyed my live thread, I am doing a Princess cruise in a couple of days.  I'm staring a live thread for that one as well.  Its only a 5 night cruise, but here it is.  I will do lots of comparisons to Royal Caribbean.

 

 

First thing I notice, this ship has internet that rivals Royal Caribbean's O3B Ships from the previous reviews i've read.