Cruise on the Navigator for free- a trip report

[wanderingviolet]

So I just returned from a short 6 day cruise aboard the Regent Navigator that I won in a promotion from my grocery store. We had a well appointed cabin with a balcony on deck 6 more towards the front of our ship, upon boarding we were greeted with a glass of champagne and there was a welcome party on the pool deck.Our steward Victor was very polite, left our rooms meticulously spotless and took care of all of our requests with a smile on his face.

 

Ports

Key West- before heading out on our sea kayak tour in the morning we enjoyed room service breakfast in our cabin. The tour began with a catamaran ride out to a set of mangrove islands where we picked up our 2 person kayaks. We wandered around the mangroves going through little inlets, we saw plenty of birds, a few rays and a nurse shark. Afterward we grabbed some lunch at Catherine's on Duval street, went to Hemingway's house to see the 6- toed kitties, and explored the neighborhoods making sure to avoid the springbreakers on Duval street in the evening.

 

Grand Cayman-the water was a little cold for us to do any swimming/snorkeling so we took a bus to Royal Palms, chilled at the beach a little and walked back to Georgetown. The walk is not bad if you are in decent shape but West Bay is quite a busy road. There is only so much rum cake you can sample and highend jewelry to look at so we headed back to the ship a little early and lounged by the pool. The beach was pretty here but there are other Caribbean islands that I greatly prefer to GC.

 

As far as the ship goes I will list the pros and cons, being that this trip was free(aside from the $50 we "donated" to the casino) I really had nothing to complain about but others may find the info useful.

 

Pro

cabins-spacious with a nice sized balcony and a comfortable bed, I also enjoyed having a nice sized soaking tub. There was a bottle of chilled champagne when we first got to our room and we were able to order 2 bottles of alcohol/liquor for our room which we took home as we could get whatever we wanted throughout the ship

 

service- the answer is never no and your glass is always full, this is the main reason to choose Regent if you are considering a luxury cruise line.

 

food- we enjoyed the breakfast buffet and greatly preferred the Compass Rose to Portofino's for dinner. Not that Portofino's was bad, we just enjoyed the food and ambiance much more at CR. I had ordered several items from the healthy selections as well as one of the sugar free desserts as their descriptions appealed to me and everything tasted as great as their full fat counterparts.

 

Sauna- I used the sauna twice and each time I had it to myself, it felt like my own personal little luxury.

 

Cons

We had rough seas one day and being a smaller ship you could definitely feel it a lot more, we also noted the well documented vibration towards the back end of the ship and were grateful our cabin was more forward.

 

This is my own personal pet peeve but the king size beds are actually 2 double pushed together.While the beds were extremely comfortable for sleeping this made it difficult to snuggle with your significant other.

 

 

 

We had never been on a pleasure cruise before (though we had both been stationed on aircraft carrier and thus have spent plenty of time at sea), generally we like the freedom of being able to explore the area we are in without any time restraints.In general we thoroughly enjoyed this cruise but will continue to primarily take land based vacations, but will happily return if Harris Teeter decides to invite us back next year!