Royal Caribbean International
Explorer of The Seas Cruise Review
Eastern Caribbean

Sheri O.
Age: 40
Occupation: Business Owner
Number of Cruises: 5
Sailing Date: January 22nd, 2006

My husband and I had mixed reviews about this cruise. The ports were great. We had a great time in San Juan, sightseeing and shopping. Pan America Pier is too far of a drive in my opinion considering most people go to Old Town San Juan for shopping. Another pier with walking distance would have been much better. St. Martin was very fun and full of shopping as well. Typical tourist town shopping, music was a little too much after 4 hours. St. Thomas was very fun, parasailing and screaming eagle ride is highly recommended! Nassau was my husband's favorite port for cleanliness. Our shore excursion was Breezes all inclusive. This resort was filthy.....if you like to booze it up then you'd love it. The food was fair. It was hard to enjoy eating because the floors, tables and chairs were just soooo dirty. Only one pool and the brochure read three pools or so. Not the case. The ship advertised cutting this one short or longer is no problem, catch a cab for $12.00 one way. Not the case at ALL! We were snubbed by three cab drivers (chose to miss the bus and take a cab) who didn't seem to want to drive to Breezes, which is located at cable beach. Finally we found a cab driver who admitted it was not worth the price...we said name your price and he said $20.00. We were fine with that. According to this cab driver, the advertised price of a cab to cable beach on the cruise ship is misleading and not a fair price for the cost of the drive. We wasted almost an hour finding this cab driver so needless to say we really picked his brain about this and he bent our ear about the cab fee being too low. About the room, it was a suite, no complaints except on the second day I went to use the Jacuzzi bath tub when I couldn't figure out how turn on the shower head hose. I needed to obviously rinse myself and the tub out. Well, after two phone calls where everyone talked to us like we were mentally challenged, finally our stateroom attendant informed us that the previous tenants broke the knob that turns on the shower head hose......so we were out of luck. I was very angry about this. The ship should have fixed this problem before we boarded or at some point during the cruise when we were off the ship for several hours. They advertised this amenity in the description of the room, the least they could do is fix the problem. Also may light bulbs were out?? What's up with that, don't they have a maintenance crew? Change the gosh darn light bulb HELLOO!

Finally, room service for breakfast on a 7-day cruise, got it right only ONCE! That's right, they screwed it up every day...one morning they forgot all together. And we had an excursion that day. What a nightmare that was! We also could have used a clock in the room, besides the one on the phone...which could not be seen at night. That was very surprising to me. The crew was friendly, but didn't enforce the rules of the ship, i.e. no caps and swim suits in the dining areas. And on several nights there were kids playing in the elevators and running around completely unsupervised. That was very annoying. Disembarking was a holy nightmare as well. Although everyone had color coded luggage tags and were supposed to leave the ship upon their color being called, no one abided by this system. It was a mad dash to exit the ship....people standing in front of the doorways, making it impossible for those of us whose color had been called to exit. Everyone was so rude....When we got to the door, the cruise personnel didn't ask to see your color tags.....they just let you off. What good is the system if they don't enforce it?

I think I'll stick to Holland America! They got it right!

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