Navigator of the Seas Feb 17, with Universal Studios pre-cruise

We are a family of five, and this is our second Royal Caribbean cruise.

We chose this cruise for the unique Itinerary, and did a three day stay at Universal Studios ,in Orlando, prior to the cruise.

We stayed onsite at Royal Pacific Resort, great hotel. Early park admission, express pass included, and club level food and drinks were worth the extra money to stay here. We booked 3 day park to park tickets and were able to see City Walk, do both parks at leisure, repeat anything we wanted to. 2 days would have been possible, but a bit more rushed.

Our kids are big Harry Potter fans, and we found both of these areas really outstanding.

We were a bit nervous about driving to Miami from Orlando, but we had no problems, leaving at 7 am and arriving to Miami port area around 10:30 - 11:00.

Drop off area in Miami was more chaotic, and signage was a bit confusing, compared to Port Canaveral, but we figured out where to go, and were in line for security around 11:15.

Check in went smoothly, and we were soon on board, lunch and the pool area next, the kids hit the pool, but it was too cold for us. Once rooms were cleared we headed up to our cabin.

We were extremely disappointed to find our room dirty and layers of dust, broken cabinet doors, we had to contact housekeeping, and they were able to resolve our problems, but it was an aggravating way to start the cruise.

We recently did the Freedom of Seas earlier, and found the ship layout similar, so it helped getting around and finding things.

We did the BOGO dining plan, first night at Sabor and second at Giovanni.

Sabor was really good, a bit slow in the service, and the guac was great too, however it was somehow not as good as we remembered or anticipated, maybe the experience of table side preparation missing had something to do with that.

Giovanni's was excellent, especially as a discounted BOGO promotion, we had great servers and great food.

Every other night we did late seating at the main dining room, pretty good food, our waiter was great, assistant waiter not so much, but we always had fun and they were really good dealing with our one child's food allergies. On our last sea day we did lunch at Izumi, it was really, really good and a nice change from regular lunch fare.

The ice dancing show was really great, glad we decided to go this time. We didn't do many of the nightly shows, but the ones we went to were pretty entertaining, including the Elton John tribute, the Alley Cat doo-wop group, and we saw the guitar player and piano player at the various bars.

On our sea days we spent time at the various pools, flow rider, mini put. The kids were quite happy with Adventure Ocean, lots of activities and the staff were really good with the kids. we found there were lots of servers around the pool to take drink orders, and had great service at the R bar too.

LABADEE - spent the day at columbus cove, swimming was good, beach was nice, kids got to practice with their snorkel equipment, nice sunny day

CURACAO- took a cab to mambo beach, snorkelled, swam, walked the beach, nice beach but it was pay for use of everything, adds up soon for 5 people. we got a cab back to the ship and after lunch dropped our youngest off at Adventure Ocean, then went on a walking tour around the pontoon bridge and town. The bridge was really neat, the town was vibrant and friendly.

ARUBA- we did a tour called Trikes Aruba, it was really fun, we saw the main sites, got lots of cool pictures, we did the little church, light house, rock formations, two beaches.really great fun and a one of a kind experience, really glad we did this. We had planned on going to the beach after this tour but decided to head back and chill on the boat after getting back around 1 pm.

BONAIRE- we did the afternoon snorkel trip with Woodwind Snorkelling, it was really great, awesome snorkelling, even better crew and boat, well run, educational, environmentally aware. we got great pictures saw lots of fish and even turtles. we had to book this really early and were so glad we did.

Disembarkation was awful, we had breakfast, met at the assigned area at 8 am, then waited and waited, and waited, then were finally called and made to walk a huge line all around the main dining room and then wait again on the other side. 2 hours later we were going through customs, 20 minutes from clearing customs we were on I-95 driving North.

Thanks for the feedback. We too have had excellent excursions with Woodwind.

Some pictures of our Aruba, and Bonaire excursions

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Thanks for the review.

Yay, glad to hear getting on wasn't too bad. We are leaving on the 17th so I appreciate the review[emoji4]

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