Review of Navigator of the Seas - Aug 12th to 26th

Hello

We recently came off the Navigator of the Seas on a 14 night cruise around the western Mediterranean so I thought I would list a few points that might be useful to others cruising this ship in the future.

The main point to make is that we had a fantastic time! So much so that we've already booked a 3 night cruise on Independence of the Seas in October half term. There were 3 of us sailing - husband, wife & 5 year old daughter.

I thought it would be useful - you might disagree! - to point out some things that we were either surprised about or would have benefited from knowing in advance, to better prepare. So here goes....

1. I've seen a lot of people in Royal Caribbean reviews saying the food wasn't too good. This is obviously very subjective but our experience from mostly eating in the Windjammer was that it was great - especially the puddings! I would agree with other reviewers that the choice in the Windjammer doesn't vary an awful lot from day to day, although I would say that's largely because the choice is so wide on any given day that there's not much else they could replace it with. I will caveat that by explaining that we are not in any way food connoisseurs & so maybe our expectations are just lower, however we had no issues.
   
2. On the 3 or 4 times we went to the main dining room for dinner - usually the formal nights - the service was good & the food was too. It was hot when it arrived. It usually took about an hour & a half to two hours from start to finish - they do warn you of that in the daily schedule though.
   
3. We went to Chops Grille on one evening as it was our tenth anniversary & it was great. The food was fantastic. My wife is a sea food fan & paid extra for the sea food platter which was amazing. We were worried about taking our 5 year old to a "posh" restaurant but the staff in there were really great with her & couldn't do enough for her, which really helped make it a memorable meal for our special occasion.
   
4. I mentioned above that we mostly ate in the Windjammer. That was because the times for eating in the main dining room didn't really work with our young daughter. There were almost always kids games, disco or karaoke in the Star Lounge each evening but that usually started at 6.30. The main dining room opened for dinner at 5.30 so there wasn't time to eat there without missing almost all the kids fun. So we tended to eat at the Windjammer when it opened at 6 & get to the Star Lounge by 6.45 ish, still with plenty of time for our daughter to join in with the fun.
   
5. We went to Johnny Rockets once & the food was good, but compared to the food that's available for free, we didn't think it was worth the extra cost incurred.
   
6. Our daughter loved the kids activities. The entertainment team who did the kids activities - especially the ones I mentioned in the Star Lounge - were great. Its just a shame they didn't start an hour later to give time to have dinner first.
   
7. We had done one previous cruise last year with Norwegian & our daughter was put off going to the kids club there after the first session as she was a bit freaked out at the way I was ushered out the door immediately after signing her in. With that in mind, we were pleased to see that on the first day on Navigator there is a session where kids can check out the kids club while parents are there too. We thought this would be a good way to ease her in. The only thing was there were so many kids around plus adults signing their kids up, that many of the activities weren't laid out so the rooms (certainly the one for the youngest kids) didn't give a good impression of the activities that the kids would be doing. It put our daughter off for a few days but eventually she went along to an afternoon session & loved it so much she wanted to go back every afternoon. Might be worth bearing that in mind if you go along on the first day.
   
8. Some of the activities on board had a minimum age of 6 which we didn't realise until we were on board. This applied to the FloRider, Climbing wall & Ice-skating sessions. Our daughter wasn't interested in any of these anyway so it didn't affect us but I don't remember reading about this beforehand. That being said, we still had plenty to do on board, even with Navigator having fewer facilities than we've seen on other ships like the Independence of the Seas.
   
9. I've seen others mention this but be warned that if you have one of the photo shoot photography sessions, the price list is eye-watering! We had one while dressed up on our anniversary & went back the following day to review the pictures. The pictures were fantastic but the first thing they try to sell you is a coffee table style book of 50 pictures for $3000 (yes, three thousand dollars). Then they offer a slightly smaller one for $2600, then one that's smaller still for $2200. Eventually I got them to show me their full price list & we eventually got down to 4 pictures for $350 as the minimum. Given that you can have all the pictures taken around the ship for the whole cruise for $250, we just couldn't do that. On the last day the photographer called our room to say they had an offer on where we could buy 1 picture for $100 but we wouldn't have been able to choose which picture out of all the ones taken, so still said no.
   
10. The Ice show that happens on sea days was great. Everyone is assigned automatically to one showing based on muster station, however in our experience the show is never quite full so if you want to pop along to a different showing you will likely be allowed in - my wife & daughter went a second time as they enjoyed the first one so much. There is a separate queue for people from other muster stations & these are let in near the start time when it's obvious it won't be full.
    
11. This might be obvious to everyone but me - the pools were filled with salt water which meant we had to occasionally get out to wipe our eyes with a towel after we'd been splashed because of the irritation the salt caused. Might be worth investing in some goggles if that's an issue.
    
12. The cruise departed Southampton & headed to the Med so the first full day was at sea while crossing the Bay of Biscay. We'd heard that could be choppy but assumed that was when the weather was iffy. Nope. We crossed it on a relatively nice day & still suffered with sea sickness & many, many others on board did too. They give out tablets on board to adults if needed, but not to kids. We purchased tablets & sea bands at one of the ports for the return trip a & we were fine on the way back. I'd recommend you take those with you even if the weather looks good.
    

So hopefully that'll be useful to someone with a holiday coming up. As I said, we had an amazing time & even the negative items above were only minor things in the scheme of things. I'd recommend this cruise to any one

Happy cruising!

Thanks for the review. My friend and I will be going in February, after the dry dock, but only for a 5 day cruise.

Thanks for review , navigator is one of our favorite ships , but I really dislike WJ on all ships. Agree on everything else glad you had a great cruise.

Thanks for the review. My friend and I will be going in February, after the dry dock, but only for a 5 day cruise.

I’m fascinated to see what they do to the navigator in dry dock. I hope you have a wonderful time

Thanks for review , navigator is one of our favorite ships , but I really dislike WJ on all ships. Agree on everything else glad you had a great cruise.

Thank you, we really did

Thank you for your review :cool:

Are there hair dryers in cabins pls and are they any good could do without lugging mine on board :cool:

Thank you for your review :cool:

Are there hair dryers in cabins pls and are they any good could do without lugging mine on board :cool:

Yes they are in the top drawer of the dresser. I have never had any issues using them. You have to keep your thumb on the button to make it go.

Thank you for your review :cool:

Are there hair dryers in cabins pls and are they any good could do without lugging mine on board :cool:

Just a heads up about the hair dryers. I usually am relatively satisfied with using the typical hotel hairdryers, they might not be quite as good as my own but to save space I'll put up with that. The hair dryers on the ships are pretty bad though, some might think they are fine but I was so sorry I didn't bring mine. Their power is poor and it took twice as long to dry my hair and usually I gave up before it was completely dry. next time I will bring my own. If you do decide to use the ship's hairdryer you can make it easier to use by putting a rubber band or duct tape on the switch so you don't have to hold it down the whole time. Just unplug it when you're done and you won't have to put it back on each time.

:halo:

Thankyou

You know the dif between drying and blow drying

Im taking my own now :D

We are taking the Navigator of the Seas next week from Southampton down to Spain/Portugal/Morocco. My husband suffers from motion sickness. Was the ship moving a lot side to side all day and night? We just did a cruise to Norway on the Koningsdam last May and the wind was very strong and you could barely feel the ship moving. Thank you for the heads up. We will bring extra tablets.

We are taking the Navigator of the Seas next week from Southampton down to Spain/Portugal/Morocco. My husband suffers from motion sickness. Was the ship moving a lot side to side all day and night? We just did a cruise to Norway on the Koningsdam last May and the wind was very strong and you could barely feel the ship moving. Thank you for the heads up. We will bring extra tablets.

Hi

We only suffered during the day on the first day at sea after leaving Southampton. It didn't interrupt any of us sleeping on the first night & we were better by the evening on that first sea day too. You could feel the ship moving that day but I was surprised by how much that movement affected us as the movement didn't feel that bad. I should add that our cabin was right at the forward end of the ship & I believe that makes it worse. There were lots of other people suffering too though so it wasn't just down to where the cabin was.

Hope that helps!

We are taking the Navigator of the Seas next week from Southampton down to Spain/Portugal/Morocco. My husband suffers from motion sickness. Was the ship moving a lot side to side all day and night? We just did a cruise to Norway on the Koningsdam last May and the wind was very strong and you could barely feel the ship moving. Thank you for the heads up. We will bring extra tablets.

HI

We are going on the same cruise going on the 30th from southampton and we have a cabin at the front of the ship so this is very useful information

Thanks

Thanks for the information. We are cruising on her in December for 5 nights. I didn't know you were assigned the ice show by muster station. We have 3 cabins in three locations so not sure if we will all be scheduled together.

They must change up the ice show assignments depending on the itinerary. We got on on the 26th for the 7-day Northern European Cities and we didn’t have an assigned ice show time. We had 3 sea days. They did the show on embarkation night, the in the first two sea days, they did two shows each day, so maybe that allows them to spread it out more. DH and I were two doors down from my mom and aunt and in the same muster station, but my sister, BIL, and niece were in the other side of the ship. We still all went together.

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Great review..