We have just returned from B2B Five night/ Four night Med. Navigator Of The Seas out of Barcelona. Three of our party of six cruised N.O.T.S. in it’s inaugural year & three were new to Voyager Class ships. I was impressed by the overall condition of the ship after hundreds of thousands of pax had made their mark on it & I was pleased to see it could still cut the mustard in the Wow Factor Department.
CABINS: Two cruises, Two different Cabins. First was Promenade View over the Two Poets Pub, good for watching the Grand Parades. Second was Oceanview, both were of a good standard of cleanliness & showed little sign of ageing. Well done RCI.
FOOD: We all considered the food in the Main Dining & Windjammer to be of a very good standard for a 4* cruise line but here comes my/our major complaint. For the last fifty years of cruising, Second Sitting Dining has traditionally been 8.30pm, Give or take 15 minutes on all lines. RCI in Europe have moved to 9.15 pm which for most of us of a certain age found to be unacceptable to our digestive system. Finishing a large rich meal, with wine, at 11.00pm night after night, left us all with uncomfortable sleepless nights. This in my view is nothing to do with customer satisfaction, but more to do with breaking the traditional dining times & moving to a Freestyle Dining.
ENTERTAINMENT: Standard RCI plus the Grand Parades in the Royal Promenade.
The Ice Shows are always a very high standard & not to be missed, but come on RCI this is the identical show to Navigators Inaugural Year (2002). A change is surely due for repeat cruisers.
FORMAL NIGHTS: Well what a difference between the two cruises!! First Cruise 5 nighter, Marseilles, Cagliari, Palermo had 1800+ Brits, A large Spanish contingent, German in third place & then the rest of the world. Plenty of Tux’s worn by the old gits like me & suits & ties by the younger generation. Second Cruise 4 nighter Villefranche & overnight in Ibiza, Brits down to 200+ & replaced by the local Spanish Youth (Ibiza probably had an effect) Tux’s were clearly below 10% (I counted 14 on the Formal Night Photo display next day) & a new dress code was born! Crumpled T Shirt, Crumpled Shorts & Backpack surgically attached over the right shoulder with complete wardrobe inside, a replacement Crumpled T Shirt & obligatory bottle of water. Remember this was Formal Night or was I having a nightmare? ‘Scruffs’ could be the New RCI Dress Code.
My final moan was an important issue ‘No Alcohol Hand Wash anywhere on the ship’. This was picked up by half of our party, as soon as we boarded, as they are NHS employed. I overheard someone ask for handwash as he entered the Windjammer & he was told they no longer have it! It appears that handwashing has little deterrent to Novo as it’s been found to spread orally i.e. is an airborne bug. This being said, after the last half a dozen cruises with dispensers around the ships & crew spraying your hands everytime you reboard to go to nothing, no explanations, people get concerned. A short explanation in the Daily Scrod would have alleviated peoples concern. These gripes aside the overall cruise experience was a good one & look forward to my next adventure.