DukeASUGirl

Entertainment: This is where Royal positively sparkles. Go see iSkate on the first night and at least 1 or 2 more times. They had 2 shows on Night 1, 2 shows on Night 4, and 1 show on the afternoon of Day 7. We missed the first seating on Night 1 because of dinner, but made it to the 9:15 seating. We skipped it on Night 4 because dinner was running late and the later seating wouldn't get out until 11 pm - but we had a very early shore excursion (and were also losing an hour of sleep anyway due to a time change), so we decided to just go see it on the last afternoon instead. SO good. It really is a fantastic production! (We were originally supposed to sail on Harmony last fall because my daughter's coach was taking a hiatus from the rink to skate in the Harmony of the Seas shows, but we had to cancel our cruise because the hurricane made it impossible for us to get to Port Canaveral - Delta canceled our flight and couldn't reschedule us in time. Royal gave us Future Cruise Credit, but we wouldn't be able to use it before Jaclyn's skating contract ended, so we decided to just go on a ship closer to home instead of flying.) Her coach told us that Navigator's iSkate is her favorite show of the entire fleet, so we knew it would be good. But it really did blow us away. And we're a skating family, so we watch competitions and skating shows all the time! As for the Royal Theatre, our favorite production show was Showgirl. I watched it twice (due to a miscommunication, my daughter didn't end up going with us to the 8 pm, so I insisted she come with me at 10:15) because it was that good. On the whole, the men are stronger dancers than the women, but that's a bit of an unfair comparison because a portion of the time the women are reduced to just walking in a straight line with showgirl feathers on her head/back. The can-can number was amazing! I also really liked Ballroom Fever, especially Nastya and Dima (the professional ballroom couple from Ukraine). I'd taken a master class with them many years ago, back when I competed on the collegiate level, so it was fun to see them perform again. Take their cha-cha class! It was at 11 am on the Cabo day, before we got to port. I also enjoyed Oh What a Night (the Franke Valli tribute show), which was flown in from Vegas the morning before (met the ship in Puerto Vallarta). But my dad thought it needed less "humor" and more songs. I heard that same complaint from several other people. The main comedian Angelo Tsoukalis was funny, but the "physical comedy" unicycle guy was kinda meh.

Dining: We had My Time Dining, and due to food allergies, we made a standing 6:45 pm reservation for our party of 6. We loved our waiter Meckinson and assistant waiter Clive. They were absolutely wonderful. Meckinson heads home to India on July 7 for 2 months for a well-deserved break. Our daughter's food allergies were much more standard (peanuts/tree nuts) than mine (parsley, cilantro, sesame, chickpea). She's not an adventurous eater, so she stuck with chicken fingers off the kids menu every night except Night 7 when she went crazy and ordered a grilled cheese. Thankfully our son likes to try new things. He's our kid who actually qualified for Kids Sail Free (she missed it by 5 months), but he ordered off the adult menu every night - usually steak. Because of my food allergies, the supervisory waiter for the section would stop by every night and take my order for the next night, so they would be able to alert the kitchen ahead of time to prepare something special without my allergens - usually the biggest issue was parsley, but sometimes cilantro. They would bring me the menu for the next day (or I could look on the app), and they would also let me know if they didn't think I'd enjoy that selection once it was altered to be safe, so I could choose something else as needed. We had the same table every night except for Night 4, after Mazatlan. We didn't enjoy that port, so returned to the ship early, and as a result we were ready to eat earlier than 6:45, so we decided to just go early and see if they could seat us. We got there at 6, and there actually was a table available for us because a different party of 6 decided to skip the main dining room that night. It meant we didn't sit in our normal section, though, so the supervisor on that floor had to hunt down my special order ticket. So we stuck to 6:45 after that. We enjoyed everything we tried in main dining room. I know there have been a number of complaints about the current menu, but we liked it. We brought our carry-on bottle of wine to dinner 4 nights, and never got a corkage fee. We ate in Windjammer most mornings (although I did have breakfast in dining room one morning), and some lunches. I ate at El Loco Fresh for lunch a couple of times when I didn't want to leave the pool area. Never tried the pizza in the Cafe Promenade. I snuck peeks at it in the glass display case and on people's trays as they went back to their cabin with a late night snack, and never found it appealing. the crust looked like Peter Piper Pizza or a prebaked shell from the grocery store. We got room service continental breakfast for the kids on the morning of our early shore excursion so they could sleep a little later while my husband and I braved the Windjammer.

I'm going to do this in sections. __________________________________ Embarkation/disembarkation: Port of Los Angeles - San Pedro has to be the worst cruise terminal I've ever sailed out of in the US. The entire process was just so chaotic compared to other terminals I've been to. Probably the smoothest I've ever experienced was Port of Long Beach (Carnival), but have also enjoyed the process in Seattle, Port Canaveral, and Miami. Houston was okay, but still better than San Pedro. We had the 10:30-11 check-in time, and our entry to the terminal kept being blocked by people trying to enter early for their 1 pm check-in. We literally stood for 20 minutes at the curb trying to flag down a porter while people who just arrived would get one immediately. Porter after porter kept skipping us. My mom was in a scooter, so we did get taken out of the long lines inside the terminal once we got to the front to be able to enter the building, but even getting to the entrance of the terminal was a process with rude people who kept trying to enter 2 hours early. But once we got on the ship, it was much better. We skipped the safety briefing until closer to sail time and headed straight for the Windjammer because our hotel didn't include breakfast.

It will depend on the ship, but the app should tell you what time it opens on your ship. I just got off Navigator, where MTD officially opens at 6:45, but we got seated as early as 6 one night by showing up and apologizing, but asking nicely. They happened to have a table ready for us - a group who decided to skip their early seating due to a port day. We made a standing reservation for 6:45 every night, but if our regular table was ready when we showed up, they would seat us. We got in as early as 6:35 that way. (The night we asked to be seated at 6, we didn't get our regular table/waiters.) We did not miss any shows.

Just got home after sticking around LA for a couple of days after our cruise on Navigator of the Seas. Will write an in-depth review once I've had a chance to decompress from the drive, but in the meantime, feel free to ask any questions!

THIS! 100% this. We have an amazing backyard. Seriously, people see photos and assume it's a pool at a resort (the backyard backs up to a desert mountain preserve, so the views are phenomenal), and do we use it? I went into the pool for about an hour today, but it was the first time October and I was the only one in my family who got in. We just don't use it - we'd rather be DOING something. Same thing with a balcony on a cruise ship. We've had them and just end up not even using it because we prefer to be out and about.

Honestly, we didn't use the balcony anywhere near enough to justify the additional expense, and I didn't sleep as well as I do in the cave (aka interior). I'm the girl who doesn't turn on lights when getting up in the middle of the night to go pee. I'm incredibly sensitive to light. Like I said, even a nightlight is too bright for me. LOL Interior is perfect.

Nope. Honestly, the lack of natural light is the biggest draw for me. I sleep AMAZINGLY on cruise ships specifically because I always choose interiors. I've done an outside once, and a balcony once, and will never do that again. Way too much light with either of them - I LOVE having it pitch black in there! It's the best sleep ever, but then again I'm one of those people who has blackout curtains in my bedroom at home because otherwise when the sunlight starts streaming in before 5 am in the summer I'm absolutely miserable. I detest nightlights, and can't sleep if there's one in my room. Literally. It's way too much light and keeps me awake. My parents refuse to cruise in anything less than a balcony, so for me it's the best of both worlds. I can hang out on theirs if I really feel compelled, but personally I'd rather just be out and about around the ship rather than hiding away in my room.

Do they still have printed Cruise Compasses?

That's super frustrating for people like my mother who don't have a smart phone and thus would prefer print. Thank you for asking!

Maybe you could rent a car at San Pedro and return it to LAX, and then that way you could create your own tour. If you got off on the early side, you could conceivably already have gotten bags, gone through customs, and rented the car by 9, and then would have almost 6 hours to explore.

We stayed there the night before a Carnival cruise in 2018, and it was a lot of fun! We loved exploring the exhibits and all the history. And it was SO easy to get to the ship the next morning!

Exactly - San Pedro isn't a destination in itself. It's really just a place to stay the night before the cruise.

It's not in Gifts and Gear for the Navigator 7-day to Mexican Riviera. 😞

Wish this was offered for my cruise! I just looked in Gifts and Gear, and it isn't listed at all.

I absolutely LOVE interior cabins. I know people call them broom closets, but to me it's literally just a place to shower and sleep, nothing more. We're always out and about all over the ship and really only return to change and go to bed. Speaking of sleep, I sleep SO amazingly in those interior cabins! It's SO dark, which is fantastic for me. I'm one of those people for whom a nightlight is too bright and I can't fall asleep, so the whole idea of natural light for the cabin really doesn't appeal to me at all. My parents will never cruise in anything less than an Oceanview Balcony, so if we're really want to escape for the crowds of the upper decks, we could just go hang out with them. But really we don't do much in the way of just lounging around. When we've had our own balconies we literally never went out there.

It's probably sold out. We sail on a May 19 cruise, and have had it available to select for months now.

We hit 45 days today, but got the invitation to bid on a Royal Up a couple of weeks ago.

Thank you!!!! We'll be on the 5/19 sailing - have an amazing time!

Thank you!

All the local public pools or hotel pools that have waterslides near us require the kid to be 48 inches, even on slides smaller than the ship's slides. So this wouldn't make me bat an eye at all. I guess it's all what your experience has been, but 48 inches seems to be a standard at many places.

That's pretty standard. I've never been to a waterpark (or pool that has good waterslides) that doesn't require you to be 48 inches for the better waterslides.

If anyone has a recent 7-day entertainment schedule for Navigator, I'd love to see it! The 7-day cruises only happen once a month, so it's been hard to find this.

I tried at 9, and it didn't work. I've been periodically trying and still nothing, so I'm going to try to stay awake for the next 54 minutes, but I'm already dragging. LOL Thanks!

Royal Caribbean is headquarterered in Miami, so Eastern time zone. My 45-day check-in is tonight at midnight, but I'm getting conflicting information. Is it midnight Eastern (where Royal is headquartered) or is it midnight Pacific (where the ship is located)? I live in Arizona, and the cruise goes out of LA, so I'm on the same time zone as the ship currently (because we're rational and don't daylight save in AZ unlike the rest of y'all with your silly Spring Forward), so I'm hoping the check-in is based on time at headquarters, because then that's only 9 pm for me. Much easier to stay awake to check in at 9 pm than at midnight, but you do what you gotta do. I'd assumed it was based on ship's time, but people on the board for my sailing on another social media are saying it's based on Miami. I guess I could always try at 9 pm, and if it isn't open yet, try again in 3 hours.