daleandrews

We will be watching as well! We sail Glasgow to NYC, 23 days, departing on September 2. Optimistically expecting a great trip. Hope they have most of the kinks out by the inaugural -- I note that they cancelled the formal christening and shake down cruise for media that was supposed to take place the week before the inaugural cruise but they are still planning for a media open house of the ship the two days before the inaugural. Hoping for some videos of the actual ship interior!

Excursions were posted in mid-February for our September 2 sailing out of Glasgow.

FYI -- After contacting Explora concerning glitches in the sign-in program as of today, 2 days later, all fixed and all is well. Signed in and boarding passes received for our September 2 departure!

See you there!

Our TA and his wife are traveling with us on the same trip and he can't make the system work either! Looking forward to laughing over this on board with a drink in hand!

Nope -- it got everything wrong!

We received an email from Explora yesterday (June 3) advising us that we can now check in for our September 2 cruise from Glasgow to (eventually) NYC. I attempted to work my way through the sign in process today but encountered a maddening number of glitches. First, information that I entered and saved was then displayed incorrectly after saving. Specifically, the program kept transposing numbers entered for our passports and then changing the dates entered. These errors I eventually corrected through re-entering, and then re-checking the information. So beware -- when you are inputting information check on the next page whether the information has been stored correctly. Also I found that my wife's birthday information as stored in our booking information (and then used by the check-in program) was also wildly wrong -- wrong year, wrong month, wrong day. I went back to the booking page attempting to correct the dates and while I could enter new ones the program would not save the newly entered date and instead reverted to the erroneous one. Has anyone else experienced this and been able to successfully rectify it? Finally when I tried to save my own information (which I had managed to eventually get correct on the check in page) the program returned a message of "can't save, try again later." I'm thinking I need to call Explora on Monday since I suspect that this is all a bit complex for them to reliably handle by email. Anyone else with similar experiences?

Can't comment on all of the ports, but based on past cruises we have taken a tender will likely be used in Gustavia where piers accommodate large yachts but seldom cruise ships. Tenders will almost certainly be used in Bequia and Soufriers, which (unless things have changed) have no docking for ships larger than yachts. I think that is likely true for Spanish Town also.

We had the same issue some time back. Our TA checked and was told that OBCs cannot be used for paying for excursions prior to boarding. Sort of a maddening approach but apparently that is what it is.

Experiences clicks fine on my booking page. You should call Explora.

FYI -- Having raised the issue of the "disappearing check-in button" I thought I should mention that I figured out what happened. They moved on-line check-in to a menu item -- click menu on the left hand side of the home page and check-in is near the bottom of the list.

I noted that the check-in option disappeared from my Explora web page today. When I had clicked on it previously it returned a message of "too early to check in." Our trip begins September 2 and I suspect that the check-in option has been changed so that it only appears when check in is in fact possible. Question for those who have successfully checked in: when were you able to do this -- 60 days out? 90?

I just noticed that on-line check-in went live today (May 12) on the Explora website.

Re Crystal, just an FYI: the childrens' facility has always been shown on the ship diagrams of Symphony and Serenityand and those facilities are also shown in a lot of the on-line ship tour videos. We never got to cruise on Crystal -- 3 booked cruises but then they went under -- but I suspect that the reason no one may have noticed kids on board is just a testament to the effectiveness of the program coupled with the fact that at luxury cruise prices there simply are not going to be a lot of families travelling with kids.

I think this has always been part of their plan -- the videos emphasize "family friendly," the deck plans on line show a childrens' area and one of the pools is labeled "adults only" on the deck plans. Having said this, the absence of gimmicks like water slides would indicate that there won't be a lot of families with small tykes showing up.

I read that in a report summarizing a speech given to some TAs an official of Explora said that new itineraries filling in the gap months in the supper of 2024 should be out in about a week, i.e., third week of May.

Did everyone note that Explora has added their first resident chef (Chef Mauro Uliassi) for the sailings through September 25? https://porthole.com/explora-journeys-partners-with-chef-mauro-uliassi-aboard-explora-i/ Per the press release the price of dining from his menu in Anthology will now be $210 USD per person for the "tasting menu" and $82 USD per person for wine pairing. I don't know how this works, i.e., for the tasting menu with wine is the price $292 ($210 plus $82) per person? In any event it's a pretty steep increase from the $100 per person Anthology price previously listed on Explora's website. I wonder if they will secure enough dining patrons at that rate -- seems to be a pretty steep add-on.

We are booked on the September Glasgow to NYC trip and I have been putting off scheduling excursions waiting to see if the Explora website might get updated to make the selection process a bit easier. I'm about to give up and book on the present site but have a question -- Have any of you successfully booked excursions using on board credits? We are traveling with a couple, one of whom is our TA, and he has called Explora several times on this issue and has basically been told that there is no firm decision on whether OBCs can be used for excursions but likely this will not be possible, at least for excursions booked prior to boarding. It seems to me that I read somewhere in the Explora threads that someone HAD successfully used OBCs toward excursion expenses. Any experience out there?

I haven't seen an official announcement from Explora but when I check the cruises available for summer and fall of 2024 it shows no Explora 1 sailings in the summer but then cruises pick up again on the U.S. east coast/Canada in the fall. The Med cruises shown on the website are (still) Explora 2.

Looks like they changed their minds!

Real ship. Apparently filmed during sea trials.

We are on the September 23 day Glasgow to NYC trip, via Iceland and Greenland. One of the things we are looking forward to is one plane trip. In NYC it's just taxi to the train station and then ride the rails home to Washington, D.C.

This happened to me. I sent Explora an email explaining the problem and they fixed it (well, sort of fixed it) after a few days.

Sign on, click "my bookings" in the upper right hand corner of the page, when your booking comes up click on "details," go to the bottom of the page and in "experiences" click on the little pen on the right. That SHOULD bring up a listing of available excursions with prices. (The web page is NOT particularly intuitive!)

A few months ago my sign-on stopped working. I emailed Explora and they sent the issue over to their tech department. I can now sign on BUT when I do so I get a "505 error". Below that message is a button that can be clicked to go back to the home page. When I do this (despite the error message) I am signed in. I can then access the "my bookings" on the drop down menu, upper right corner of the home page. When I click this I first get a message of "no bookings" but then my reservation loads.