krissi10400

Explorer needs a refurb. He's just confirming it. It's not just a little rust.

 

Depending on what cabin you get, you could have a nicely redone room or one with a really stained sofa and old worn out carpeting.

 

If a hotel room was old and worn people wouldn't pay top dollar, yet RC gets top dollar for their cabins. So if people say it needs a refurb, I think they are justified.

Agree totally. I am not going to post my review here because I don't want to be "attacked". I will post it elsewhere. But the couch was stained so bad we needed to put a sheet over it to sit on it. Gross. The inside of the vanity that opened was peeling and the drawers and shelves were not cleaned and stained. As for the little bit of rust...I agree that rust is hard to keep up with on the water but the balcony had chipping paint on the floor so little pieces of blue paint ended up in all over the floor in our room and in our bed. Yuck. You couldn't walk barefoot on the balcony at all. All in all it was clean enough, just very, very run down.

We just got off this cruise too and found this whole trip to be a bummer :-( We do appreciate the OBC they gave us even though they didn't have to do that. We have been on 4 other ships in their fleet and this was the worst of all of them. It does need to be refurbished badly and is showing its age. I know that no one can control the weather, and it is much better to be safer than sorry, i just wish we could have seen Bermuda without hurricane winds/rain and would have had temps that didn't have me in sweatshirts most of the trip! The crew was so pleasant and friendly and tried to make light of unfortunate events. I also liked that Captain James kept us informed throughout all of the issues. On the plus side the food and entertainment were good. The down side, like i said, other than the weather and propulsion issues, were the beds (not like the oasis or freedom.) They were so hard and falling apart and the cabin was old looking, and stained. I am definitely going to cruise with them again (probably not on the explorer) but I hope to choose a time to see Bermuda in good weather!!! There were issues with cape liberty port and getting on/off the ship, but that is due to the fact that they are still building the terminal and i am sure once that is done things will run much smoother.

Shhhhhhhh...don't say anything bad about the cruise you may be attacked by the cruise police...

And I totally agree with you. The only day we had in Bermuda was torrential downpour and high winds. Of course not the cruise line's fault and I am quite aware that mother nature has her own agenda but still it was a bummer. I also agree that Captain James was wonderful and did a great job of keeping us informed. As for the staff being friendly and having answers to simple questions I had the opposite experience. Only 2 staff members made this cruise better for me and I will be letting RCI know exactly who they were in my online survey. They were absolutely wonderful and given a very nice tip from myself and the other person in my cabin. I also agree the ship is falling apart. I do not need anything fancy and in fact prefer simple - but it needs to be clean - and the explorer was not clean. The rooms are falling apart, stains everywhere, paint chipping, dust, and it was smelly. I would have to cover my nose when I walked down the hallways. And Cape Liberty is a joke. I have only ever cruised out of NY and if I ever go on another cruise it will never be out of CL. On another note, the lobster tails on lobster night were phenomenal!

People on this board are so funny. I am on at least 15 message boards on various topics and have never seen such outright malice if god forbid anyone says anything negative about ________ (fill in the blank - in this case it's cruising). This helps me to understand why I don't like cruising if this is the type of people I will be spending my vacation with :p

I hope that one of our resident Captains will see this and explain better but Im pretty sure ALL RCI ships use some type of redundant system and in no time or in any way were you ever in jeopardy of completely breaking down and being stuck in the middle of a hurricane.

 

Again, hopefully someone with much more experience in this than I (I have none) can explain in detail.

I am sure that is completely true but I am someone with absolutely NO experience in how a ship works. And like I said sometimes your mind goes to the "worst case" scenarios first in situations such as this. And we had a beautiful ride back so my nerves were calmed very quickly...

Wow, this thread has engendered a mental picture of a cruise ship in a hurricane with no (or inadequate) propulsion! Scary image. :eek:

 

The two ships may have sailed out "together" just to help each other out, if necessary...

 

Anyone have a recent update from Explorer?

YES! It was very scary. We left Bermuda early to "beat" the hurricane with a propulsion problem that we were never told was "fixed" until late Tuesday morning when were also told that we still needed to completely stop the ship for "readings". All I had going through my head was the ship breaking down and the hurricane on our tail. If you watched the captain's speech (I saw it on the tv) he showed us exactly where we would be and where Cristobal would be as we sailed. It was quite frightening. Thoughts of the ship not moving fast enough or completely breaking down with a hurricane following us was not very comforting. Of course that was my "worst case scenario" thinking but you know how your mind always goes there at some point before you talk some sense into yourself...

Ok the cruise started off fine, we always wanted to try a Promenade room, and it was OK I think. We'll go back to a balcony next time I think. The ship needs refurbishment, or a total makeover. She is beautiful but really starting show her age. This was our 3rd time on her, last time was 2010 and its just time for her to go into serious dry dock.

The Propulsion issue was odd because we had literally just walk back to see the wake the propellers were making, and I thought it was more loud than normal, and really, really vibrating bad back there. Maybe it always is, but that was my impression. A few minutes after we left the stern and went inside the Captain made the announcement. So that was kinda odd. We docked I think at around noon. That made excursions a mess.

Speaking of Excursions we had a few we had to cancel, had one that was cancelled, and just ended up doing a trolley tour of the "west end" of Bermuda. We start to leave on this "trolley" that looks like a train, and has 3 cars and a little fake train engine. We are in the last car, and there is NO SOUND from the tour guide. Our car and the two cars in front of us were trying to get the guides attention, but no luck until about half way through. He then could not get the "Mic to work and proceeded to get out at every "important" stop and manually give up narration. Still could hear most of it. The people behind us were saying they want there money back. When we go back they gave the run around, and refused to give us our money back. They said no one else complained which is a GIANT lie. Someone besides us complained, but that was there story. Here is the weird part, they said they called the tour provider and they said nothing is wrong with the mike and the tour guide did the best he could and got out at every stop. So which is it, "Mic' worked or it didn't?

Now we were given 200 dollars on-board credit, but I think we deserve more.We go in at noon because of a propulsion issue, and then left at 7am because of a hurricane. We had like less than 20 hours in Bermuda. Maybe I'm wrong but I think we should have gotten more. I'm not one to complain. the trip was still fun, but not quite as it should have been. What do you think?

PS the propulsion issue was fixed so the captain said.

I am just off this cruise also and couldn't agree more AND have 100 more things I would like to complain about and I am generally not a complainer. I will be doing a day by day review shortly.

Not sure why you would need a pkg for calls/texting. Do you get some price point break for that?

 

We use our phone on the ships for both and its just part of Verizon's normal pricing. I think in a week our bill has never had over 20$ of extra charges, mostly texting

 

If we have to use the internet we just use the ships pc. No data is ever involved

I have ATT and its $2.50 per minute to make a call from the ship. Texts I think are $.50 per text. The plan offers 50 minutes of talk for $30 and there is also a text plan. I had those plans last year but I would go turn on my data roaming at times to check my mail and I had a huge bill because of it.

Thanks for the info! Can I call before I leave to get the package or would I do it when I get on the ship and where?

I am sailing on the Explorer. I am going to get a package from ATT for calls/texts. I know they also offer an internet package. Last year I didn't get a package and would turn on my data roaming to check my mail, etc, and ended up with a huge bill.

My question is does the ship offer a package so I can access the internet from my phone anywhere on the ship? Does anyone know the pricing? Or how could I find this information out?

Thanks so much.