Voyager Review from 9/10 Hurricane sailing – the good, the bad and the ugly! VERY LO

[FunCruiser56]

Thanks for taking the time to post a very good review, even of the bad stuff!!

We are taking our 2 boys 9 and 17 on the Navigator in 3 weeks and your suggestion of the baby monitor is wonderful, we will be packing one. Did you by chance use any of the family radios while on board?

Bev

[marciemi]

Bev - we did buy the 6 mile, "expensive" radios to use on the ship and found they really didn't work any better than our old, 2 mile ones. You know what I mean, they work, but half the time you have to keep asking people to repeat themselves, or they beep to call you, then when you answer, they don't talk or their only talking is to beep. We kept going over how to use them properly with the kids, but even we had trouble ourselves. When we gave them to the kids to carry, they kept leaving them in the kids club, on the floor in the restaurant, somewhere in their cabin.

 

Finally, what we did was always have one with DH & I, and left the other one on the desk in the cabin. If anyone came back unexpectedly (ie their activity ran short or was cancelled), they went back to the cabin and called us. We also used the phones on the ship a lot, which was a much better way of communicating if someone was in the cabin. There are phones by every elevator and in the kids' club rooms so they'd just call our cabin if they were staying longer or leaving early. Or if they came back to the cabin and called us on the radios, but we couldn't get them to work or understand them, we'd just find the nearest phone and call the cabin.

 

Our radios were Cobras, if that helps any. The monitor was the $15 one from Walmart which worked fine for our purposes. Again, we could only hear them, not talk to them on the monitor, but could always call their cabin to resolve problems, tell them to get ready, etc. Good luck!

[FunCruiser56]

Thanks, I think we just leave the radios at home, I have a home daycare so I have a couple of baby monitors, we will bring one of them. Did your kids just leave you a message on the phone to let you know where they were headed?

I think that would work ok, the 9 year old will probably want to spend time in the club-he loved disneys', we could hardly get him out. Now the 17 year old that is another matter he will be either spending alot of time with us or impossible to keep track of!!

Bev

[Mark32]

We were also on this cruise. For the most part you are right on about everything. St. Maarten was a total waste of time. Not only was it raining and the seas were too high to allow swimming on the beach, but all the roads in town were torn up and being resurfaced. It is nearly impossible to push a stroller through thick wet sand. We did have fun on the water taxi ride. Who needs a rollercoaster, the taxi was bouncing around link a ping pong ball.

 

We had done the shopping thing in St. Thomas before so we would have rather hit a beach, but again the seas were way too rough to do anything but drown.

 

The weather is the weather. I would have prefered that the captain take us closer to southern Mexico and Belize instead of into another Hurricane but I guess you can never predict when these things will hit. The ironic part is that we sailed to the East because of Ivan and what he was doing to Jamaica and Grand Caymen yet we still ended up sailing right through the remains of Ivan as he worked his way back down the eastern seaboard.

 

I do agree that RCCL should have upped the level of activities on the ship. I realize they cannot open shops or the casino in an American port, but they could have opened up the Pay Per View movie channels to free viewing for a couple of hours. By the time we got back on the ship and dried off, we sort of wanted to just stay inside and watch the thunderstorm.

 

We did have to go through imigration twice on the trip. Both were a total waste of time as I would hold up three passports for myself, wife and daughter and they would just see three pictures. Mine could have had a gorilla as the picture and nobody would have noticed. I can only imagine that this was because RCCL was not able to supply the manidtory 96 hour manifest notification that is required for all ships sailing into an American port. I recall a few months ago that a ship was kicked out of Charlston, SC for a few hours because they missed the 96 hour window. Due to the hurricanes all around us this may have been the compromise. Personally I would have rather stayed at sea and found the sun to the northeast of Jeanne.

 

We were on deck nine port side in a hump balcony stateroom. We never saw any stollers in the passageways. Of course we were only 10 steps from the aft elevators so someone would probably steal it with all the traffic. I did notice that one of the tags was ripped off one of our bags on the last night before they were picked up by the crew. It was the only one where the tag was visible and some vermon ripped it off the handle. Luckily I checked on them before bed time and we had spares. Otherwise we would probably never have found the bag.

 

Our waiter was a man from India named Lokesh. He was the best waiter my wife and I have ever had on a cruise. He kept telling us about his nephew who was our daughters age and how hard it was to leave after his last break. He doted over our daughter the whole week. I had a digital photo made into a hardcopy and gave him a picture of the two on the last night along with a very well earned tip. We were supposed to be at a table for 10 with another family of 5. They were already asking for a new table before they even uttered their first words to us. The husband and sister seemed embarrased about the wife, she looked like a real prize from the one dinner we spend together. It worked out in the end with it just being the five of us (my folks were with us) and the table next to us with 4 retired couples who doted over our daughter as well. At least once a night we needed to get her out of the dining room for a few minutes and let her run around, but by the time we got back Lokesh had found some new treat to keep her busy. Word of caution, if you are traveling with young ones, bring a bag of books, coloring books and crayons every night. They will not supply anything in the dining rooms. With the four of us taking turns coloring and the few minute breaks she was very good for all nine nights. It also helped that we were in a corner up against the windows, that made it much less likely that she would disturb anyone.

 

We had a great time even with the missed ports and the weather. It could have been worse and we would be a work.

[marciemi]

Bev - we didn't know how to leave messages on the phone until someone else left us one (another CC'er) more than halfway through the cruise. You certainly could do that. Hopefully your cabins are more central than ours were as far as going back quickly. Another tip - the first day we went to the purser's desk and got extra keys for everyone so we all had keys to both cabins (especially since we were booked with DH in one and me in the other). This made it easy to run back and forth, etc. However, there is no way to lock the doors against the keys, ie no chain, and the deadbolt does not stop you from opening it with the keys, so your kids can always come in. Just a warning in case you do this.

 

Mark - sorry we didn't know you before the cruise. Didn't know there were any other CC'ers with kids other than the one (piginmud) we'd emailed many times before the cruise. Have to agree with the amount of scrutiny on the immigrations. I hadn't considered your point that maybe it was because we switched itineraries and stuff wasn't done beforehand. I was thinking maybe everyone had to do it in all US ports. Only had one other cruise since 2001 and it didn't go to any US ports so figured that was why I hadn't seen it before. However, when we asked in San Juan, we were told we wouldn't have to do it again in St. Maarten or St. Thomas. That would make sense because they certainly had the 96 hours for St.Thomas. Not sure what changed so that we had to. Thanks for your response and support!

[roe2ship]

Marciemi, thank you for posting such a detailed review. So sorry that happened with your oldest son and the bad weather. Your review has just made my decision final. Like you, we love aft cabins. In fact, you helped me with some info on Princess aft cabins. We are planning to try RCL and always wanted to try a Voyager class ship. From researching on the boards and the help of other posters, I began to realize that as an aft cabin lover the Voyager class may not be for us unless we decided to take a cabin midship. That said, I am looking into the Radiance of the Seas for 2006. I am a bit skeptical b/c it will be 5 yrs old at that time, same age as the Voyager is now and apparantly the maintenance may not be kept up as it should be. The newest (Jewel) is either doing a 6 day or 8 day caribbean out of FL and neither fit our schedules.

[marciemi]

Roe2 - glad I've been of some help! I've only read good about the aft of the Radiance class ships. I'd love to try those someday, but hadn't heard of those 6/8 day Caribbean itineraries. Everytime I looked for any of them, they were all Alaskan, Mediterranean, Canada, etc. Guess I haven't been looking out to 2006 yet! What cabin do you have on the CP next year? Good luck!

[roe2ship]

Well we had your favorite cabin C752 and on my next one we have C753! What a view! Did you think the Voyager balcony was bigger? The Jewel of the Seas will alternate 8 day eastern and 6 day western in November 2005 through April 2006.

[marciemi]

The Voyager balcony was definitely bigger (for that specific cabin only - it's supposed to be one of the largest on the ship), but not as "pretty". The blue floor, clear glass, padded loungers make the Grand balcony so much nicer. It also drained below that blue padded flooring, whereas ours on the Voyager didn't drain at all unless we used a towel to push the water towards the drain in the corner which unfortunately wasn't lower than the rest of the balcony. So when the floor got wet, it stayed wet (although I concede we had virtually no rain on our Grand cruise to compare with!) There was also much more "walking" space - you felt like you were in a room where you could easily walk around. On the Grand, it felt like a balcony - you'd walk out, and immediately sit in the chair or lounger. Check out my pics above if you haven't.

 

I checked into the Jewel itineraries for Spring Break 2006 after reading your post. I can do a 6 night then for only twice as much as we paid for this 9 night! Guess that's why we hit those hurricanes! The RCCL new pricing policy just puts the price out of our range, especially if we did want to take the kids again, and if we didn't we'd stick with Princess! But that 6 night itinerary is pretty awesome!

[Mac]

Hello Marci And Debra

It's Me Mac From The Meet & Mingle. My Husband Is The Firefighter That Your Husband Comented On The Hat. It Was Nice Meeting You All, Very Disapointed Because 61 Signed Up And Only A Hand Full Of Us Showed Up. Even Though Are Itinaray Changed We Must Consider Ourselfs Very Lucky We Weren't Out To Sea For 9 Day's. I Was Very Disapointed To That I Couldn't Swim With The Dolphins One Thing I Alwasy Wanted To Do. But Things Happen For A Reason. We All Had A Wonderfull Time, Met So Many Wonderfull People And Rcc Did There Best Under Those Conditions. This Was The First In September It Was Beautiful Going Out Of N.j. But It Was A Chance We Had To Take With The Weather. Already Booked For Febuary On The Mariner Counting The Months............

[Firefighterhoop]

Part of your port problem may have been that all the ports not damaged or directly effected were FULL! Of all the ships, (Rccl and everyone else) there was only a limited amount of ports available each day that was not directly in the damage path or damaged by the storm!

 

Also there are several ports damaged by that and other storms that the ship could not go to! SOrry to hear it rained, but It sounds like you were able to make the best out of some bad weather and still have a GREAT time!