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Royal Caribbean's
Explorer of the Seas
December 13 - 20, 2003
Cruise Review
by
Ann Bohnen

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Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 18:11:59 -0500
From: abohnen@baileymgt.com (Ann Bohnen)
Subject: Review

Our cruise was wonderful, with the exception of one thing. The two adjoining rooms that we booked with our travel agent were not the rooms that we got when we boarded the ship. It was a very long and tedious chore to straighten it out, but we did finally get our adjoining rooms. Once we were in the correct rooms our trip was fabulous. We had six people in our group, two adults and 4 kids, so we really needed the two adjoining rooms. Our rooms were spacious, the kids were happy with thier accomodations, our room steward brought in two cots so that the boys did not have to share a bed, and that made them very happy, being the two girls took the big bed in the room. All of the kids also enjoyed ordering room service off of the television. When we dined in the Magellan dining room, our wait staff was great, not only did they serve us wonderful things from the kitchen, but they entertained us, and our kids. Our girls being the social beings they are met many other k ids at the hot tubs and went there every night to socialize. They ended up sharing email addresses with the other kids, and have been emailing kids from as far as Spain, and also Oregon, Washington, and other places. We really enjoyed the ice skating show and all of the photography stations on the ship. We had our pictures taken many times, and ended up purchasing over $200.00 worth of very nice photos. We spent some time in the spa, and felt very pampered by the services they provide there. We did not get to participate in the climbing wall nor did we ice skate, we anticipated we would, but we seemed always busy and happy with what we did make time for. Our week went by very quickly. I loved the waiters who came out by the pool selling drinks, and providing entertainment & fun rhymes and enticing people to try the interesting fruity concoctions. My favorite was the "Love Potion", very tasty, and it came in a nice souvenier glass. I struck a bargain with the man selli ng the "Love Potion" drink, that if we purchased two of them that he would give his sales pitch on our video camera. It was very funny and I am so glad to have that to remember. We did visit the Doctor on the ship two times, for two different things. One of our kids got seasickness pretty bad, they had a cure for that, which amazed me. They gave him an intervenous shot, which worked immediately, and my son was able to go to the formal dinner just 30 minutes after receiving the medicine. The other time we used the medical facilities one of us had a bad earache after going on the Underwater Bob trip. The Dr. took some time with us, prescribed some medicine, and again, we were on our way. Oh, and by the way, the Underwater Bob shoretrip was awesome. Underwater Bob was the highlight of all of our shore trips. The captain of the ship was entertaining, and we all really loved the view from the underwater motorbikes. Our pictures of that are wonderful. Everyone we showed those pictures to was as amazed as we were to see what we did. Another favorite shoretrip was the Dolphin Encounter. Anyone who likes dolphins at all would love to have this experience. I would definetely recommend it. We also went on the shipwreck snorkel and the Eagle catamaran. On every shoretrip the people who took care of us did an excellent job. Our parasailing boat captain was pretty grumpy, but everyone else did an excellent job of showing us a great time.

Overall our trip was great from the funny animals our room steward formed out of bath towels, to the spa treatments, the wonderful food in the dining room, the Ben & Jerry's ice cream in the shopping promenade and the ice skating show was very entertaining for the whole family.

I would definetely recommend the Royal Caribbean line to anyone interested in a cruise. We spoke with people on different lines when we were on our shore excursions, and they had many complaints to share with us about the other lines. We had no complaints to share at all.

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