It was a nice time

The ship is definitely a bit older, but they do a nice job keeping it in good shape. Unlike Norwegian!! You could not pay me to step foot on another Norwegian ship....The Explorer of the Seas was a totally different experience. The service was a 3.5 out of 5 starts, some great service, some okay and one bad experience. The room we stayed  in was on the promenade on the 7th floor. A great room people that stay out late every night or who can sleep through noise. If you are someone that goes to bed early this is not the room for you. There where 3 parties at night in the promenade. It was very loud.

The food on the ship was 3 stars...Not top of the line, it was just okay.

The mystery dinner show....$55 a head. The food was great, the show not so much. And it was never ending. The show lasted 3.5 hours. By the time the show and dinner was finally over no one cared who killed the guy. We all just wanted to leave.

WE loved the champagne bar, although we had one mishap...my traveling companion sat on one of the sofas one evening and landed on a 2.5" shard of glass. Right on her upper thigh. It did not cause sever damage.  The bartender Echo was very nice, but I had to go to guest services to get a bandage...no manager ever checked with us??

WE had a huge issue with the  photo lab. One of the 3 nights our photos where taken at dinner was New Years eve. We had a group of 6 traveling together, so there where group photos and couple photos. When we went down the next day we could not locate any of the photos. We finally found Sean and he helped us look for them. After 45mins total down there looking at everything, it was deduced that the photos had not been printed. Sean even had us look through his computer. He figured out that the photographer had not turned in his memory card for the night. We asked him to call when it was located. The next after noon we stopped by, Sean was not there we spoke To Le-Le, she did not know what we where talking about said she would investigate....we head nothing. The next morning and the day of the last formal sitting for photos we went back down and finally found a manager. It appears he had been out ill two days. When I went over every thing with him, he was a bit smug. Gave me the same we will call you. I told him I need an answer immediately as we would need to decide about going to the formal dinner tonight as we had purchased a photo package. He actually told me Sean had over stepped his boundaries by allowing us to see the  photos in the computer....That upset me....I stated to him that if I found out Sean got into any trouble for helping us for a half hour then he would be better off with a hurricane hitting the ship!! My wrath would be that strong. He backed down....I received a call a few hours later that the photos had been found. Unfortunately, half of them did not process due to photographer failure...this  included on New Years EVe group shots with hats, horns and leis!! 

Once again no manager of ship personal contacted us about this issue, although it stole away easily 2 hours of our time.

The ship is going in to dry dock this year ...so it will be over hauled. I am certain it will be lovely.

So, we had a great time however, there where some areas of concern.