Our first family cruise

I am now back from our first family cruise on board the Navigator of the Seas with Royal Caribbean.  It was a 10 night cruise and meant to be sunshine in the canaries.  When we arrived at Southampton I couldn’t believe how fast the whole process of the porters taking our suitcases from the boot of the car to being on the ship was.  The whole process took half an hour and was very straightforward with our daughter.  Once on the ship we couldn’t access the cabin straight away but that was fine as we went for lunch.  Our cabin was an oceanview on deck 3.

It was spacious for the 3 of us and we had a travel cot for our daughter.  The mattress wasn’t very good for her but the cabin steward soon sorted this for us.

The cruise started well and all the passengers and staff seemed to love our daughter as she was really playing to the crowd.  The problems started on the second night.  I had been awake all of the night as the ship was moving so much something didn’t seem right.  The next day we found out there had been technical problems with the ship and our itinerary had changed.  We ended up in Vigo early and the itinerary for the rest of the sailing had been altered.  We were now missing two of our ports.  This was very disappointing and we wanted everything to be perfect for our daughter’s first cruise.  The ship didn’t handle the situation very well and we never really found out what was going on.  We had to try and move on from what had happened and let our daughter enjoy her cruise.  She had a great time and as we were away for Halloween we had taken an outfit for her and we also dressed up.  Poppy won the best dressed baby from the Halloween parade which was lovely.

We ate most nights in the main dining room as Poppy could also eat with us.  This was great for her as she got to experience a lot more foods than she has at home.  The service wasn’t great in there but the food was very good.  Two of the nights we booked in to the speciality restaurants.  We booked later times so that me and my husband could have our meal when Poppy was asleep.  We would take her in the stroller.  The Chops Grille was amazing and so was the Giovannis Table.  Definitely worth the surcharge of $35 per person and $30 per person.  The windjammer was the buffet restaurant that we used for breakfast and lunch.  We were always happy with the food on offer and did always manage to get a table but we did seem to avoid peak times.  We had decided before we went to purchase the all inclusive drinks package.  It was hard to know what to do but we knew the drinks on board are very expensive.  We paid £39pp per day by booking in advance.  The variety of drinks for the package was great.  We got a free soda cup with the package and found it so easy as we never had to sign for a drink when we ordered.  Sometimes they didn’t even take our cards just looked at them.  I think we got our value for money on this package and would definitely take a package if we went again.  It was nice not to have to this about how much we were spending etc.

My next blog will talk about the entertainment and Children’s facilities on board the ship.