We were both awake at 6:30. We got up and ready and then checked out breakfast options. We figured that the best option would probably the Windjammer. As soon as it opened for breakfast at 7:00, we headed up there. There were not many early risers and we ended up with a table with a view. Graham had a roll with cold cuts, some sweet yeast bread, fruit, and yoghurt. I had pork link sausages, eggs Benedict, biscuit and gravy and hash browns. Eggs Benedict can be decidedly hit and miss on Royal Caribbean, and it was definitely a big miss on this ship.
I was delighted when I spotted a pot of congee. Unfortunately, there was nothing to go with it apart from some chilli paste. I passed on this. Next to it was a pot of grits. I have been curious about this for years but was never brave enough to try. I decided that needed to change. There was some cheese next to the pot and that definitely looked tempting. I really do not understand why I never tried this before. I love polenta and this tastes the same. It is just that the texture is a little coarser. Breakfast on the whole was very nice. Even the coffee was drinkable.
After breakfast, we quickly went back to the cabin. Graham wanted his telescope, and I wanted my iPad so that I could read for a while. Then we headed for the Viking Crown Lounge. We like hanging out there. There are comfortable seats and some nice views. We settled down on a sofa with a nice view. Graham watched then world go by, and I read for a bit. Soon I head-to-head off for my first activity of the day. I arranged to meet Graham at the Schooner Bar for morning trivia and then I headed off.
When Navigator of the Seas received an extensive makeover in January 2019, what used to be the chapel was converted into an escape room. When we first sailed on Ovation of the Seas, they had a pop-up escape room, which was free of charge. It was fun to do, but it was fairly basic. This one had a charge. However, as I still had plenty of on-board credit left, I did not mind this. I managed to get a reservation for 09:00 the evening before. I was half expecting that would be cancelled as the ship still felt really empty. However, shortly after I got to the meeting point, a couple showed up and about 5 minutes later, a family of 5 joined us. This was most certainly enough for the activity to run. The escape room is called The Observatorium and has an astronomy theme. Everybody was there early, and our guide took us up as soon as he arrived. We got a short briefing and then we were set loose on the escape room. There were four clocks around the room that had stopped. We had to solve puzzles to start each of the clocks again. It did not take us long to start the first clock, but the others were tougher. Still, after 22 minutes, we had started all the clocks. We figured that was a pretty impressive performance. However, we were not done. We had to stop the clocks again. This was quite tricky, but we managed to all work together and with trial and error, we achieved this. However, we still were not done. We had to complete one last task that ultimately revealed the button that we needed to press to escape. We had 60 minutes to escape, but in the end, we managed to escape with 20 minutes to spare. This was a lot of fun and I am glad that I decided to do this.
I had a quick look in the Viking Crown Lounge to see if Graham was still there. He had already left. I headed down to the Schooner Bar. He had found some nice seats by a window. He had ordered a virgin pina colada. I was initially not convinced that I wanted something to drink, but then the idea of having a virgin mudslide became too tempting. I was glad that I had gone with this as it was delicious. The morning trivia had a good selection of questions across a wide range of topics. We got 12 out of 20 questions right, which was not a thrilling score, but as the winning score was 15, we did not do too badly.
After morning trivia, we decided to head out onto the helipad. This is one of Graham’s favourite hangout spots and one of the reasons why he loves this class of ship so much. It was a little windy out there and I headed back to the cabin to pick up a layer. On the way, I stopped by the logo store. I did end up buying the sun hat that Graham had spotted the day before. I also got a nice pink Spirit Jersey with the name of the ship on the back in glitter. Better yet, the did not cost me a Penny as they were covered by the on-board credit I still had.
I took my goodies back to the cabin. Our stateroom host had already made up our cabin and had left us a towel animal. I took a quick photo, grabbed a layer and then I headed out again. It was still surprisingly quiet on the Royal Promenade. I grabbed this opportunity to take some photos. There used to be a bronze dog statue near the entrance of the Windjammer when we did a transatlantic cruise on Navigator in 2016. We had a lot of fun with this, because every day, the statue wore a different costume. I had missed this statue the day before as it was no longer guarding the Windjammer. However, it had just been moved and was now outside the pub, but unfortunately minus costumes. I also took a photo of the car on the Royal Promenade. Every Royal Caribbean ship that has Royal Promenade, has a car in this area. When we sailed on this ship in 2016, there was a gorgeous red vintage car. This had been replaced with an orange jeep. As this is outside the tiki bar on this ship, it kind of fits, but it is still a shame that the old car has been removed. I also took a photo of a huge cake just outside the Café Promenade. It was Remembrance Day that day, which is observed as Veterans Day in the USA. They were setting up for an event to recognize this. I moved on swiftly as I did not want to get tangled up with this.
When I got back to the helipad, it was pretty busy, but it soon emptied out as it was still quite breezy. However, with the extra layer, I was comfortable. While I had been away, some dolphins had come to visit. Unfortunately, I had missed this, but we saw plenty of sea birds. As per usual, Graham’s telescope caused some interest, and we had a steady stream of people coming to speak to us.
Around 12:00, we briefly went back to the cabin to drop off our stuff and then we went up to the Windjammer for some lunch. Graham was being else again. He had all kinds of salad vegetables, cold cuts, and some bread. I had some beef and olive stew, mashed potatoes, and vegan meat loaf. I usually like vegan or vegetarian food and as meat loaf is one of my favourite dishes, I had high hopes for this. This ended up being one of the worst dishes I have ever tasted. Both the texture and the flavour were awful. The rest of the food was however delicious. One thing that I loved on this ship is that they had a burger of the day. That day it was a French onion burger. This was juicy and delicious. Once I had finished my main course, I went to check out the dessert situation. They normally have a hot dessert every day and Graham usually likes those. There was no hot option with the desserts on that side. Sometimes they have a different dessert station on the other side and usually only one of the dessert stations has the hot option. Graham was out of luck. However, something caught my eye as I walked past the area where they had the burgers on that side. They had hush puppies, which is something I have always loved, but have not had in ages. I had to have a few of them. They were as nice as I remembered. The biggest surprise however was dessert. Their pound cake is a running joke in our house. I actually quite like it as it has a beautiful texture, but whatever flavour it is meant to be, they all taste the same. The only thing that normally changes is the colour. The only indication that the pistachio pound cake is meant to be pistachio is that it is bright green. Imagine my shock when I had some that day and it actually tasted of pistachio. I had every intention to have another slice later in the day, but I never got around to this.
By the time we had finished our lunch, it started to get quite busy. We had planned to get some coffee, but we figured that we would get better coffee in the crown lounge anyway. We vacated our table and went downstairs. We initially had the crown lounge to ourselves. We got some coffee and sat down. Suddenly a bride and her entourage appeared. The wedding was due to take place shortly in the Star Lounge that is next door to the crown lounge. Apparently, the bridal party was supposed to wait in a backstage area while everybody else was seated, but this area is not air conditioned and the bride nearly passed out. We were asked if we minded if they waited in the crown lounge. Of course, we did not. I cannot see how anybody could have objected. Once the bride had regained some colour, we started chatting to them. It was interesting to learn how weddings work on Royal Caribbean. They were waiting for quite a while. It was a good job that the bride could wait in comfort.
Once we had finished our coffee, we headed downstairs to the Schooner Bar for true or false trivia. This is not a favourite of ours, but we had no other plans, and it would while away 30 minutes or so. This was when we met the first member of our trivia dream team. During the cruise, we teamed up with some other cruisers that also loved trivia. The Schooner Bar was always packed for trivia, so it made sense to team up and it was nice to see some friendly faces every day. We had managed to get some seats by the window and Carol asked if she could join us. We did not mind some company. This was not the typical true or false trivia that Royal Caribbean offers. You did not only have to guess true or false, but if the answer was false, you then had to provide the correct answer. This was not one of our finer hours. We only got 11 out of 25 with the winning score being 22. Still, it is the taking part not the winning that counts. On a positive note, not only did we make a new friend, but I also found a new favourite drink. Normally my go to drink at the Schooner Bar is the lavender daiquiri. However, for some reason, I decided to browse the menu that day and spotted a dessert pear margarita. I decided to try this, and it was absolutely delicious. I have already checked out if it is available on Radiance of the Seas, which will be our next ship. Fortunately, it is on the menu there, too. I shall have a few more of those in May.
We chatted to Carol a bit longer and finished our drinks. Then we were at a loose end for a bit. Graham had got me some Crocs for my birthday and has I had hurt one of my toes just before we went on this trip, I figured it probably would be a good idea to wear those when going into the ocean as my toe would have a bit more protection than my water shoes would provide. The question was if I would be able to swim with them. We decided that it would be a good idea to give them a test run in the pool. We decided to use the spare time to have a swim in the solarium pool. We have never seen that pool so busy. Fortunately, there was a fairly large group in the pool and once they left, there was actually some space to have a swim. We got into the pool. The water was a gorgeous temperature and it turned out that I can indeed swim with Crocs. Once the pool started to get full again, we got out. We dried off as much as we could. Then we went back to the cabin to get showered and to get changed for dinner. It was formal night that evening. Once we were ready, we went back downstairs for evening trivia.
We picked up some coffee from the Café Promenade on the way past and got to the Schooner Bar around 16:30. It was already pretty full, but we managed to find some seats. Trivia was fun again with a good selection of questions. We scored 15 out 20, which was the winning score. We got some Royal Caribbean can koozies. At 18:00, there was ultimate Harry Potter trivia in the Star Lounge. This is not something that we will ever win, but it is a trivia I enjoy. Normally this is far too busy for our liking, and we don’t tend to bother. However, this took place during early dinner and the Star Lounge is pretty big. We figured that this would probably be OK. It was absolutely fine. As expected, we got nowhere near to winning with a score of 13 out of 22. The winning score was 22 and there were three teams tied. As a tiebreaker, they had to play Dobby the house elf and the team that got the most applause won. This was hilarious and it was worse going to the trivia for just this.
After trivia, we went to the Bamboo Room for a pre-dinner drink. This was one element I was the most excited about on Navigator. When Navigator had the big makeover, they added the Bamboo Room to the Royal Promenade. This is a tiki bar with some unique cocktails. The cocktail that I was the most excited about is called On The Run. This is lovingly referred to as adult Capri Sun as it is served in a clear pouch with a straw. It consists of Bacardi Superior rum, watermelon juice, lime juice, guava syrup, St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram, and mint. I love everything with watermelon, and I figured it would be a hit. It was not what I had hoped. It was not that it was unpleasant. It just was nothing special and not worth the upcharge. The signature cocktails at the Bamboo Room are considered premium cocktails and are a bit more expensive than what is covered by the drinks package or the drinks coupons. I would not have minded at all to pay the difference a few times if the drink had wowed me, but there were nicer drinks available on the ship that were fully covered by our drinks’ coupons. Graham had a mojito, which was covered by the drinks’ coupon. He enjoyed this. He was not too keen on the venue though. It was quite dark and somewhat strange. This remained our only visit to the Bamboo Room.
One good thing came out of this though. Towards the end of 2022, the changed how the free drinks vouchers are treated. Since then, every time you redeem a drinks voucher, you get a receipt showing how many vouchers you have used that day. I noticed when I looked at the receipt that we had one voucher less per person than we should have been. As the Bamboo Room is very close to guest services, I decided to head over there. It transpired that for some reason we were each charged for an orange juice at the Windjammer even though we did not have any. I figured they could just readd the voucher. Apparently, it is not as easy as that. She contacted the bar manager and explained what had happened. We were advised that when we want to order the fifth drink for the day to ask, he server or bartender to contact the bar manager. In the end, we decided that this was too much hassle and we only had one class of wine with dinner that evening.
Once we had finished our drink, we headed to the dining room for dinner, we had liked our dining team the night before and I was hoping that we may have them again. However, we were taken to a different section. Our new dining team was also from India. It turned out that we only saw our server Rohan from a distance that evening. He had a large family group in his section, and they were nothing but demanding. However, we were very well looked after by our assistant server Winston. He was definitely ready to go up to server. He was friendly and attentive, and we felt well looked after.
The menu that evening was A Taste of France. Graham started with the escargot, and I had the French onion soup. For his main course, Graham went with the beef tenderloin, mashed potatoes, asparagus, and peppercorn sauce. I had the beef bourguignon, which came with rice. For our dessert, we both had the crème brûlée. Everything was lovely as was the Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling that we had with dinner.
After dinner, we made the rounds of the photo opportunities. This was a dire disappointment. Normally there are lots of different photo opportunities on formal night. However, that evening they had one backdrop plus photos in front of the hanging sculpture and on the stairs. Neither of us is particularly keen on stair photos. We passed on this. If I had paid for the photo package rather than using non-refundable on-board credit for this. I would have asked for a refund. Fortunately, things got better from this point onwards and in the end, I had plenty of photos.
Once we were done with the photos, we went back to the cabin. Graham went straight to sleep, but I read a couple of chapters before settling down for the night, too.
Dolphingirl’s Travels 
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