Explorer of the Seas

When Explorer of the Seas put to sea in October 2000, no passenger ship in the world was larger. Five dates explain the rest of her story. 2000: she enters service holding the world record, and carrying an oceanographic and atmospheric research laboratory run with the University of Miami and NOAA. 2008: the laboratory closes, after more than 80,000 visitors; nothing of it remains to see today. 2015: a refit adds a category of floor-to-ceiling glass cabins. 2020: the amplification — the major overhaul that rejuvenated Voyager, Navigator and Mariner — is postponed indefinitely, leaving Explorer one of the two Voyager ships still waiting, and the older of the two. Autumn 2025: a maintenance dry dock renews the carpet, the beds and the balcony paint, but not the cabins.

Everything else follows from that line. A ship kept up but never reinvented, long since outgrown in size, and still laid out in a way her regulars consider excellent: you cross her without spending your holiday walking. Her itineraries run from Ravenna in summer, towards Croatia and Greece, and from Port Canaveral in winter, from the Bahamas down to the southern Caribbean.

This article neither defends her nor condemns her. It helps you decide whether she suits you.

The cabins: what the year 2000 left behind

The cabins are where her age shows most plainly. The standard categories have been neither rethought nor rebuilt: original furniture, narrow showers, bathrooms straight out of 2000. The 2025 dry dock did not touch any of that — linens, carpet and paint, nothing more. The hard mattresses, long the ship's first grievance, at least went out with the old beds. The closed-up smell that sometimes greets you when the door first opens comes from the original ventilation and partitions, as on any ship of her generation: it clears within a minute or two.

On her overall condition coming out of the yard, the reports flatly contradict each other, over the very same weeks: breakdowns and sloppy finishing on one side, a spotless ship with freshly painted balconies on the other. Selvague does not pick a winner, because there is nothing to pick: Explorer came out of dry dock in uneven shape, and that is a risk worth knowing before you board.

There is one exception, on deck 12. The panoramic category — no balcony, but glass from floor to ceiling — dates from the 2015 refit: fifteen years younger than the rest of the ship, with a décor that shows it, and the sea in view from the bed. It is the simplest answer to the complaint made about Explorer's cabins.

For anyone choosing a balcony, one detail of construction matters more than the category does.

Outlets and Wi-Fi: the limits of a hull built in 2000

In standard cabins and junior suites alike, there is no outlet and no USB port at the bedside: everything sits at the desk or the vanity. Before you pack a solution of your own, read Royal Caribbean's rule on chargers — strict, and fleet-wide. We cover it in our article on Mariner of the Seas.

Wi-Fi is her real weakness, and there is a reason for it. Explorer receives Starlink like the rest of the fleet, but the signal then has to cross an interior network designed in 2000, inside a hull made of metal: bulkheads, decks, ceilings, doors. Modern standards travel poorly through all that, and replacing the network would mean taking the ship apart. Some days the connection is perfectly fine. Over a full cruise, do not count on it for work.

At the table

The main dining room, spread over three levels, carries the ship: quick service, steady cooking, staff who learn your habits fast. The Windjammer, the buffet on deck 11, is the weak link, for one simple reason — there are not enough seats. On embarkation day it hits bottom: packed, hot, limited choice. Regulars skip it altogether by having lunch that day at Chops Grille, the extra-charge steakhouse, which opens at midday.

On every other day, the buffet has a relief valve that nothing advertises.

A note on food allergies: at the buffet, labelling is patchy and should never be treated as a guarantee. The dependable arrangement is in the dining room. Introduce yourself to the maître d' at your first meal, then order from the next day's menu each evening. The line itself states that it cannot guarantee an allergen-free environment.

Early evening, on a sea day, you come down to deck 4. The Schooner Bar opens across from Giovanni's Table, a few steps from the casino exit, and you smell it before you see it. First, as you step in, a trace of smoke drifting from the gaming room next door, which no door holds back. Then, further inside, another smell, far less expected: the ropes of the décor, tarred as they would be on a real rig. The bar is named after a schooner, and it has not forgotten the sea.

Orders come to the counter in waves. When the casino bar overflows, this is where people fall back, and you may wait a little to be served. You find a seat near the piano.

The pianist plays in sets of about half an hour, then stops. During the breaks the room changes key. You hear ice in glasses, conversations dropping a notch, a laugh at the far end. At the next table someone reads without looking up. Two men play cards, in no hurry at all. A couple weighs one evening show against another.

Then the piano starts again, and the room fills a little more. Soon the first diners will leave for the dining room. For now, nobody feels like standing up.

Smoke: knowing where it goes

Explorer has only three smoking areas, all of them to port — the left-hand side as you face forward: the outdoor promenade on deck 4, a corner of deck 11, and the smoking section of the casino, indoors on that same deck 4. It is the last one that causes trouble. The casino has no doors to close it off, and its smell spills as far as the neighbouring Schooner Bar. This is not a bad day here and there: it has been constant for years, and it is enough to make the passage unusable for anyone who reacts badly to smoke. To cross the ship end to end without going through it, take the Royal Promenade, one deck up.

When the wind empties the pool deck

On a still sea day, the pool deck on 11 is full. Reserved chairs are not the reason: there simply are not enough seats. But attendance up there answers to the weather before anything else. Let a brisk wind get up, and the same deck empties from one day to the next. The solarium is open to the sky on this ship, so it offers no shelter at all. It stays a warm place to retreat to, and nothing more.

Evenings

Evening life gathers on the Royal Promenade, where the dance parties pull in the whole ship for want of anywhere else to spread out, and at the Palace Theatre for the production shows. Fixed dinner seatings pay off here: the whole evening programme is built around the two slots, so dinner and a show fit together without planning.

At Studio B, the ship's ice rink, the ice show is the safe bet of the week — it holds up even when the other productions fall flat. No reservation is needed, but pillars block sightlines, so arriving early means choosing your seat. The rink has history, too. For years, Explorer was the ship where the first ice show built around the seasons ran, long before Wonder of the Seas created her own on the same theme.

With the family

A decision point for families with small children: Explorer has no children's water park, unlike her amplified sisters, which gained one in their refits. The outdoor youth area on deck 12 does exist, but it is a space for games and ping-pong.

Sailing back to back

Turnaround day on a back-to-back has its own rules.

• The morning meeting. Guests staying on board gather at a set meeting point and are given their new SeaPass card there. A crew member then walks the group through customs in a separate line. Keep your card in hand until you are back aboard.
• An empty ship. She is all but deserted at that point, and almost everything is closed. Lunch is served in the dining room to guests carrying on.
• The file. As soon as you are back on board, dial zero and have someone confirm that your credit card and passport carried over from one booking to the next. Otherwise the problem surfaces at the exit check on the second cruise, when there is no time left to fix it.
• The key. If you change cabins, the new key may not arrive until late in the evening; stop at guest services to get in.
• The wine. The allowance applies to each cruise, which means you can bring both on at once — part of it checked with your luggage.
• The dining room. Ask to keep the same dining team from one cruise to the next.

"Explorer isn't chosen for being modern. She's chosen for her layout, her itineraries, and what you know how to get out of her."

Selvague