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Navigator 2.0 Part Deux


Andrew72681

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Just realized we depart in 2 days and I hadn't started a live-blog about our upcoming sailing at all. All that darn work gets in the way of all of the fun. This will be our second time on Navigator this year, with the first being in May, so I'll keep it rather brief.

Some pre-cruise thoughts

- The public spaces on Navigator were so much fun back in May that when a good casino offer came in we had to jump on it. The rooms still left a lot to be desired, so we'll see how they do with water this time.

- For the very first time, it'll just be me and my 9 year old daughter. She's very excited to have a daddy-daughter cruise, but we'll see how stressed out I am by Monday. That also meant for the first time I had to get a travel authorization notarized. From the sounds of it, no one ever asks a mom questions about traveling with a kid, but don't want to risk someone thinking I'm trafficking my daughter to CocoCay to become a full time water slide attendant.

-Room- since this is a short cruise with just two of us, we had originally booked a Virtual Balcony Interior room because it was so cheap and we figured it was worth a try, just to say we did it one. However, later on the royalUp offers came in and we secured a balcony upgrade for only 200 more. We seem to have lucked out with the location as there's rooms both above and below us. This will be our first time in a standard balcony room as we've always done Junior Suites before, but without all my wife's stuff I don't think we'll have any issues with space. We will have large suitcases though as we're staying in Florida for the following week, which I'm sure will look odd as everyone else shows up with carry on bags.

Excursions and Ports- CocoCay and Thrill water park are the reason this trip was booked, as my daughter loved it back in May. We've booked the full day pass, which was unfortunately more than three times the price of what we paid earlier this year. For the day in Nassau the plan is to just stay on-board and hope the slides are open most of the day.

Dining- nothing planned as of yet outside of the main dining room, but I'm sure that will probably change as my daughter is a huge fan of Jamie's Italian (which I'm sure makes her a mortal enemy of @PRC)

 

 

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6 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

If Hubby and my kids ever took one of these, I'm pretty sure it would be the kids leading the way! lol Have a great time!

I got lucky. Addies an easy going little girl. Willing to try anything, but that also means I’ll be back on the drop slides on CocoCay, I’ll be sure to look for @Matts courage along the slide. 

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2 hours ago, PRebecca said:

Looking forward to reading all about it! My 1st time on this ship is coming right up!

Thanks. If you haven’t already, check out the first one I did back in May of this year. Will be great to see how the ship compares versus right after it came out of dry docks. 

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Travel Day

 
Getting to the airport was a breeze this morning as traffic was non-existent with lots of families taking vacations before school starts after Labor Day. Once dropped off at the airport we checked our bags, which seemed so weird for a three day cruise, but with 5 days afterwards was a necessity. 
Precheck at BWI has been a mess recently and today wasn’t any exception, those in the precheck line were looking at a 15-20 minute wait, luckily with my CLEAR memebership, Addie and I were through as fast as I could scan my fingers. 
Once onboard the plane we were treated with a delight that doesn’t usually come during the summer, an empty middle seat. Chalk that up to one advantage of just being a Daddy-Daughter trip without my wife to fill out the row. We arrived almost a half hour early and were well on our way to getting a mini-vacation off to a fast start. 
After getting our luggage and hoping in a Lyft XL (76 dollars today) we were on our way to The Hyatt Regency Miami. While the property is in need of a renovation, it’s in a great location nearby Bayfront Park and Bayside Marketplace. We lucked out and got upgraded from a standard room to king suite which gave us more room to spread out, even though it’s just two of us. 
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After hanging out for a bit, we ventured up to Bayside and past the favorite hotel of  @Lovetocruise2002 , the Intercontinental. It was nice to walk through the park and a bit away from the city streets.
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We ended up grabbing some dinner there as well as some Starbucks tea. I always thought I’d have a few more years before the Starbucks Habit kicked in, but apparently I wasn’t that lucky. It must have been our lucky day because right as we walked back in, it began to pour outside. We grabbed some dessert inside at the property’s marketplace and headed up to get ready for tomorrow. 

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Through two buildings from our balcony you can make out Norwegian’s new Terminal being built for Norwegian Encore which sits next to Royal’s Terminal A which we’ll be using in the morning. 
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10 hours ago, AGSLC5 said:

You won't see many Florida kids onboard.. School started here last week. 

That was part of the hopeful thinking on this date. College kids have started school and lots of younger kids as well. This will probably be the last year we can do anything this week, they rolled back the law they’ve had for three years that school can’t start till after Labor Day. No joke, the amusement park and beach town lobbyists got a bill through and now it’s finally being taken away. 

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49 minutes ago, Andrew72681 said:

That was part of the hopeful thinking on this date. College kids have started school and lots of younger kids as well. This will probably be the last year we can do anything this week, they rolled back the law they’ve had for three years that school can’t start till after Labor Day. No joke, the amusement park and beach town lobbyists got a bill through and now it’s finally being taken away. 

Wow that's funny!.. I am a Floridian my whole life.. We never started school after Labor Day we always started sometime in August. But you should be good to go this weekend.. I am on the next weekend sailing during Labor Day now that one is going to be a lot of kids I'm sure. 

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9 hours ago, AGSLC5 said:

Wow that's funny!.. I am a Floridian my whole life.. We never started school after Labor Day we always started sometime in August. But you should be good to go this weekend.. I am on the next weekend sailing during Labor Day now that one is going to be a lot of kids I'm sure. 

Yep. That’ll be a busy one. We’ll be heading over to the gulf coast (Anna Maria Island for Labor Day weekend), something they call a “Land Vacation” I know blasphemy. 

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On 8/22/2019 at 1:19 PM, Andrew72681 said:

Thanks. If you haven’t already, check out the first one I did back in May of this year. Will be great to see how the ship compares versus right after it came out of dry docks. 

I’m looking forward to seeing your take between now and then. We just got off Navigator yesterday-stayed in a Junior Suite thanks to the Royal Up program. 

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On 8/24/2019 at 9:54 AM, darketower said:

I’m looking forward to seeing your take between now and then. We just got off Navigator yesterday-stayed in a Junior Suite thanks to the Royal Up program. 

Just got off. Voom was slow so getting photos up to IMGUR for posting was a no go. Will get it caught up today. Spoiler alert, don’t think we’ll be back on Navigator anytime soon. 

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1 hour ago, Andrew72681 said:

Just got off. Voom was slow so getting photos up to IMGUR for posting was a no go. Will get it caught up today. Spoiler alert, don’t think we’ll be back on Navigator anytime soon. 

I didn’t want to say anything initially for fear of tainting your own impression. While we liked the ship, we were surprised at how it seemed “old” even though it was just amped. I came to the conclusion the Amped was more for the pool/slides and restaurant changes vs interiors. The carpeting looked worn and stained in numerous areas. It was nice and we enjoyed our cruise, we just had higher expectations. 

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3 hours ago, darketower said:

I didn’t want to say anything initially for fear of tainting your own impression. While we liked the ship, we were surprised at how it seemed “old” even though it was just amped. I came to the conclusion the Amped was more for the pool/slides and restaurant changes vs interiors. The carpeting looked worn and stained in numerous areas. It was nice and we enjoyed our cruise, we just had higher expectations. 

We had done it back in May as well, and a lot of the refurbishments are already showing their age just a couple of months in. 

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3 hours ago, darketower said:

I didn’t want to say anything initially for fear of tainting your own impression. While we liked the ship, we were surprised at how it seemed “old” even though it was just amped. I came to the conclusion the Amped was more for the pool/slides and restaurant changes vs interiors. The carpeting looked worn and stained in numerous areas. It was nice and we enjoyed our cruise, we just had higher expectations. 

 

2 minutes ago, Andrew72681 said:

We had done it back in May as well, and a lot of the refurbishments are already showing their age just a couple of months in. 

Really hoping that this won't be the case with Oasis as well....

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10 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

You’re on Oasis in March?? When? I am on March 15, 2020.

Screwed up the date in the my brain. It’s April, not March. Booked the 3 day that we’re officially treating as a “cruise to nowhere” it has one stop in Nassau then a sea day and we’re just staying onboard. 

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