Royal Caribbean cruise explorer of the seas/ allure of the seas

[Amy2000]

Just wondering if anyone can advice re cruises.
Looking at explorer of the seas Ravenna/ Athens / Santorin and either Split/mykonos or kotor/ argostli depending on which cruise I choose.
Never been to any of those places.

or allure ( revamped) for Barcelona, palma both seen before, Rome ( will be hectic and hot I think)
la spezia abd naples- £800 more also!

I prefer the itinerary of explorer but the ship possibly of allure ( allure £800 more).- more to do for kids / better shows it seems.

never cruised before - 2 kids also age 16 and 11 .
Anyone done one or the other or both ?
Both have 2 sea days- it the ship or port more important?
thank you

Replying from Anthem of the Seas... somewhere off the coast of India currently!

It depends how you want to spend your port and sea days. For me and DH we want to chill on sea days- sit with a book, play cards, then dress up for the evenings and enjoy different locations for music on the ship- pretty much every cruise ship fits this criteria. However, we are BIG on exploring and port days and this drives our choice. Current cruise includes and overnight in Mumbai, other ports in India and then heads to Asia- we have long days in port and spend all of them off the boat for as long as possible.

Therefore we chose based on itinerary every time! We even went on a super cheesy Carnival ship because it had an amazing week in Alaska that fitted our dates. We got off and did amazing things in port whilst lots of others stayed on board in the casino....

However I have a friend who just wants to hop off for a few hours, wander round the area near to the port and get back on the boat and want lots of entertainment on board, participating in activities etc- for her she would prioritise the ship choice.

Royal is a great choice in general though- cruised with them on my first cruise 10 years ago on Adventure, now back on Anthem and found despite one being a very old ship and one being very new, service is top notch, very friendly and smiley but no forced joining in!

I believe in Rome you dock nowhere near the city and have to get a coach to Rome itself so that may impact your views too!

I love Royal Caribbean. Been doing it the last 6 years, in indeed, the Caribbean.

Rome from memory is 90 mins drive from the port Civitavecchia from memory.
Kotor ( Montenegro) and Argostoli ( Kefalonia)are small in a good way and nice but you can venture out from both. We have done all these ports except Ravenna, which I suspect is a small place with not much to see but cheap for the cruise line to dock.
Cruise critic forum is a great source of info.
It sounds anal but plan each day on a spread sheet somedays will have nothing so you can do nothing. Sea days usually have more available activities should you wish to do them the choice is yours.
We saved a fortune by organising our own trips, one saved £5400! Ship wanted £6000 local company did it for £600.
Royal Caribbean kids clubs are very well organised.

Thank you for the feedback. Your cruise sounds amazing. I think we will go for explorer due to the ports. But tendering seems a bit hit and miss. I read that the queues to get on and off and kotor can be long.

Thank you . How did you find the tender at kotor? It seems waiting for tenders takes a while ?
Argostli looks like a relaxing possibly beach type of port.

Thank you . How did you find the tender at kotor? It seems waiting for tenders takes a while ?
Argostli looks like a relaxing possibly beach type of port.

We docked in Kotor no tender. Argostoli is small place you can sometimes feed the turtles look for fisherman at quay side. Little happy train type thing will drive you around have to get taxi to beach it’s a fixed price but check

I wasn’t that keen on Explorer (I do prefer slightly newer ships) but the Explorer itinerary looks much better.
Sailing in and out of Kotor is one of my best cruising experiences.