In case you missed it from the past three blog posts, I recently wrapped up a one-week cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the Seas from the World Cruise Center at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, California. This was the second ever cruise I’ve taken, with the first one also being with Royal Caribbean, but on their Quantum of the Seas ship instead. My cruise this time around had stops in Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlán, and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico.

I already shared my thoughts about my second Chef’s Table experience, the all-access behind-the-scenes tour of the ship, and the food I ate at each of the specialty restaurants with my unlimited dining package. I still have a bunch of miscellaneous pictures I took around the ship that I haven’t shared yet, so here is my concluding photo dump with everything else I haven’t covered.

To address my hatred of standing in line, I once again purchased The Key add-on, which is basically like a paid VIP service for certain aspects of the cruise. … The actual reason I get it is because it comes bundled with onboard Internet access, which is mandatory for me so I can continue working while cruising. With that being said, I do actually hate standing in line though, so the priority access from The Key made my boarding process much easier.

After getting through security, I joined a line with everyone else to head onto the ramp to get on the ship. I think this process would’ve been quicker if I had shown up earlier at the beginning of my priority boarding period, but because I was still waking up pretty late at that time, I didn’t want to make myself suffer through any unnecessary sleep deprivation.

I enjoy seeing the logistics of how things work. I think it is quite interesting to think about how complex and full my life is, and then realize that everyone else also has a life with just as much time as I do, and then further realize that there are hundreds of those people dedicating all their working hours into making large-scale coordinated things happen, such as a cruise.

With that in mind, I like getting a peek at the behind-the-scenes of how things are organized. This may seem very mundane, but I saw a long row of carts with checked luggage waiting to be loaded onto the ship, so I snapped a photo.

After boarding the ship, I had my welcome lunch as part of The Key. Not long after I finished eating, staterooms opened up, so I headed up to the sixth floor to drop off my bags. The Key has a system where you can leave your bags at a designated drop-off point immediately upon boarding and the staff will deliver them to your stateroom door for you if you’d like. I personally don’t use that service because it’s not that much of a hassle to bring a carry-on-sized luggage around with me for a little bit, and I’d much rather not take the risk of it getting lost.

For this cruise, I decided to get an interior room with a promenade view. During my previous cruise, I had a balcony room; it was nice, but I realized that the value that you get with the balcony relative to the upcharge is debatable.

I think if you’re cruising with family and want to spend some quiet, private time together with them, then a balcony room might make sense. However, I’m cruising solo and have no problem going out in public spaces on my own just to people-watch, so I didn’t actually really spend that much time in my stateroom (and if I did, I was working at my desk and was focused enough on my work to not care about the balcony). On top of that, if I ever actually wanted to go look at the ocean, there were plenty of public places at which I could do that.

After leaving my carry-on luggage and backpack in my stateroom, I headed back out to go for a walk and check out what Navigator of the Seas has to offer.

The main difference I noticed compared to Quantum of the Seas is that Navigator is a bit more “portioned out.” On Quantum, I felt like I could start at any point on the ship and always make it to the opposite side of that deck just by walking on a path that cuts through the entire length of the ship. However, on Navigator, things were organized in “sections,” and if you are in one isolated section, you have to do a bit more navigating before you can make it to a different section.

After everyone embarked on the ship, the sail away party started and we departed San Pedro.

On the first night of the cruise, I thoroughly walked around the entire ship to figure out where everything was and scout out some nice areas where I could work while people-watching. After returning to my stateroom and getting some work done while looking down on the promenade from my interior window, I headed over to the Royal Theater in time for the first show of the cruise.

After the show, I headed over to the Star Lounge to listen to a live performance by the band Euphoria. There was a dance floor in front of the stage, so for some of the more fun songs, people went up there to dance to the music.

Royal Caribbean’s mobile app has a convenient schedule of activities going on at all times, and especially on sailing days, that list is packed. During one of the sailing days, the art shop ran an art auction.

This was probably the stupidest art auction I have ever seen in my entire life. A staff member would bring out a piece of art to the stage, then the auctioneer would say something like “this art piece is worth over a hundred thousand dollars, but we are starting bidding today at only $70,000!” He would then count down, and obviously not a single rational soul on a cruise ship would spend tens of thousands of dollars on an impulse purchase of a random painting, so nobody would make an offer. The auctioneer would request applause anyway, and then they would swap the art piece and repeat the process.

I did not see a single art piece sold at this auction. I left early so I could eat lunch instead.

After the auction was over, they brought the art pieces back down to the designated art gallery area. While walking around and taking a look at a later time, I saw this cat sculpture. It looks nice, but knowing their pricing system, it’s probably worth $300,000, but they will give you a great deal and sell it to you for $299,999.

And of course, you shouldn’t touch it for your safety, i.e., so you won’t have to take out a second mortgage on your house to pay for the damages if you break it.

Here’s another shot of the Royal Theater for a different show. This one was very strange. At first, these two guys started as comedians and told about half an hour of jokes. … Then they randomly pulled out some bolas and swung them around and did some kind of hybrid dance and martial arts performance. It was very unexpected.

Quantum had a long walking track that stretched across the entire upper deck, but the one on Navigator felt like it was only about half the length, and it was curvy and wound around cabanas and was overall just more difficult to use. Thus, I spent a decent amount of time in the fitness center, not only to use the treadmill to get my steps in, but also to do some resistance training as well.

The gym had a back door that led to somewhat of a secret area with a row of pool lounging chairs. It was a nice place to get a peaceful view of the ocean after my workout. In the distance, you can see Cabo San Lucas; I didn’t disembark the ship because Cabo has tendering service only (i.e., they put you on a smaller ship and bring you back and forth to shore), and I get severe seasickness on small ships, so I didn’t want to take the risk.

The following day’s show at the Royal Theater was “Ballroom Fever.” Apparently I decided to take a picture of the empty stage upon my early arrival, but didn’t actually take any pictures of the show.

Here are some photos of our day docked at Mazatlán.

One of my favorite spots to work was in the Cosmopolitan Lounge on one of the upper-most decks of the ship; it had floor-to-ceiling windows that showed a great view of the pool deck and ocean.

Here are some photos of sail away from Mazatlán.

I returned to the Cosmopolitan Lounge the next day to work while people-watching again.

After wrapping up most of the work I needed to do for the day, I dropped my laptop off in my stateroom and headed out to the pool deck to watch sail away from the next port, Puerto Vallarta.

Here is the mini-golf course on the ship. I managed to get a picture of it empty because it was extremely windy and slightly drizzling this day, so it wasn’t practical for anyone to play mini-golf.

The night of sailing away from our final port, there was a performance by Jennifer Singer.

And finally, the night after that, which was an all-day sailing day, the show in the Royal Theater was “Showgirl! Past. Present. Future.”

So there are the rest of my miscellaneous photos to fill in the gaps between the other three cruise blog posts I already published.

I’d say that I had a comparable level of enjoyment on this cruise compared to my first one on Quantum. There were a lot of aspects about Navigator that were either better or worse than Quantum, but overall, I think it averaged out. One thing that did help a lot was the fact that I wasn’t as much of a newbie for this cruise as I was on Quantum, so I feel like I was able to take advantage of more of what the cruise had to offer because I knew what I was doing better.

If I find another absolutely insanely incredible bargain deal on Navigator or Quantum for one of these same sailings, then I am willing to do a repeat of one of these itineraries. However, it seems like I already experienced both ships and both longer sailings that depart from San Pedro. Thus, for my next cruise, I will most likely be looking at other ports (like ones in Florida, Texas, or Washington) so I can experience both a new ship and a new set of destinations.