Explora II Cruise - February, 2026
A bit about us: I started cruising in 1999, my wife in 2006. We initially began sailing on Carnival, but grew tired of the 70s Vegas casino decor of neon lights and topless mermaid statutes. We moved on to Royal Caribbean and we stuck around long enough to make it to Diamond status, but we eventually aged out of the need for rock walls, ice rinks, wave simulators, etc. We switched to sailing Celebrity (mostly in Retreat) and had some great cruises to the Galapagos, Alaska and the Caribbean. But after Covid, when Celebrity made the decision to simultaneously raise prices (significantly) *and* cut quality, we knew it was time to look around again. We have since sailed on Virgin Voyages and on MSC in Yacht Club.
When we discovered that the premise of Explora was essentially "Yacht Club, but for the entire ship", we booked a 10-day cruise from Miami to the Eastern Caribbean on Explora II. Although we have taken 20+ Caribbean cruises, we had not visited 3 of the 5 islands on this itinerary, so we were looking forward to exploring some new (to us) locations.
Here's the itinerary:
Pre-Cruise – Travel to Orlando, Universal Orlando Resort, Brightline to Miami
Sunday, February 1 - Tuesday, February 3
Since the cruise didn't start until mid-week (on Wednesday February 4th), I opted to take two weeks off of work and we decided to drive from our home in the Tampa Bay area to Orlando and spend a couple of nights at Universal before heading down to Miami.
This turned out to be not the greatest decision since a polar vortex was causing Central Florida to have the lowest temperatures in 16 years! Nonetheless, the reservations has been made and pre-paid, so on Sunday morning, we dropped off our dogs and headed over to Orlando. We had chosen to stay on-property at Universal at their Adventura hotel. Here's the room:
Don't let the sunshine in that last picture fool you. It was around 35 degrees outside. I would love to regale you with stories of all of the fun and adventures we had at Universal, but even with the puffer-jackets and gloves from our Alaska trip that we dug out of storage, this was way too cold for us. You'll see from our step count below that we ended up walking 15 miles over the 2 days, but that was mainly because the water taxis weren't running due to the cold and wind and the wait for a bus was around 30 minutes, so we ended up walking around the resort whenever we ventured out.
The most exciting part of our Universal stay was when we went to lunch at Toothsome Chocolate Factory and the bartender made us an Irish coffee-like concoction, but with chocolate added. This was tasty (and warm!):
On Tuesday, we checked out of our room at Universal and headed over to the Orlando airport. We parked in the garage at Terminal C, then it's a fairly short walk to the Brightline terminal:
Here's a snippet out of my previous review when we took the Brightline for our MSC cruise:
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I want to talk a bit about Brightline. They advertise the service as a "High Speed Passenger Train" but don't mistake this for a Japanese bullet train (which can hit speeds up to 200 mph).
Here are the Brightline speeds (as quoted by the attendant. These aren't official speeds published by Brightline):
-Miami through West Palm Beach: Max 79 mph
-North of West Palm Beach: Max 110 mph
-After the turn west to Orlando: Max 125 mph
The train trip from the Orlando station to the Miami station takes 3.5 hours. Can you drive from Orlando to Miami in 3.5 hours or less? Yep. So keep that in mind when exploring travel options.
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TIP: If you are considering the train, sign up for the Brightline mailing list. They frequently send codes for 25% off fares.
Our 10:50AM train ended up being delayed until 11:30, but the trip was pleasant and smooth and the Wi-fi was fast. We arrived at the Miami station at around 3PM and grabbed a Lyft to our hotel.
We chose to stay at the Hampton Inn and Suites in Brickell. This was our room:
We ate at the Batch gastropub next to the Hampton. I had the Batch burger:
Final step count for Pre-Cruise:
