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Media kit: Explora II at anchor, where the megaships can’t fit
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A completely biased, highly unfiltered investigation.
Welcome back to the one corner of the travel internet where nobody flashes a row of blinding veneers, describes a “transformative spiritual awakening” on a pool deck, or slides an affiliate link for pastel packing cubes into your peripheral vision.
If you want the big picture — the reroute, the embarkation, the stateroom — start with Part 1: The Overview. This is the nook-and-cranny version. We inspected the restaurants, analyzed the bar acoustics, verified the hot tub coordinates, and sacrificed our own liver health in the name of investigative journalism.
Grab a properly made cocktail, use our hard-earned research to build your own strategy, and book it direct. Or — and we say this about exactly one cruise line — let us book it for you. That’s how much we trust Explora. The commission goes to our scholarship fund, not our bar tab. (The bar tab is included anyway.)
Maybe the best hotel doesn’t have an address. It does have a propeller.
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*As always, no commissions from our links. We encourage booking early and direct. These maps are always a work in progress, and are curated from all past trips and current research.
These pins also power ai-tinerary, our invite-only itinerary tool. Same stamps, same opinions.
Three bookings before you board, one wallet moment once you’re on.
Explora approaches dining with a refreshingly civilized strategy: you lock in three pre-cruise reservations at their distinct venues, so nobody has to engage in hand-to-hand combat for a 7:00 PM table. Better still, there is no massive, echoing main dining room anywhere on the ship.
Once onboard, tweaking the schedule or adding spontaneous dinners is easy, and that includes the Emporium Marketplace — which we must formally insist is a high-end food hall, not to be confused with the germ-swapping trough of a standard cruise buffet.
The only time your wallet comes out for food is Anthology, the €140–165-per-person Italian tasting menu. It’s the ship’s lone, unapologetic upcharge, and it is mostly worth it. “Mostly” is doing real work in that sentence — see below.
The included restaurants, starting with the best one.
Marble & Co. Grill is the best restaurant on Explora II. Full stop. Not the upcharge venue, not the breezy poolside lunch — this one.
Instead of one giant banquet hall where you watch 200 strangers saw into their sirloins, the restaurant is broken into smaller, separate rooms. Dark, moody, old-school New York polo club, where you can hold a conversation without shouting over the next table’s vacation drama. Service is warm, professional, and perfectly timed.
The Wandering Mustache Survival Warning: do not clear your plate during the appetizers. The crushed fingerling potatoes with Calvisius Oscietra caviar and Normandy butter are the best dish on the ship, and also a beautiful, delicious trap. The sustainably sourced steaks — French Jersiaise prime rib, dry-aged Black Angus — arrive in massive portions. Share one. It’s the only way you’ll have room for the sides, which might be the real stars anyway.
We didn’t let our steaks go cold taking 47 photos for strangers. We ate it hot, drank the wine, and lived the experience. Go do the same.
A few years ago we’d have laughed you off the deck for suggesting an all-you-can-eat, omakase-style Pan-Asian restaurant on a cruise ship that we wouldn’t regret the next morning. Sakura proved us wrong.
The flaw: it’s the ship’s only single-room restaurant, and it gets loud. Our second night came with an unexpected appetizer — a table of ladies whose decibel level could have cracked the stabilizer glass. We asked to move, and they relocated us to the al fresco deck section. Problem solved, view included.
The kitchen handled a gluten intolerance flawlessly, with a gluten-free steak so tender it made the gluten-eaters jealous, plus crispy soft-shell crab, generous sushi, and excellent dumplings for the rest of us. The sake selection is very good and included. A near-perfect meal — just pray you aren’t seated next to Susan and her crew.
Traveling with a group? Skip the lobby-bar scramble. Most passengers walk right past the small bar and lounge tucked into the front of this restaurant, which makes it the ship’s best-kept secret. Sink into a chair, coordinate the evening, and feel insufferably smug about your superior spatial awareness while everyone else hunts for a seat. We did this several evenings, even when dinner was somewhere else entirely. Zero regrets.
The restaurant itself is Mediterranean done right — as light or as olive-oil-drenched as you want. The table-side Dover Sole Puttanesca alone is worth the visit.
The caveat: because the bar pulls double duty as a lounge, wine service ran a beat slower here than anywhere else on the ship. Not a dealbreaker — you’re on a luxury cruise, not a lunch break — but flag your waiter before the glass hits half empty. Steal our lounge strategy. Just don’t ask us to book the table.
Fil Rouge was our go-to for French-inspired dining, and it wins on atmosphere before the bread arrives. Artistic room dividers break the space into intimate pockets of tables — no echoing hall, no hearing what a hundred other people are chewing. It feels like a cozy Parisian bistro with enough privacy to gossip about your fellow passengers in peace.
Service was consistently excellent and the food was stellar. The foie gras appetizer is the kind of rich, decadent triumph that makes you forget your cholesterol for an hour, and the dessert cart is not to be ignored.
They also do a table-service breakfast. It isn’t the showstopper dinner is, but it’s a civilized alternative to hunting for a table in the food hall while someone’s kid blocks the eggs.
Two ways to eat well without getting dressed up.
If the word “buffet” conjures lukewarm mystery meat, shared sneeze guards, and passengers hoarding shrimp, the Emporium will shatter your trauma. It’s crew-served: an ultra-fresh raw bar, chefs tossing handmade pasta à la minute, a charcuterie station that belongs in Paris, and daily specials worth planning around. Pro tip: eat out on the al fresco section.
The flaw: on embarkation day it’s a madhouse. Everyone boards hungry at once, the space feels rushed, and the beverage service could use a couple more bodies to keep the wine moving at peak times. And there is no 24-hour buffet on Explora, so learn the Emporium’s hours on day one. Staffing gripe aside, it’s a triumph of casual luxury dining.
Want the actual luxury move? Order in. We used in-room dining strictly for breakfast, and it arrived precisely on time, piping hot, and was divine to eat on the balcony while watching the sea. No hour-late, lukewarm tray, no hidden “delivery fee” — Explora treats it as an extension of the main culinary program.
Word on the ship is that the late-night BLT is perfection.
Spectacular food. Two very fixable problems.
Anthology is the lone upcharge venue aboard Explora II. On a ship where practically every calorie is already included in a hefty fare, an extra €140–165 per person needs some justification.
The food justifies it. The service is flawless and the Italian tasting menu is technical, beautifully plated, and frankly mind-blowing. If this restaurant were on land, it would sit comfortably on a certain French tire company’s star list.
Gripe one: the wine. There is no included wine at Anthology. None. Not a house red, not a polite little prosecco. Every pour is an upcharge — on a luxury all-inclusive, at the one restaurant you already paid extra to sit in. We are proud wine snobs, and a great pairing is a religious experience, but this one comes with a collection plate. Pro tip: between courses, excuse yourself, slip out to the nearest bar, collect an included glass of something lovely, and return to your seat like nothing happened. The sommelier will survive.
Gripe two: the fine-dining daycare. For reasons that defy all logic, Explora allows children under 12 — including infants — into Anthology. We dressed to the nines for a romantic, all-out dinner. Three tables were occupied in the entire room. Ours was accompanied by a crying infant and two toddlers conducting an active food fight directly across from us. We love families. We do not love flying organic carrot purée at €150 a head.
Explora, we are begging you: it’s a Michelin-level concept. Give it a Michelin-level atmosphere. Adults only.
Bars that don’t ask for your room number. Pools where nobody plays chicken.
We grouped the pools and bars together because the designers essentially welded them together. If there’s a body of water big enough to submerge yourself in, there’s a skilled bartender three paces away with a premium gin and tonic. This rule applies top-side only. Wander down to the grand-piano Lobby Bar looking to swim and you’ll have a very awkward conversation with the bartender.
You’re safe from the usual mid-tier atrocities: no amplified cruise director, no mandatory line dances, no neon Drink of the Day hawked by a guy in a giant captain’s hat. The loungers are thick, plush, and abundant. Retire the 6:00 AM towel strategy. There is always a spot. Is it right next to the pool? Not always. But there are enough chairs for everyone.
Naturally, because we aren’t influencers, you won’t find us lounging poolside in a carefully draped linen shirt, staring pensively at the horizon through 400 burst shots. We were too busy actually lying down, reading our books, and letting the sea breeze hit our faces.
Full disclosure: did we have a brief moment of psychological weakness and snap exactly one un-curated, wind-blown, sun-blinded selfie on deck, just to prove to the family we hadn’t been marooned in the Aegean? Yes. Fine. We did. It’s right there.
Possibly the best pool sailing today, with one caveat: leave the swim cap at home. This is a sitting pool — compact, shallow, and built for submerging chest-deep, resting your elbows on the edge, and staring at the ocean like a highly pampered sea lion. Show up to practice your butterfly and you’ll kick someone’s cocktail out of their hand.
Most cruise lines treat the stern as suite real estate and leave everyone else peering from the side rails. Explora gave it to everyone, and it’s a design masterstroke. Sitting low at the infinity edge, the ship’s churning white wake fills your whole field of vision. Hours disappear. Overhead canopies give real shade, so you can read without the pages blinding you or nap without waking up a boiled lobster.
It also doubles as Sakura’s al fresco lunch spot on port days. So when that $45 hamburger in Santorini gives you pause, come back aboard, order Pan-Asian, and watch the port from the best seat in the house.
One more thing about the best seat in the house: a Greek fighter jet buzzed the ship. Twice. All around us, passengers clutched their loved ones for one final goodbye. The Staches clutched their champagne. Priorities. (Everyone lived. The champagne did not.)
Tucked at the back of the ship just above the Astern deck, the Atoll is the pool half the passengers forget exists. Quiet, intimate, beach-club vibe, unobstructed views off the stern. When the main decks show too many signs of human life, grab a cocktail and disappear back here. Bartenders keep it relaxed by day and slide into acoustic sets or low-key DJ as the sun goes down. Blissfully underused. Keep it that way.
The large central pool sits under the Magrodome, a massive retractable glass roof that closes when the weather turns or the Helios deck shuts down. The flaw: the roof decision is made before the ship moves, and on a sunny sea day a closed dome turns greenhouse-warm in a hurry.
That aside, it’s beautiful, grand, and free of the chaotic lido-deck energy you’d find on lesser ships. At night it becomes an open-air cinema with popcorn, cookies, and a full bar. Films skewed adult on our sailing.
The adults-only sanctuary at the very top of the ship, and where we spent most in-port afternoons. Panoramic, unobstructed ocean views, plush loungers in abundance, and a breeze that keeps you comfortable under the Mediterranean sun. It feels like commanding your own private superyacht.
Until it doesn’t. That excellent breeze turns into a full gale on windy sea days, and when it does, the crew locks the whole deck down and you retreat downstairs like a peasant. Worth it every other day. Have a backup plan.
We tested every single pool bar on the ship. You’re welcome. We are officially ruined for life.
The indoor drinking ecosystem.
Before we head indoors, a reminder of the Wandering Mustache philosophy: we’re not here for brand deals or to sell you a course on traveling the world on three dollars a day. We pay our own way and share the blueprint so you can pull up your big-kid pants and plan your own damn itinerary.
The baseline across the ship is remarkably high. The included wines are excellent — not the mass-produced house plonk of mid-tier lines — and the standard spirits list is full of top-shelf names you recognize. If your palate is dangerously expensive, every bar has a beautifully bound for-purchase menu of rare vintages and boutique spirits. For the most part, the bartenders let you drink the included good stuff in peace.
The one place you’ll feel a gentle corporate nudge toward the upcharge menu is the Malt Whisky Bar. More on that economic trap below.
Dead center, double height, a chandelier doing a lot of heavy lifting, and a pianist on the Steinway one deck up — often joined by a cellist or violinist working through everything from Bach to whatever was on the radio last summer. Pre-dinner, this is the ship’s people-watching headquarters, which is the point.
Our only gripe: there isn’t enough seating. Which, annoyingly, is the point. There are plenty of bars aboard, and cramming in more chairs would turn the ship’s living room into a departure lounge. If every seat is taken, take the hint and go explore. You won’t be sorry.
Big, bright, and pointed straight at the horizon. By day it’s coffee, light bites, and afternoon tea for people who want to feel British for an hour; by night it’s cocktails with live jazz and piano. There’s an outdoor section for when the view deserves fresh air. It manages to be quiet and cozy without tipping into stuffy — nobody shushes you, because nobody needs to. There’s also a selection of games for those so inclined, which is how a polite couple settles twenty years of grudges over backgammon.
The catch: it’s the ship’s default after-dinner destination, so it is at its busiest exactly when you’re most likely to want it. “Busy” on a 900-guest ship is relative — nobody is throwing elbows — but if you want a window seat, arrive before dessert finishes elsewhere.
Rare whiskies, whisky cocktails, jazz, and a walk-in humidor stocked with Cuban and non-Cuban cigars, complete with a resident cigar expert and an indoor-outdoor smoking terrace. It is, as one reviewer put it, “masculine,” which is cruise-speak for leather chairs and a faint smell of decisions.
Two warnings. First, this is the one place aboard where the upsell lives: the good-stuff menu is long, and nobody volunteers which pours are extra. They made us a specialty cocktail and let the upcharge be a surprise. Ask first. Second, it’s the only smoking venue on the ship. If cigar smoke isn’t your thing, choose your Explora Lounge seat accordingly.
Mixology and enrichment talks by day, cabaret-style performances by night, with the programming growing livelier as the evening goes on. It’s where the after-dinner crowd lands when they want to be entertained rather than merely served.
It’s also one of two places aboard where dancing actually happens. Fair warning to the showstoppers: if you’re the kind of dancer who needs the entire ship watching, you may be disappointed. Half the ship is elsewhere, and the other half is politely pretending not to look.
The honest version: the shows are polished, pleasant, and not why you booked this ship. If you’re expecting full Broadway production values, you’ve confused Explora with its megaship cousins at MSC. That’s the trade, and frankly, we’ll take it.
The all-day lounge that opens straight onto the Astern Pool, so you can take the wake view without getting wet. Sundown is aperitivo hour, and later the DJ reads the room instead of following a playlist — the energy builds as the night goes on.
Which is either a feature or a flaw, depending on how you feel about a DJ after 10:00 PM. It’s also the ship’s second dance floor, and the formal one — someone leads, someone follows, and nobody attempts the Macarena. Early evening is civilized. Late night is the closest Explora gets to a party, which is to say: a very well-dressed one, with the volume at “considerate.”
Open-air cocktails at the very top of the ship, with wind screens doing their best and a house DJ playing reworked lounge hits as you sail out of port. Sail-away here, with a glass in hand and the harbor shrinking behind you, is the best seat aboard at that particular moment.
The flaw is the same as Helios, one deck higher: it’s fully exposed. On a breezy night the wind screens become a suggestion, and hair becomes a lost cause. Bring a layer. Leave the blowout at home.
Every so often, after sail-away, the DJ forgets which cruise line he works for and Sky Bar turns into an actual club. It’s occasional, it’s brief, and it’s surprisingly fun — especially since the wind already ruined your hair.
The one part of Explora we’d happily throw overboard.
Full disclosure: we are not mass-market, ship-planned excursion people. We plan our own ports, obsessively, and we like it that way. But Explora handed us an excursion credit good for one tour, and after a week of this ship getting nearly everything right, we figured: how bad could it be? We booked two — one on the credit, one at full price.
That was two too many.
It started fine. A coach to the ferry dock, then a ferry to Antiparos — a dream of a Greek island, the kind of place you’d happily lose an afternoon in. Our guide, semi-knowledgeable and semi-confused, led us through the adorable town to some genuinely unique ruins. Then we were rushed right back through that same tiny, charming town, citing a tight ferry schedule and a reservation at our next stop.
We made the ferry. We made the bus. Only then did our guide notice we were missing four people. Several fellow passengers reported that those four had chosen to stay behind. Several more — the Staches included — suggested we go join them. It was very nearly a mutiny, led by linen-clad warriors demanding more time in all those cute boutiques. The mutiny failed. So we sat, sequestered on the bus, for 45 minutes while two more ferries came and went, before moving on to our next “urgent” engagement: a beachfront café.
Here’s the kicker. The bus let us off in front of a truly lovely beachfront café. We walked in. We sat down. And our now thoroughly befuddled guide herded us back out and across the street to a different café. That one was actually very cute — and entirely understaffed for a busload of people, and it lost track of about 20% of the orders at our table of six.
She-Stache declined to sit and wait for her coffee and strolled over to the beach instead. She came back ten minutes later. The coffee did not. Then it was back on the bus and back to the ship.
What stung more than the day itself was the response. We went straight to the excursion desk, along with several other guests from our bus, and explained what had happened, and asked about our second booking, in Corfu — which, we learned, might be even worse than Paros. So we politely asked for a refund of the full price we’d paid for Paros.
Through some truly impressive accounting magic, the excursion credit had been applied to Corfu, not Paros — so the tour we’d actually paid for was, in their books, fully used. Nothing to refund. So we skipped Corfu entirely and let the credit sink with it. That’s how bad the first one was. No money back, and no real sense that anyone grasped how disappointing the whole experience had been. On a ship that gets almost everything right, it was jarring how wrong this went — and how little the excursion team seemed to mind.
Do not book Explora’s excursions. Not even with a credit. Especially not with your own money. Plan your own ports, book local guides direct, and let the credit go. Your afternoon is worth more.
Mostly road-tested. Where it isn’t, we’ll say so.
Contrary to everything you’ve read so far, we did occasionally leave the bars. Here’s the rest of what Explora II has on offer — what we tried, what we skipped, and what we merely peeked at through a glass door.
The thermal suite is included — thalassotherapy pool, heated ceramic loungers, salt room, steam room, sauna, and “experience showers,” which is a shower with ambitions. It’s built for one thing: doing absolutely nothing, beautifully. That it isn’t an upcharge is a genuinely lovely perk. Explora, please keep it that way. The one catch: if you’re not booked for a treatment, access hours vary, so check the daily schedule before you show up in a robe.
Treatments in the spa proper cost what a luxury resort on land would charge. She-Stache splurged on a massage — her first ever at sea, after years of assuming a cruise-ship massage was mostly an upsell with lotion — and it was excellent. Go on a port day, when everyone else is ashore and the place is practically yours.
Thanks to a generous onboard credit, the Staches did something deeply out of character: we exercised. Voluntarily. Personal training, pilates, and yoga were all excellent — and yoga on a moving ship is a real test of whether your feet actually know where the floor is. The TechnoGym-equipped gym on Deck 10 is compact but has everything you need, and it never once felt crowded.
Up top, the pickleball court on Deck 14 (that orange rectangle in Part 1’s aerial photo) was fun whenever the wind allowed, which is the same deal as the jogging track on Deck 12. The track actually circles the whole deck, so you run fewer laps and get better views — and on a windy day, a free resistance workout. Marble & Co. calories, consider yourselves warned.
Small-group classes — risotto, Spanish pintxos, that sort of thing — where you cook, then eat your homework. We didn’t take one, but the lineup looked interesting and far more original than the usual towel-folding demo. It costs extra. For a pair of foodies, skipping it was an oversight. Next time.
Video games, VR, pool and foosball tables, and board games. We traveled without any wee-staches, so this is a walk-by review: the space looked clean, well equipped, and well maintained. No babysitting service, though — which makes the toddler food fight at Anthology slightly more understandable and not one bit more forgivable.
We are not casino people, but credit where due: the casino (open only at sea) sits behind glass doors, so the jingle stays inside and out of the corridors. It looked perfectly adequate to us, which is the highest praise non-gamblers can give. Late-night karaoke and a silent disco are there for the brave.
Daily lectures, dance lessons, games, and trivia do repeat on a multi-week sailing. But new guest entertainers rotate in almost every week — one week brought a genuinely amazing magician — so there’s always something new by the time you’ve memorized the trivia answers.
And Crema Café on Deck 5 became a daily habit — at least once a day, usually more. We loved it, and the light snacks are exactly what you want after a long day in port when dinner is still hours away. The Deck 11 pool also has a gelato and crêpe station, for the rare moment Crema isn’t enough.
And yes, there are boutiques — Cartier, Piaget, Buccellati, Panerai — strategically placed for the moment the included champagne convinces you a watch is a reasonable souvenir. It is not. Keep walking.
No kick-backs for links. Ever.
We always encourage booking direct, and every link on this page goes straight to the vendor. But we’re confident enough in Explora to make an exception: if you’d like help finding and booking the right sailing, we’re happy to do it for you.
The catch, such as it is: the 10% commission goes straight into our volunteerism scholarship program for underprivileged teens. Not our wine budget.
The fine print: we will happily book your sailing. We will not book a single excursion. Not one. We’ve seen what happens to the coffee.
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