Adventure B2B Trip & Ultimate Beach Review 4/16/16 - 4/30/16 (photo bomb)!!!

Introduction

Hi everyone! Having successfully knocked out a few of these reviews in the past, I figured you all might enjoy reading another one. This time, I'll be taking a look at the lovely Adventure of the Seas (aka "Party Boat #1")!! As usual, this was a Back-To-Back cruise (why take one cruise, when you can take two for twice the price?) visiting a total of 10 different Caribbean islands (if you count Puerto Rico). Here is where we went:

Aboard this fantastic ship:

About Me

I'm a 48 year-old, retired Software Engineer (dot com was very good to me) who has been married for 26 years, with no kids. I'm a "good life" kinda guy, specializing in food, wine, cigars, and generally having a good time. I prefer to vacation in warm climates where I can get a good rum drink and spot a few bikinis here and there. I've been on 15 cruises (not counting the ones in this review), all of them with Royal Caribbean. I don't generally take shore excursions through the ship or privately - I do my own thing instead. I'm not a photographer, but my phone did come with a camera.

Overview

I'm going to change up the format of this review. In previous reviews, I covered every venue of the ship first, then did a day-by-day account. I'm going to stick to just the day-by-day account and let the ship areas get covered organically. I am going to focus more closely on the food than in previous reviews - all the stuff I learned from watching cooking shows will finally be put to good use. Prepare to get Chopped Royal! I'm also going to focus on the beaches. This particular cruise offered the unique opportunity of seeing 10 beaches in 14 days. I'm gonna tell you all about them and which was the best.

I took over 500 photos of everything worth seeing including lots of food and booze. I have every Cruise Compass from this trip. Normally, I'd scan and include them in the review, but I'm not going to do that this time. However, if someone wants to see a Compass, I'll scan it for ya'. I'll do my absolute best to answer every question and respond to every comment. Please feel free to ask, comment, critique, flame (please be gentle), or whatever. Alright, let's get started!

Pre-Cruise

Booking a B2B

There used to be two ways to book a B2B: strategic use of 24 holds and calling Royal. Now that 24 hour holds have gone the way of the dinosaur, there is only one way: call. Which is just fine and probably better than trying to mess with Royal's web site (so-called). As with every time we've called Royal, the person on the phone was very helpful and got everything done with ease. SolsticeAZ made the call and became "the person" (I think they call it "primary") on the booking. More on that below.

We selected cabin 1346, a very nice Junior Suite on Deck 10:

Online Check-In

I try to be positive in these reviews, but Royal has this one coming. Their web site gives disaster areas a bad name. I really thought that a year or two ago, when they slathered more lipstick on the pig (aka gave the web site a face lift with all the fancy images), that it was Phase One of a website overhaul. Now, I'm not so sure.

SolsticeAZ is "the person", but we'd like to put all on board expenses for both of us on my credit card. This should be simple. It's not like I want to pay them using goats or BitCoin. SolsticeAZ is the first name up, so I start filling it out. When I got to the expense account, I can't remember what I originally put - maybe cash. I learned later there was no "right" selection and anything I chose wasn't going to work. When I was done with SolsticeAZ's check-in, I moved onto mine and put in the credit card info. No worries. Until I tried to link SolsticeAZ to put her charge on my card. I spent a good 30 minutes trying everything, nothing worked. Then I called customer support. The tech had to call his supervisor. The result after 45 more minutes was "fix it at the pier" - they had no solution to the problem. Nice!

Because this is a B2B, I had to check-in for both cruises. I learned with the second check-in that if I filled out my check-in first, even though SolsticeAZ comes up first (she's "the person"), I can put in my credit card and have all of SolsticeAZ's SeaPass charges go to my card. It's all about who you fill out first. It must be the person with the credit card, or you'll have to "fix it at the pier". That makes total sense, doesn't it??

In my best impression of "Comic Book Guy" from the Simpsons: Worst website, ever... Ok, I'm done ranting.

In Transit (Day 0):

Flying to San Juan from Tucson, AZ isn't as simple these days as you might think. When I looked for flights, several months before the cruise, most involved many connections and long layovers. There was one flight where the total time was 24 hours! Luckily, I found flights through Texas that had one stop and less than one hour layovers. The downside of these flights was that the first one left at 5:10 am. All went well, despite an extremely early morning. Almost...

Several months before the trip, I decided to buy some really nice TSA approved luggage locks. The ones I had previously would open automatically if you put in the combination or even got close. The new ones only open if you press a button with the correct combination. When I got to the hotel, one of the bags had no lock on it, no TSA note in side, nothing. Nothing was missing from the bag, either. It was really weird.

Ritz-Carlton, San Juan

18°26'36" N 66°0'49" W

As I often do before cruises, I splurged on the hotel, choosing the Ritz-Carlton. We arrived at 4:00 pm and were greeted with guava mimosas (yummy). Sorry, no picture because I had my hands full with check-in when they handed me the mimosa.

The fountain out front.

The courtyard.

The pool.

The lobby bar.

The beach. I think someone was going to get married on the beach, hence the chairs.

The room itself. Not the best Ritz-Carlton room I've ever stayed in, but still a damn nice hotel room.

We relaxed out at the pool bar with a couple of mimosas and mojitos.

That evening, we decided to eat at their steak house - BLT Steak.

BLT Steak was quite impressive. Ordinarily, I'd say "how good can a steak house be? They either cook the steak right, or not." It seems these guys have found something else - service.

The menus. The "blackboard" is the daily specials.

We started with a complimentary fois gras, which was unbelievable and made fresh every day.

I moved on to raw oysters (east coast). I had considered other appetizers, but when someone has good raw oysters, that's what you get - if you like oysters, and I love 'em.

To go with, I went with a simple Grey Goose martini, done properly with blue cheese-stuffed olives.

They brought popovers as a bread. My, these were really good.

For entrees, we did steaks (duh) - rib eye for me and filet for SolsticeAZ.

For sides we picked braised carrots (really good) and the house specialty, jalapeño mashed potatoes. Get the mashers, they are to die for. A nice touch to my rib eye was roasted garlic and some bone marrow.

To drink with dinner we got a nice little bottle of grand cru Bordeaux. What do you drink with your steak?

We decided, probably against our best judgment to split a dessert - spiced carrot cake with ginger iced cream. Holy crap, this was one of the best desserts I've ever eaten, and I'm a dessert guy with a sweet tooth! Probably the best aspects were the bits of crunchy toffee and the caramel-ish sauce which melded together with all the island spices.

The cocktail menu from the lobby bar.

After dinner, it was a rum old fashioned and off to bed to try and make up for that ungodly 3:00 am wake up earlier in the day.

All in all, we did pretty well, and it ranks as one of the better "In Transit" days I've had.

Coming up will be San Juan and Embarkation....

Loving your review so far!! We will be on our Honeymoon Cruise at the end of September and can't wait to see the rest. Thank you for doing this!!

Great review, we'll be following along. We sail the Adventure in November.

Looking forward to the rest of this review. Looks like its gonna be a good one!

Beautiful photos.

Always a great review. Thanks for doing this.

Wow, what a great start to this review! I can not wait to read more...

Loving your review so far!! We will be on our Honeymoon Cruise at the end of September and can't wait to see the rest. Thank you for doing this!!

You are most welcome and congratulations! There were a few honeymooners on board as well as a surprise proposal at the "Take a Formal Photo with the Captain" event. Not even the Captain was in on it. She said yes and cried. It was awesome.

Great review, we'll be following along. We sail the Adventure in November.

I'll be leading the way! Or something. You'll get to see her after the refit, nice. I'm jealous.

Looking forward to the rest of this review. Looks like its gonna be a good one!

I hope so. Thanks for the early vote of confidence. But, no pressure...on me. :eek: Enjoy!

Beautiful photos.

Thank you kindly. Truth be told, iPhone did most of the work. The cameras on the phones are amazing now. Especially since you can adjust the exposure on the 6S.

Always a great review. Thanks for doing this.

You sound like a repeat customer. Yay!!!!

You are most welcome and please enjoy!

Wow, what a great start to this review! I can not wait to read more...

I'm so happy you are liking it! :D

I'll be uploading photos as quickly as I can - they are the long pole in the tent, so to speak. The words come pretty quick. The pictures, less so. :o

Nice start, can't wait to read the rest.

Looking forward to all of your beach reviews!:)

Nice start, can't wait to read the rest.

Thank you very much! I promise to keep you waiting as little as possible.

Looking forward to all of your beach reviews!:)

I hope my beach reviews will live up to your expectations.:D

I was shooting for 10 different beaches, but mother nature spoiled one and economics took care of another. So, it'll be 8 beaches. That's a B (8/10), right? I can live with that.

Oh, and spoiler alert. I suppose I should have put that first...oops.

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of your review. Your pictures are great and you're a good storyteller.

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of your review. Your pictures are great and you're a good storyteller.

I'm glad you are enjoying it! And I really appreciate the kind words.

Great photos, great review, more, more [emoji1]!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Yay! I get to relive the cruise, and AZAficionado does all the work!! But since I took part in this beach odyssey, I'll chime in once in a while...someine has to be the fact-checker on the storytelling here! :D