karkee8807

My husband and I were on the 12/8 to 12/16, 8 Night Eastern Caribbean Cruise on Adventure of the Seas.

 We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We had a wonderful, very much needed vacation.  I loved being at sea for eight nights! I don't cry much, but let me just tell you, I have been fighting back the tears since we left because I miss it so much already. This trip and the amount of time we spent on the sea is exactly what I needed, but I think a lot of us will agree it is never enough time.  This is just a "quick" recap of our trip, for those who are interested in reading my babble  in the order as if comes from my head. It is the middle of the night as I am starting this and I have been really sick with the bug that everyone around us seems to have, so please forgive any typos or "is she an idiot" moments.

We are from Akron, Ohio and flew from Cleveland to FLL the day before. This was my 8th cruise and my hub's 4th. My 7th with Royal, his 3rd. Oh, and I turned him on to cruising and I think he loves it almost as much as I do. I say almost because I have not yet convinced him to sell our house so we can go work on the ships, which is something I have always wanted to do. 

Our Itinerary was 

12/8- Board at Port Everglades

12/9- At Sea

12/10- Labadee, Haiti 

12/11-San Juan

12/12- St. Maarten

12/13- St. Kitts

12/14- At Sea

12/15- At Sea

12/16- Debark Port Everglades, Fly home.

First, we have very little to complain about and what annoyed us was not even a big deal.  They really pushed the app, but we had a lot of problems with it. Times, menus and events did not match up, so that was a tad frustrating, but it was obviously nothing to grab the Compass instead..  The app is a very cool idea had it worked, but I prefer the Compass and the TV or touch screens. We noticed a lot of guests were very rude this cruise. Very pushy/cutting in lines, leaving messes all over the ship or rude/demanding/demeaning to  the crew are what really bothered us. Literally no reason to act that way. That has nothing to do with Royal or how the cruise went, just mentioning it in passing in this post. However, most of the guests were great. It was also great to see the amount of guests stopping and talking and being friendly with the crew. The line for self debark was very long, but if went very fast. We were off and on the bus within 30 min of getting in line at 7:15 and at FLL at 8:15. We used All Star for the transfer since they took us to the port from the hotel. Oh, we stayed at the Comfort Suites on Stirling in Dania Beach night before cruise. We'd stay there again since they had a very nice staff, clean grounds/building and comfy rooms and the free breakfast was decent. 

We mostly ate in the Windjammer and it was really good most of the time. Also ate Johnny Rockets a few times. The guys at the coffee bar (Ipuptu, Paul and Wayval, I did not get the other guy's name),our server at Johnny Rockets (Adealyn), as well as our stateroom attendant (Dodi) were wonderful. We really enjoyed them and give them all extra tips.  All of the crew members were really great too. I bought the Royal Refreshment package, which I enjoyed a lot. This was my second time getting it. It is a nice treat. I loved the bottled waters, the lattes and I enjoyed sparkling water with a bit of peach flavored water from the Freestyle machines (try it!). My husband got the Classic Soda and Voom package. Both we bought at 18 and 22 a day, but Black Friday had them at 15 and 19 a day, so we rebooked them. The cost difference paid for our excursion in San Juan! 

Didn't make it to any shows or MDR. We planned too, but took advantage of the empty pools and decks  Liked that The Quest was on the second to last night. It was really funny. It was my first time seeing it how Mercedes did it, and we really enjoyed it. We walked around a lot or sat and watched the sea. We brought things to do because we planned on having a lot of down time, but managed to keep ourselves busy while still doing nothing but enjoying ourselves around the ship. I mayyybe had more lattes then one should, but they were yummy and I love my coffee pals. 

We had room 8259 overlooking the promenade. I think next time we book that style room, we will book more central or at least at the grouping of rooms so we can see more. We love the views and the people watching was excellent.  The room was warm, but we remembered that from last time. I packed a fan with a detachable plug, no issues at all bringing it on. 

St. Kitts was our favorite stop and we took our tour with Thenford Grey on his Grand Tour of St. Kitts. He was wonderful and we highly recommend his company. Caribelle/Romney Manor and Brimstone Hill were amazing. Such amazingly beautiful places with spectacular views. Mr. Grey was so great at teaching us about the island and I think everyone in our group loved him. My coworker went to Romney when she visited in October at my suggestion since I knew it was something she would like. She booked the Open Air Adventure with Royal and enjoyed it. She loved Romeny and gave me a list and money to get her some more goodies. I also bought a lot there. We plan on self touring or booking a private tour next time to allow more time at those places. St Kitts was just so beautiful. Timothy Hill was very pretty, but busy. I had a monkey tossed on me as soon as I got off the bus and realized what was happening, the old pay to take your picture scam. But instead of giving the monkey back, I was handing a guy 10 bucks after a few minutes. At first was mad at myself for falling for the scam, but it was only 10 bucks and I did like playing with the monkeys. He did take a ton of photos at least of my hubs and I with the monkeys. We also saw mongeese and more monkeys at the beach we stopped at, I honestly did not get the name, which is unlike me.  Bermuda is our favorite place we have been so far, but St. Kitts takes a very close second place.  

St. Maarten was our least favorite. We had a very poor tour guide with Bernard's Tours who was very negative and very prejudiced when it came to Jamaicans, Dominicans and Haitians, and he shared things and his views, when he probably should not have. We also were not impressed with the tour, Marigot or the 20 useless minutes at Maho beach. The island is very pretty and really trying to recover from Irma. Next time we will book a water or beach excursion  with Royal. We saw Harmony and wow, was she beautiful. The MSC ship (I think Seaside) was in port and a Marella ship as well. I enjoy seeing other ships, but we are loyal to Royal. Although, I would do a Celebrity cruise anytime, especially if it meant I got to meet Captain Kate.

San Juan was awesome. We did the Old and New San Juan tour. We booked through Royal a few days before leaving.Great tour and great guide named Hector. He suggested La Bombanara  to us on San Francisco. It was an  awesome cafe. Best latte I have ever had. I had the Balloon (an almond cake with a corn bread like texture and house made vanilla ice cream) and my husband had a buttered Mallorca, both were amazing. Mallorcas will be our go too next time we go to the cafe. I regret not getting an extra treat from the pastry case, they looked wonderful. We loved the forts and learning the history of the island. We are planning on sailing from San Juan one day. Such a beautiful island. I have been trying to learn Spanish the past couple months, and have not gotten very far because I recognized very little. Hector did teach us how to roll our "R's" though. But yea, I am still awful at it, haha. 

We loved our beach bed rental on Labadee and how quite the beach around the beds was. We spent most the time swimming. We highly recommend the beds. Lunch tasted better then I expected for how busy it was. Hubs talked about the rice and beans for days, lol. Seeing the dogs running around  by the hillside was a surprise. At first we were turned off because one started crying and screaming, we thought they were fighting and couldn't see.. But we saw them all again while walking around, they were really cute and they seemed harmless and wanted the buffet food. But I would suggest using caution if you see them.  Poked around the indoor market place for a second, but didn't stay long. The market place and the stalls reminded me of Coco Cay,  Nassau and Freeport. So we didn't feel the need to look much or buy anything since I don't like the badgering. The resort was very pretty and we look forward to going back. Does anyone know the story behind the "Carlos" straw bags we saw people carrying around? 

We would sail Adventure again in a heart beat or any Voyager class ship. Our favorite class has been Freedom, when we sailed on Liberty on our last cruise. But the Voyager class is just as good. I have sailed three of of my seven cruises with Royal on Sovereign class ships and two on on Vision class. I don't mind the ship because I cruise to be on the open ocean. My favorite thing in the world is to be on deck at night. But I won't lie, the larger ships are nice. My husband says he would prefer to sail on anything Voyager class and up, but if the ports of call are really good, he doesn't mind the size.  Adventure was in great shape. Such a pretty ship and she has a lot to offer. But hey, if I could be on deck all night, I would be ok working on the Dole ship that passed us when it was leaving Port Everglades, I'm not picky!

I don't normally share much about us or get personal with many people... but a little about us and why we wanted a "busy doing nothing" vacation. We are very easy going and easy to please people who just want to to have a good time in life. Although, I get pretty annoying when planning a vacation, lol.  We have not cruised since October 2015 and our last vacation was to Hatteras Island in May of 2016. We have had a very rough couple of years. We lost our twin sons in the fall of 2016. They were born at 24 weeks and passed away at three days old and a week old. It was awful and obviously heart breaking and devastating. Just weeks after that, we had no idea if my husband was going to have a job or not due to his company selling off his division (thankfully after six long months, he and most his coworkers were able to keep their positions. Our vacation in 2017 to Hatteras was evacuated the morning after we arrived during Maria (which really was nothing for us compared to the disaster that she caused and I hate making it sound like we are complaining).  I turned 30 this month and this trip was a great way to start a new age tier. We booked our cruise in late May. Boy, did that time fly! I made the decision this fall to cut hours back at work so that I can go back to school in January and retake some core classes. I have a good, but part-time job with a local city,but after four years, I have been told there will be no opportunities for full time.  So decided that I needed to go back to school and work towards a career I am proud of. I have my eye on program that I am hoping to be accepted into this coming fall, which means leaving my job to be a full time student until the program ends. Which also means, NO VACATIONS, until I complete the program. BUT if I get in the program and graduate, I will have a very good start to a great career and can continue with my education further and further and advance in the field. I honestly think the program will work out for me and my start to my 30;s will be better then the end of my 20's. In a couple years, we will be able to book another cruise. My goal career will help us be able to cruise more often, take an Alaskan and European cruise or dare I say, one day take a South Pacific or Transatlantic voyage! I guesss it will be worth the break in vacations in the long hull, haha. Hope this was not too TMI! If so, blame the cocktail of meds I was put on for this bug!

So thank you to everyone for the chats and questions and answers the last 6 months while we prepped for our cruise. I love cruise critic and used to sit with my mom when I was in high school as she would research on here. This is such a great and helpful community! 

Feel feel to ask me any questions. I might have missed some things. I hope you enjoyed my "quick" summary of our trip. I didn't want to to into too many details since we were pretty boring when not in port, lol. I have some photos posted on my instagram and am still working on getting more up, but I am not sure if I can share my handle on this post. So if I get the go ahead, I will link it.If we get out photos up loaded to an online album, I will share that too, if allowed. I really loved this cruise. I loved the ship. We had an amazing time and got to visit some wonderful places!

Thank you for reading this! I hope everyone has a great holiday season. See you around here and see you on the sea!

❤️Karlee

My husband is considering getting the Soda and Voom package for our cruise next month, if it is surf/stream internet. However, when I was looking at the Deluxe and Voom package, it's description says that internet portion is surf and stream. The Soda and Voom package just states high speed internet.  Does anyone happen to know if the soda/voom is just the surf or does it include the streaming as well? 

Thank you!

Just now, orville99 said:

With the app, you are piggy backing on the ship's internal system to talk wirelessly between two phones that have the app, and to access the digital version of the menu that shows up on your TV. We tried it out on our last cruise, and it is quite useless for anything else.

Thank you for explaining how this works to me. 

On a whim I decided to download Royal's app to check it out before my cruise next month. I saw the tips section under Day 1 that Wifi is free on-board with the app.

Is this the case for the entire cruise, or just the first day? Does anyone have experience using the app for the free Wifi?  Would really love to cancel the internet package we bought if we can. 

Thank you!

I might be boring, but I love both iced or hot vanilla lattes. So that is my go-to when buying one from anywhere. If there are themed coffee drinks I would try those for sure. I had the refreshment package last cruise and really enjoyed being about to get the premium coffees and bottles of water whenever I wanted.

Karkee8807,

99.9% of all of Royals sales are fake. They advertise a sale, but what they really did was screw with the numbers. They will increase the price and then advertise that it's on sale. The "sale" price brings it down to about where it was before. :rolleyes:

Ugh! Really starting to notice that trend. :rolleyes:

I get emails when there is a sail in the cruise planner. Keep an eye out for those.

"Buy one get 50% off the second" is a marketing phrase for "25% off." And the 25% off you get during that sale is shown in the dollar amount they advertise with it.

 

$42/0.75 = $56

 

So the onboard price on your sailing is $56. Buy one for $56 get a seceond for $28, or $84 total for 2, making it $42 for 1.

Thank you!

Every couple weeks I get an email about sales in the cruise planner. Some of those include the Deluxe package at buy one, get one 50% off. Just to be curious of the price with the discount, several times I have gone through the check out page where I would enter my credit card info and the package is not showing a discount. It is still the price advertised before checking out. When looking at the Refreshment package when on sale, the discount is more obvious

Am I missing something? Or is the price advertised ($42 this time) really the sale price, since it is marked down from the normal amount?

It changed a couple of weeks ago.

 

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Great. Thank you!

We arrived around 12ish on our last cruise. Parking was a breeze. We a walked across the lot and into the terminal. There is a lot of parking. Although, I cannot remember if we gave luggage to a porter when we drove in the lot, or if we rolled it with us to the terminal since it was so close.

Edit....

Guess I should have read more posts....I failed to realize that the parking has changed since I was there 3 years ago. Opps!

My milkshake was not covered on my last cruise with the Refreshment package.

Did you have trip insurance?

I was just making a payment on my booking before I came over to CC.

This error is very common. Doesn't have anything to do with final payment. It is an extremely annoying system glitch.

I have been making payments once week, sometimes twice a week. Half to of the time this error pops up and has been since we booked in May. I still have a few hundred left to pay and the final date isn't until September. Which is why I mentioned the error doesn't have to do with final payments. It is very, very annoying. I just don't call Royal because I don't fell like talking to someone for $75-$100 payment and try again later or the next day.

But since it is your final payment I would call, especially if the payment due date is very close.

I book insurance through the cruise line. I haven't had to use it through Royal.

Last year my husband and I were excavated from Hatteras Island the morning after we arrived because of Hurricane Maria. I had bought insurance through the rental company, which was through Berkshire Hathaway. While I did not file a medical claim, they were very good to work with on my reimbursement for our rental. They also refunded me for our additional fuel, food and hotel expenses while we drove home. It took a few weeks to get our refund. I was happy with their customer service and was surprised that we got things like gas and food reimbursed.

It sometimes is a little cheaper to buy it through outside companies other then what the cruise line is offering through their preferred third parties. But for me, it is just easier to book along with the cruise/house rental. I did buy it myself for our Carnival cruise since the insurance was more then I wanted to pay with, but honestly cannot remember the name of the company I used.

I can't say what is great for medical. But if your friend is not buying though the cruise line, I'd suggest them talk to Berkshire Hathaway. Also, their homeowners or car insurance company may have travel insurance plans.

We stayed at the Comfort Inn and Suites a few years ago. Hotel was fine, nothing special or over the top, but clean and safe. We booked a park and cruise package. It was around $150.

We booked the cruise only couple weeks out. The hotels I wanted to stay at had already been booked up. Comfort Inn was one of the few that had park and cruise packages left. Found out once we checked in there were a lot of ships leaving the same day as us. The hotel was packed, making for a long wait for breakfast and the shuttles. So we just walked across the street to McDonald's to grab breakfast. Found a nice place to sit outside by the pool while we waited for our shuttle time. We would stay there again if we couldn't get in elsewhere.

My parents liked the Country Inn and Suites. The stayed there a couple years ago and would stay there again.

I would suggest booking in advance since some days are much busier then others.

We were unable to do a lot because of damage and closures due to a hurricane that unexpectedly hit the island while were just about there. And then our second trip back was rerouted because of a hurricane too. That didn't stop us from falling in love with Bermuda.

We loved the sea glass beach, walking around Hamilton and taking a bus ride around the island. We also enjoyed the Fun Golf mini golf late one evening. We had planned to do the crystal caves and zoo and to go up to St. Georges, but could not. We did get a two or three day bus/ferry pass. Well worth the cost because we just hopped on and off. We got on the bus close to rush hour so it was a long ride, but we got to see a lot just driving around. The island is stunning and the locals are wonderful. We had drinks at the mini golf bar, but did not eat out during our stay as we didn't make time for it.

Bermuda is a place where you can do a lot or do very little and still be able to enjoy the charm. We cannot wait to be able to go back. We often talk about how much we miss it. It is my favorite place I have been too.

(3) my favorite of all listening to people call it a boat - it's a "SHIP" not a "BOAT".

This drives me insane as well!

Thanks for your thoughts on Adventure as well. We are really looking forward to sailing on her in December!

We will be sailing on Adventure in December from FLL.

I always pack my own shampoo and body wash, but did not think of an air freshener. That is a great idea because we will be on an 8 night in one of the promenade rooms. They are such cool rooms, but our last one got stuffy. After reading a couple other threads, I am planning on bringing lysol wipes.

We sailed out of Cape Liberty on my last cruise in 2015. It was such an easy port to get in and out of, plus its only about a 6-7 hr drive. We have been wanting to sail from there again.We on Liberty last time, which has been our favorite ship. Although Liberty is a class above Adventure, it seems like there are a lot of similarities.

What were some of your favorite areas on the ship?

Thanks for posting this!

My parents were on Empress last spring.

They really enjoyed their Chef Table experience and the galley tour. This was the first one they had done in their 20 years of cruising, so they don't have past ones to go off of. I think they would do it again. They thought it was worth the cost. My mom was a chef in a nice restaurant for a number of years, so if it wasn't up to her expectations she wouldn't have raved about it.

I don't really remember any details of it to further help you out. Also, since it was over a year ago, I am not sure how much as changed regarding Chef's Table. They are out of town, other wise I would have texted my mom to see if she could login to CC to post on this.

Are any of the beaches quiet or more secluded then the others? We are not getting a cabana, nor are we in suite.

Did you book nonrefundable or refundable?

 

If refundable just cancel and book under the new promo....

 

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I booked nonrefundable.

Thank you both! Your help made me call. I called the C&A line ready to upgrade.

However, since I am already booked, the rep told me they are unable to honor the new "sale" or honor the additional obc (I wasn't asking them to honor both my current $50obc and sale obc either, just the new deal).

So it would be an additional $470 to upgrade with no other changes besides the new room. Which is around what I originally priced out for the balcony when we booked a couple weeks ago.

I didn't ask to speak with a manager or anything and I was polite with the rep. I was just really surprised they wouldn't honor the sale. I'm disappointed too, but almost $500 more without any "perks" isn't worth it too me.

We booked a cruise a couple weeks ago for an 8 night cruise on Adventure in December. We are in a promenade room on deck 8. We stayed in a promenade room on Liberty and liked it a lot. When we booked, the balcony rooms were higher priced then they are now and a guarantee room.

We are considering upgrading to a balcony room if Royal will match the sale that started today. With the new sale it is only $300 more (before insurance) then our promenade room and comes with $175 OBC.

However it is a Guarantee balcony, which I am not too crazy about since prefer picking my own room. But at the same time, it seems like a good deal. I am also a platinum member, so I am guessing I will get a small, additional discount for the balcony. (Website would not allow my C&A number when trying to price out the new room to tell)

I have only stayed had balcony once before in a JS for our honeymoon and it was wonderful. At the same time, don't mind a smaller room because I am happy just being on a ship.

I am curious on what your thoughts are on Adventures balcony rooms. It didn't look like there were any obstructions since the lifeboats look to be lower on the ship. Would you upgrade for just an extra $300 with $175 obc?

You'll have to check in with him.