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Family Adventure on the AOS 12/2/12 with Pics!

Debitoo

By Debitoo,
in Royal Caribbean International

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Debitoo

Debitoo

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Hi Debi, great review and great photos. I enjoyed meeting you, Jessica, Alexis and Cam and hope we cruise together again.

 

All the best in the New Year to all of you.

Hi Ginnie! I finally get to see the pic of you sky-diving. You're one crazy woman!! Hope to see you again someday.....:D

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Debitoo

Debitoo

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There's a new captain in town...Captain Cameron!

 

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I think the 2 girls are starting to feel better.

 

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They ended up tethering themselves to the boat and floating for awhile hoping to feel better.

 

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He felt fine...

 

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Debitoo

Debitoo

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After everyone seemed to be over their sickness, Captain Cally navigated us down the west coast of Barbados to view some of the beautiful real estate.

 

Along this stretch of the coast are the homes of the rich & famous. He pointed out homes owned by Simon Cowell, Rihanna, Tiger Woods, Beyonce & JZ and the Beckhams.

 

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Debitoo

Debitoo

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Thank You for posting the pic of Jammin Catamaran...that is my excursion/// I loved the picture of the sail boats on the beach. You should print that for a calendar.

 

 

Angela

Thank you! I must have missed that excursion choice. Did you book through RCI or independently? Looked like lots of fun. They were really partying when we passed them!

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Debitoo

Debitoo

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I also love that belgian chocolate shop. The good thing is that since I'm a "local" I pay the same price but in guilders and get some extra free too;)

I wish I would have bought more....all I got for myself was the free samples in the shop. :( I gave EVERYTHING else away........I'm an idiot!

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Debitoo

Debitoo

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After we returned form our wonderful day aboard the Elegance, we were pooped. We went back to our cabin, rested and got ready for for 2nd formal night. While we were getting ready I shot this beautiful sunset.

 

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Debitoo

Debitoo

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This is our wonderful cocktail server Val. She was awesome! She took such great care of the kids! She earned our WOW card.

 

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Our server Agnello and assistant waiter Juan. (Sorry, photo quality not very good).

 

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Tonight was lobster night. Ummmm good!

 

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After dinner, we came back to the cabin to find this guy!

 

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We were tired. We decided to call it a night. Tomorrow would be our only at sea day.

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Coralc

Coralc

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After dinner, we came back to the cabin to find this guy!

 

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We were tired. We decided to call it a night. Tomorrow would be our only at sea day.

 

That's a really great towel monkey! :D I've never seen them use pennies for eyes before. :D:):D How creative!

Edited by Coralc
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ckrobyn

ckrobyn

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Debi - amazing review! Looks like you and your family had a great cruise :)

Your Barbados pictures are soooooo beautiful! The water is crystal clear where you were sailing - the fact that a few in your group were queasy worries me a little, otherwise I may consider this excursion. Was the water rough where you were?

 

We are sailing 5 weeks from tomorrow and I can't wait!

 

Thanks again for taking the time to do such a detailed review :D

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Debitoo

Debitoo

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Debi - amazing review! Looks like you and your family had a great cruise :)

Your Barbados pictures are soooooo beautiful! The water is crystal clear where you were sailing - the fact that a few in your group were queasy worries me a little, otherwise I may consider this excursion. Was the water rough where you were?

 

We are sailing 5 weeks from tomorrow and I can't wait!

 

Thanks again for taking the time to do such a detailed review :D

 

I don't know why they felt ill. I was a bit seasick the first 3 nights on the ship, but nothing on this cat. They weren't pukey sick thank god. They felt ill about 10 minutes after we pulled out of the bay and set sail. The waters weren't rough until we went to the coral reef and they werent really that bad. It was before lunch. So the food was not to blame. LOL. This company did such a nice job. It isn't a "party boat", but they did have a full bar, with high end liquor, good music including Bob Marley, pop etc. Very relaxing and classy. Their name says it all. "Elegance". I'd book them again in a heartbeat.

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Debitoo

Debitoo

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I guess the time has come to wrap up my trip report/review of our wonderful AOS Family Adventure.

 

I didn’t take many pictures on Saturday which was our only at sea day. We slept in and had a very late breakfast. It was so late, that the WJ staff was setting up for lunch! We ate quickly and went back to the cabin to start the painful task of packing. Ugh! We weren’t overly careful about what went into each suitcase as we were staying in SJ for a night before flying back to CA. We decided to do a careful packing at the hotel. We got some of it done and then realized that we had forgotten about a luncheon in the MDR with some from our roll call group. Darn, I wasn't hungry! We ran down to the dining room where everyone was waiting for us. The salad bar looked wonderful. I wish I hadn’t eaten breakfast! I opted for a cup of soup. That’s all I could do.

 

After lunch we had our roll call slot pull. There were 8 of us. We each invested $20 into a machine and started taking turns pulling. We pretty much drained our initial investment until on the last pull, we hit a jackpot and won all of our $ back and then some! We decided to stop and cash in our chips! We each came out $6 ahead! LOL, it was fun while it lasted!

 

We reluctantly went back to the cabin to pack and enjoy what little time we had left of the balcony. On our way there, the staff was putting more Christmas decorations up around the ship. I snapped a few pictures of gingerbread houses they made. They were “freshly” made. They definitely were not something that they pulled out of some warehouse! The staff was really starting to add more and more decorations to the ship. I can’t imagine how beautiful she looked once everything was fully decorated.

 

 

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Back at the cabin we continued to pack and relax. It seemed as if this was the only day we had the time to relax at all!

 

The last event we had scheduled was dinner at Portofino’s. We had a 6:00 reservation with some from our roll call group. What a wonderful dinner we had. Ginnie, (gxchan) had received 2 bottles of wine from RCI which she brought to dinner to share with everyone. Thank you Ginnie! We had such a great group of people that night! We all laughed so hard. It was the most fun evening at dinner that we had all week.

 

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After dinner we had to do our final packing. We had to be to our station, Portofino’s, early in the morning (8:00) to wait for our number to be called for disembarkation.

 

We were up and out the door @ 8:00 AM and into Portofino’s. There we waited for them to call our number. It didn’t take but a few minutes and we were called. We got to the gangway and only waited 2-3 minutes till we hit a snag. They said Jessica’s on board account wasn’t settled. That was weird. She had a credit card on file. We had to go back up to guest services. That was a long line. Crap! She finally got to an agent and they couldn’t see any charges that were outstanding on their computer. They told us to go back and disembark. We went back down to a long line. I showed them our numbers and they let us move to the front of the line. We got through with no problems this time.

 

Customs had long lines as there were only 2 agents checking everyone through. The wait only took about ½ hour. The agent was very nice and soon we were on our way to the La Concha Hotel.

 

The room type I had reserved was not available yet….I had reserved an ocean view suite. They had another suite for $30 more that was available immediately. We decided to take it since we had the two kids with us. The room was not worth the extra $ I paid. No ocean view. It had a view of a roof. I was not impressed by the accommodations. The resort itself was very nice. But I probably won’t stay there again if I’m only going to be there one night. There wasn’t time to use the resort so it was a waste of $.

 

We decided to go for a walk and check out the area. As we exited the hotel, we ran into Karen & James from our roll call. They were actually our next door neighbors on the ship! We all went to a great little pizza place for lunch. It was fun seeing them on land. Small world!

 

After lunch we parted ways with them and took the kids to the beach at the La Concha. The waves were rough. It was a red flag day there but the kids still had a blast in the surf.

 

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That night we took a cab to downtown SJ. Not a good idea. There was a food festival going on so all of the streets were blocked off. The festival would have been fun if we didn’t have kids. There was a lot of drinking and partying and different vendors with booths set up cooking right there in the street. We walked a bit to get out of the crowded streets and found our way to a Mexican restaurant; Tijuana’s. We LOVE Mexican food so we decided to have dinner there. It was pretty good. There is also one in the Condado area.

 

We caught a cab back to the hotel, finished our re-packing (one suitcase weighed exactly 50 lbs and the other 49) and the kids smaller suitcases were less than 40 each.

 

We were out of the hotel and off to the airport by 10 AM. We had no issues on our flights home except they were packed! We pulled into our driveway @ 10 PM. Vacation over.:mad:

Here are a few observations of the AOS sailing from Puerto Rico and, lastly, what I have learned about cruising and what I will and won’t do next time.

 

The AOS is a BEAUTIFUL ship. Well kept. I saw nothing that was in desperate need of repair. Our GS was wonderful. Could have used a few more electrical outlets, (or learned where they were). The hair dryer they provided sucked! Our wonderful cabin attendant Jeffery was fabulous. These guys earn every penny (and then some) of their tips.

 

Dining room: The staff was over worked. We had MTD. Our usual time was 7:00. I think that they had too many tables. We tried to sit in another section one night. That service was awful. We sat for over 20 minutes and no one even approached us. We tried dinner at 8:00 one night. Same thing. The staff was running, running, running. They never took the time to engage us on any level. I felt bad for them. They too earned every penny of their tips.

 

Wind Jammer: It is what it is. If you show up late, you’ll get slow service, (if you get service at your table at all). If you get there early, you’ll get great service. The food is buffet food. It was ok. Some items were very good. Others, meh. No complaints here about it.

 

Shows: Well, I wish I could comment here on them. I only saw one. It was the ice show. It was OK.

 

Bars: I wish I could comment on those too but I didn’t get the chance to go to any of them. (I’ll explain why below).

 

Embarkation & Disembarkation: Perfect except customs was a little long, but really not that bad.

 

OK. Here’s what I have learned about cruising from Puerto Rico and just cruising in general.

 

1. Get to the port at least 2 days before you sail especially if you are coming from far away. We arrived from CA and the time change (4 hours) really messed us up until Wednesday. (We arrived in PR Saturday night).

 

2. If you are traveling with kids and it’s not a week where the US kids are out of school, expect that the majority of the kids on board will be Puerto Rican kids. There is a language difference/barrier. Most of the kids in the kids clubs will be Puerto Rican. Although they speak English, their preferred language is Spanish. My kids felt intimidated and left out. No one at fault here, it’s just the way it was. They chose not to return after the 2nd night of being at the club.

 

3. I expected to be able to “do it all and see it all” on the ship: fahgettaboudit. You can’t. I wasn’t able to do any exploring of the ship at night. I was too beat from spending the day in port. I wanted to see and try all of the bars. I wanted to check out all of the bands and see all of the shows. I couldn’t, I was too pooped. I wanted to know how all these people do the all-day shore excursions then come back to the ship and party all night long and then get up and do it all over again. They don’t. You’re either are a day person or a night person. Yes, there are exceptions to the rules, but mostly, you’ve gotta make a choice. For this cruise, I was a day person. Next cruise, well, we’ll have to see, but I’d really like to be a night person!

 

4. I’ll probably get flamed here, but this cruise was probably a little too port intensive for me. I would have liked at least 1 more at sea day or have it be an 8 or 9 day cruise with the same ports. Maybe then I would have had the time to make it to all the bars!

 

5. Bingo: What a rip off. Don’t waste your $, especially with those “electronic” bingo machines. I learned my lesson.

 

6. Balcony: Don’t EVER sail without one.

 

7. Café Promenade Pizza: Just go find some cardboard and eat that. It tastes better.

 

8. Café Promenade cookies: GREAT but they were always out.

 

Would I cruise on the Adventure again? ABSOLUTELY

 

Thank you all for reading this and for all the positive feed back. All of you CC'rs are the BEST!

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gxchan

gxchan

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Debi, Love your review, especially the recap of things learned. You will be off to Alaska before you know it and have a fabulous time. Thanks for posting all the fab pictures and commentary. You done yourself proud, girl:D

 

ITA, our dinner the last night in Portofino's was one of the best ever.:D:D No fake tiramisu (inside joke).

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