Adventure of the Sea Review w/photos.

[waterbugohio]

Just thought of something that I didn't talk about on the review...

 

THE TOWELS

 

First let me say this in no way hindered my vacation. However, someone at Royal needs to make up their mind what/how to handle checking out towels. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to which ships do what and even this time it varied according to the days.

 

First day was at sea. We go down and each get two towels. No card scanned, no problem how many we wanted.

 

Now remember, this is our only sea day and the pool deck is extremely crowded. So the chairs are hard to come by, lots of towels on chairs. We weren't worried about being right at the pool, so I didn't seek out any chair hogs and try to hard to get a chair. We just went up on deck 12 instead.

 

However, by the end of the afternoon, there were literally piles of dirty towels laying around the pool and chair areas. And people were getting up from chairs and not turning in towels, making it even harder to know if chairs were open or not.

 

So then that night, in our compass for the next day, there is a separate page explaining towel usage. It explains that all towels must be checked out on the sea pass card. A table will be set up outside the ship where you can get towels and also can turn in when coming back on.

 

Well, instead I just send the hubby to get towels at 7:30 while getting breakfast. NOPE, no on at the pool deck to hand out towels. We get off the ship and have to swipe the cards for towels. Five hours later, we get back on the ship. A huge bin of dirty towels, but no one working to swipe the card. WHAT, I'm not giving my towels back with getting cards swiped. Walked onto the ship and had to seek out the person, no hand held device to check in towels. So he just wrote our room numbers down. I made sure to check our invoice to make sure we weren't charged.

 

The next day we didn't get off as early, we got towels on the pool deck. Not swiping cards, but would only give one per person.

 

I think the other days we swiped to get them both going on and coming back on.

 

I can't imagine for a "newbie cruiser" how confusing this would be and how many people would end up with charges.

 

And the day at sea, they really should have swiped the cards, just to prevent people letting them lay.

 

Just a very confusing inconsistent way of doing the towels. Thought I would just clue you in.

 

Make sure if you take a towel and they swipe your card, to get it swiped when turning it back it. Or keep a hold of it till someone will swipe it!!!

[tserface]

That towel policy needs to be refined and enforced. We don't spend much time by the pool (seems to hectic to me), but I can really see how some could get frustrated with the lack of consistency.

 

Maybe you could have re-purposed some of the towel animals :rolleyes:

 

Tom

[royaljcclms]

St. Croix

[cjdixon4]

Thanks enjoying your review so far cruising on her in May. The prices of the drinks makes me wonder how much I will be drinking now. I will be having some but will be for sure cutting back if that is the case

 

I'm on the sailing behind you, and trust me...hubby and I won't be doing a lot of imbibing at the prices that the OP listed. No way! :eek:

[cjdixon4]

Make sure if you take a towel and they swipe your card, to get it swiped when turning it back it. Or keep a hold of it till someone will swipe it!!!

 

Thanks for the heads-up. I thought that the towel scanning had been done away with fleet wide. Clearly I was wrong? Hope I don't have to deal with that on our May sailing.

[Clarea]

Thanks for the heads-up. I thought that the towel scanning had been done away with fleet wide. Clearly I was wrong? Hope I don't have to deal with that on our May sailing.

They still scan your SeaPass card if you are taking a towel as you are leaving the ship at a port.

[cjdixon4]

They still scan your SeaPass card if you are taking a towel as you are leaving the ship at a port.

 

Hubby and I were able to take 2 towels each with us last May on the Navigator when we disembarked in Cozumel. No scanning done then. Not certain what the deal is these days, but we'll see when we sail next month!

[Emmysmomma9]

we get our towels at the pool the afternoon before ( when someone is swiping and handing them out) and keep them in the room overnight. We don't want to risk getting aggravated the day of an excursion.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Emmysmomma9

[2bthereagain]

Thanks for taking the time to share your cruise with us!