Adventure of the Seas Review 1/21/17, post drydock with pics!

[#1packerfan]

We are doing the Bio Bay tour but in the electric boats instead of the kayaks. We are scheduled for the 7:45 pm tour on Feb 13th. We are staying in Isla Verde for a week pre-cruise and will have a rental car and plan to go to the rain forest as well (been there several times, but our daughter and son-in-law have not). Thanks for the reminder about bug spray--would have forgotten that!!

 

Enjoying your review, thanks for doing it. We leave next week. Cannot wait.

[aubreyc1988]

We are doing the Bio Bay tour but in the electric boats instead of the kayaks. We are scheduled for the 7:45 pm tour on Feb 13th. We are staying in Isla Verde for a week pre-cruise and will have a rental car and plan to go to the rain forest as well (been there several times, but our daughter and son-in-law have not). Thanks for the reminder about bug spray--would have forgotten that!!

 

Enjoying your review, thanks for doing it. We leave next week. Cannot wait.

 

Electric boats would have been what i would have booked had I known it was an option. Oh well, kayaks were definitely more adventurous!

 

Working on getting embarkation day all lined up here to post, stay tuned...

[neetneet66]

subscribed

[easyboy]

Here’s the link to the combo tour we did

 

http://www.ecoadventurespr.com/combo.html

We will try this. Thanks.

[DindelsPA]

Subscribing. :)

[aubreyc1988]

Sorry for the delay in the next entry, working on getting photos all lined up, taking me a bit longer than expected :D

[Beach Ball]

We are doing the Bio Bay tour but in the electric boats instead of the kayaks. We are scheduled for the 7:45 pm tour on Feb 13th. We are staying in Isla Verde for a week pre-cruise and will have a rental car and plan to go to the rain forest as well (been there several times, but our daughter and son-in-law have not). Thanks for the reminder about bug spray--would have forgotten that!!

 

Enjoying your review, thanks for doing it. We leave next week. Cannot wait.

Hi! Could you please post who does the electric boat tour.

We are staying at the Margaritaville Wyndham which is supposedly close to the bioluminescent bay. All I found so far is the kayak which we can't do.

Thanks

 

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[aubreyc1988]

Embarkation Day (yay!!!)

 

Our friends arrived at our hotel room around 5:30am and while they were sleeping, my husband and I went to Pinky’s down the street for some coffee around 8am, which was pretty hopping. My husband says it just looked really busy because the place is TINY, but I think it was a combination of both. We took our coffees to go and walked around that area before heading back to the Holiday Inn for the continental breakfast.

 

Link to Pinky’s

https://www.yelp.com/biz/pinkys-san-juan-5

 

We took a cab to the port around 10:30. I really would have preferred to take Uber, but I heard some horror stories about how the cab drivers in Puerto Rico treat Uber drivers so we opted to take a much more expensive cab. I think it was 30.00 for all 4 of us, and the Uber Estimate was 6.00! But like I said, Uber is such an unknown in San Juan, so cabs seem to be the safest option to get around.

 

We got to the port around 11am. The line to drop off our bags with the porter out front was longer than any other lines we had inside the terminal. Security was a breeze, and after checking in and getting our room keys (No line to get room keys in any of the queues), we went to sit down in the waiting area. We were literally sitting for less than 5 minutes before being told we could get on the ship.

 

 

 

It's always fun to take a picture of you holding that seapass card, especially one with that sticker hehe :D

[murphy4]

I would also like to know about the electric boats,

[aubreyc1988]

Hi! Could you please post who does the electric boat tour.

We are staying at the Margaritaville Wyndham which is supposedly close to the bioluminescent bay. All I found so far is the kayak which we can't do.

Thanks

 

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http://www.puertoricodaytrips.com/bio-island/

 

check out this entry in this website.

 

And for those still reading along, http://www.puertoricodaytrips.com, is where I did a lot of my Puerto Rico planning, heaps of info on there!

[#1packerfan]

We booked with BioIsland in Fajardo. I do not think there is any type of tour that goes there. We have a rental car so will be driving ourselves. It was $52 pp and they have an online reservation system. They were about the only one I could find that did the boats instead of kayaks that we could drive too. I checked for reviews so we'll see how the tour goes.

 

I plan to do a review as well when we get back so will post on how the excursion was.

[Beach Ball]

We booked with BioIsland in Fajardo. I do not think there is any type of tour that goes there. We have a rental car so will be driving ourselves. It was $52 pp and they have an online reservation system. They were about the only one I could find that did the boats instead of kayaks that we could drive too. I checked for reviews so we'll see how the tour goes.

 

I plan to do a review as well when we get back so will post on how the excursion was.

Thanks for the information.

Have a great cruise.

 

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[MaineTraveller]

I just looked up Pinky's, sounds awesome! We are staying at the Marriott so nearby, we may need to have breakfast there since the breakfast there will be so pricey.

 

This cruise will be my first UP and I'm so excited to see that sticker on my card and try all of things haha

[BillOh]

Sorry for the delay in the next entry, working on getting photos all lined up, taking me a bit longer than expected :D

 

Thank you for taking the time to post what you have so far. Its helping me pass the final weeks, so I am appreciative.

[aubreyc1988]

The best way to start a cruise is with patron shots

 

 

Checked out the solarium while waiting for our rooms to be ready. It's a nice area, quite different from the Oasis. It's not really a "Solarium" but it's a very nice space and one of our favorite aspects of Royal Caribbean ships. NCL has really poor adult only pool area, and there is NO pool on the NCL adult area. I really like that there is one on MOST Royal ships!

 

 

 

Normally we book with a TA, but our usual TA was on vacation when we booked this one, so we just went with the Royal Caribbean travel planner, and she got us this bottle of terrible champagne! But it was free, so we'll take it!

 

https://s30.postimg.org/3ub1p1zld/IMG_8484.jpg

 

And yes, we did get some champagne on the carpet in our inside cabin :D

 

This is the only photo i really have of our inside room, but trust me, it wasn't impressive. Small, simple, clean. It was falling apart a little bit, especially cabinetry, and it IS in much need of a refresh, but this was the only area of the ship I noticed this. And it didn't diminish my experience overall. It is probably one of the smallest inside staterooms we have stayed in. We asked our cabin attendant for a foam topper, as we did on Oasis in Sept, and she told us they did away with foam toppers. She then told us that she could get us a different mattress topper, which we told her we would appreciate - and she it was on our bed when we came back. Bed was very comfortable with the topper. While i am writing about the room, our room attendant was SO nice and did a great job the whole crew. On NCL, I feel like their cabin attendants are polite and do their job, but that's about it. Carnival room attendants are constantly talking to you, asking you questions about your day, etc: it gets to a point where maybe it's a little too much...RCI does a great job here, in my opinion, with the balance of how much your room attendant interacts with you. Of course, this is all a matter of opinion.

 

We went to the Welcome Aboard show, which had a family friendly comedian during it, which was kind of a preview for the adult comedy by the same guy which was scheduled for Wednesday. He was funny and was the best part of the show. Since I am showing some photos of the theater, I'll bring up a couple theater complaints. First, I hate that none of the drinks you get in the bar in the theater or elsewhere fits in those cupholders. To me, that's just poorly thought out, and later on in the week resulted in my husband knocking over my drink all over me haha. Second, while the carpet in the main ship areas are fine and in great condition, one night I noticed one of the cut outs of the carpet in the rows of the theatre seating we were sitting in was pulling up and was a potential tripping hazard. I could just see people going in and out of the rows with drinks, and someone tripping and falling and the drink flying. You get the picture, I am sure. I pointed this out EACH DAY I was in the theater to a different person and it was NEVER fixed. Pretty disappointing in terms of safety and wellbeing of guests! It wouldn't have taken much to just glue that corner down.

 

Ok, so done with complainging: I don't want to just go on and on about the bad things I saw on the Adventure, especially since there was SO LITTLE to complain about on this ship, but this IS Cruise Critic, so I thought it deserved a mention

 

 

 

I unfortunately didn't get a picture of the carpet turning up, but I really didn't carry around my phone a lot while on the ship, especially at the shows because I was going either before or after dinner and didn't have a dress with pockets (I love dresses with pockets and my husband hates them haha)

[linswi]

 

.... (I love dresses with pockets and my husband hates them haha)

 

So far, I'm really enjoying reading the review, but I have to sidetrack and ask.... Why could he possibly hate dresses with pockets?? They are little gifts from heaven! :D

[aubreyc1988]

So far, I'm really enjoying reading the review, but I have to sidetrack and ask.... Why could he possibly hate dresses with pockets?? They are little gifts from heaven! :D

 

:D EXACTLY! He says they look funny! I wanted a wedding dress with pockets SO BAD, but I refrained...I must love him or something...:rolleyes:

[aubreyc1988]

Day 2 – St Maarten

 

So this day is going to be relatively boring, as you will soon find out. We booked America’s Cup Sailing Regatta through Royal Caribbean. We did this a couple years ago through Royal Caribbean and it was SO MUCH FUN. It’s one of our favorite excursions. So last September on our Oasis of the Seas cruise to St Maarten, San Juan, and Labadee, we booked it again only to have it cancelled due to lack of people signed up. They need 8 people per boat, and it is a sailing race, so they need two boats: 16 people. It’s hard to believe that on Oasis, 16 people didn’t sign up for that excursion! So we were pretty disappointed we couldn’t do it in Sept.

 

So you can only imagine how PUMPED we were to try to get on this excursion this time around. We were supposed to meet the shore excursion people outside the ship at 10am. When we met them there, they had some bad news for us….the excursion was cancelled AGAIN!

 

This time it was cancelled to their being no wind. Can’t sail with no wind, folks! Now what?! The shore excursion lady was polite and showed us a list of other excursions we could switch to, with a 15% discount for the inconvenience. However, the only 3 excursions we could do were horseback riding, Snuba, and snorkeling. We opted to not wear our swim suits under our clothes, because we thought we were just going to be sailing. All of those excursions left at 10am, so you can see our dilemma here. We really wanted to do the Snuba excursion, but they would not wait for us to get a swimsuit from our room. So the next option was snorkeling, and we also couldn’t do that, because of the “no time to go back to the room” problem. My husband didn’t want to go horseback riding, so we just stood there for several minutes, pretty bummed out. Eventually, I just told him let’s go back and spend the day on the ship.

 

Maybe we made a wrong choice doing this and should have TRIED going into port to do something, but we were both really, really disappointed with how the day was turning out. I then had a great idea: Lets use the money refunded to us from Royal and sign up for the All Access Ship Tour! We have never done one and my husband thought it was a great idea, so we went to go sign up, only to discover it was fully booked and we could only get on a waitlist. Drats! We did get put on the waitlist, but in the end, no one cancelled and we didn’t get to do the all access tour on the sea day later in the week

 

Back to Day 2! We spent the whole day in the solarium, just drinking and relaxing. It was a nice day, but as I said, pretty disappointed about America’s Cup being cancelled. While this was not Royal Caribbean’s fault, I feel like they could have contacted us earlier in the morning about the cancellation so we could have hopped onto a different excursion easily. I think this is the last time we try to do America’s Cup. It’s a great excursion, it’s just almost impossible to get to do, and if it gets cancelled it is hard to get a backup excursion.

 

I don’t have any ship pictures from this day, but I do have some bar menus!

 

Boleros Bar Menu

 

 

 

 

[aubreyc1988]

Regular Bar Menu

 

 

 

 

 

 

[aubreyc1988]

Champagne Bar

 

 

 

and looking at all these drinks has made me thirsty for one! I'll be back later tonight with another entry, I need to make myself Raspberry Martini :D

[Aviator of the Seas]

Thank you for posting the bar prices! Now I'm wondering if the UP is worth it. The prices look similar to what they were in 2012 - the last time we cruised on RCI - and back then the combined bar bill for both of us was around $500/week.

[aubreyc1988]

Thank you for posting the bar prices! Now I'm wondering if the UP is worth it. The prices look similar to what they were in 2012 - the last time we cruised on RCI - and back then the combined bar bill for both of us was around $500/week.

 

 

I paid 44.00 plus gratuities per day, cruise planner price. I got it for this itinerary because I figured I could drink 3 drinks a day, 2-3 specialty coffees, a couple sodas, and bottled water. I at least broke even!

 

 

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[aubreyc1988]

Thank you for posting the bar prices! Now I'm wondering if the UP is worth it. The prices look similar to what they were in 2012 - the last time we cruised on RCI - and back then the combined bar bill for both of us was around $500/week.

 

 

If you can do two people with a 500 bar bill I wouldn't get it! They do some deals where you get a drink with a half price shot all the time, and on the last sea day they also do 1.00 mimosas in the casino

 

 

 

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[angela1044]

Thanks for sharing.

 

 

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[zdad59]

I paid 44.00 plus gratuities per day, cruise planner price. I got it for this itinerary because I figured I could drink 3 drinks a day, 2-3 specialty coffees, a couple sodas, and bottled water. I at least broke even!

 

Thanks for the review. Very detailed, informative and fun. Your approach to the Deluxe package is exactly the same as ours. AND TODAY (2/3/17) RCL lowered the price of the package to $38+18%. Our group saved a total of $300.

 

I will be very interested in your St. Lucia and Barbados port reviews. We have extensive tours schedules for St. Maarten, St. Kitts, and Antigua. The last two stops we intend to just bum around some.

 

Cheers.