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

[aubreyc1988]

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.

 

 

 

Part of the allure of it for us is just having prepaid, and not having to worry about a bar bill at the end

 

 

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[B&J_Pgh]

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.

how did you find the reduced drink package. When do they come available via "My Cruises" at RCC? They aren't even offered yet for our January 20, 2018 cruise?

[MaineTraveller]

Thank you for all of those bar menus, I can't wait to try them all haha. Bummer about your excursion in St. Marteen, I would have been disappointed to.

[zdad59]

how did you find the reduced drink package. When do they come available via "My Cruises" at RCC? They aren't even offered yet for our January 20, 2018 cruise?

 

It showed up in my Cruise Planner. I did talk to RCL and they did say the offer wasn't available on every ship and every sailing. Being a year out or your cruise, I suspect they'll see how many packages sell at the "regular" rate before they start cutting prices.

 

(BTW--- I'll assume the PGH in your screen name is for Pittsburgh. I am Pittsburgh born and raised. Aliquippa specifically. Sisters live in Moon Twp. Mom lives in Upper St. Clair. Still hold my Steeler season tickets even though I live in Philly.)

[Clarea]

how did you find the reduced drink package. When do they come available via "My Cruises" at RCC? They aren't even offered yet for our January 20, 2018 cruise?

There's no set time for promos. They show up in your Cruise Planner, which you can check periodically.

[ColoradoGurl]

how did you find the reduced drink package. When do they come available via "My Cruises" at RCC? They aren't even offered yet for our January 20, 2018 cruise?

 

 

There is currently another "up to" 30% off sale going on. Check your planner today and see if the prices have dropped. I checked last night and the deluxe package went down from $46 to $40.

 

 

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[cruisers without kids]

I would say overall we wouldn’t stay at the Holiday Inn Express again. The area is nice, but the hotel was just…too basic for me. Since we normally don’t get suites or anything fancy for our cruises, I love getting a nice pre cruise hotel and next time I’ll stick to resorts. Free breakfast and wifi didn’t really make up for the small room and accommodations. I did take a little walk through of the La Concha, which is also in Condado area, and next time I will stay there – WOW!

 

!

 

I stayed at La Concha 2 nights pre cruise in September 2016 and have my reservation there for 3 nights in September 2017 already. Loved it!!!

[daze6399]

Aubrey, or someone else who's been on recently what were the production shows onboard? Forgive me if you've mentioned it and I missed it.

[Clarea]

Aubrey, or someone else who's been on recently what were the production shows onboard? Forgive me if you've mentioned it and I missed it.

Adventure has Can't Stop the Rock and Invitation to Dance. Not sure if there is another.

[khm1]

Aubrey, or someone else who's been on recently what were the production shows onboard? Forgive me if you've mentioned it and I missed it.

 

 

 

I mention all of the shows in my review of the 1/14/17 Adventure sailing. I didn't go to many shows, but I listed the shows and show times in the review.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2448208

[aubreyc1988]

Before starting St Kitts, I found some photos of our inside and thought I’d post them, even though it’s proof of our messy chaos in our cabin! These were toward the end of the week, so we got pretty lazy haha!

 

 

 

But I do hope it gives you some idea as to size. It’s pretty small, one of the smaller insides we have had, but as it’s a port intensive cruise and we are hardly ever in our room (probably because it looks like that haha), we don’t mind!

 

Day 3 – St Kitts.

 

I’ve kind of been getting away from beach only excursions, but I agreed to do one beach excursion with our friends on the cruise, so I picked St. Kitts as a partial beach day. I wanted to know a little about the St. Kitt’s as well, so I found Thenford Grey’s tours, which had a small city tour coupled with a beach day for only 25.00pp. This was a good deal since it included all transportation, entry to Palm Court Garden, and tour of the city.

 

Here’s the link to the excursion we took

 

http://www.thenfordgreytours.com/capital-city-tour---beach-splash-on-st.-kitts.html

 

We did not get Thenford as a guide. I feel pretty bad, but I don’t even remember the name of our tour guide. As tour guides go, he was pretty bland and didn’t offer much good facts and info about the island. I even asked him several simple questions about the island and his answer was pretty much “I don’t know”. We were with another family, so about 10 of us total in the van.

 

It was still a decent tour for 25 bucks but would have preferred to see more of St. Kitts. Capital tour lasted about 2 hours and then got to Cockleshell beach around 11am. We did stop for several awesome picture opportunities and yes, there are tons of monkeys on St. Kitts. You can even pet/hold one if you pay a guy 5 bucks, although we opted to not do it.

 

Palm court was a bit strange. I didn’t really know what it was. At first, I thought it was just a garden with plants for people to look at, but it’s like a resort. It was pretty awkward walking through it, while other people are trying to enjoy their vacation. It really wasn’t upkept well, as you couldn’t even read the plaques for the plants, they were all worn off and my tour kind didn’t know really what most of the plants were in the Palm Court. It was beautiful though.

[aubreyc1988]

I wasn’t impressed with Cockleshell Beach. We told the driver we would all be ready to head back to the cruise ship at 2pm. It’s about a 30-45 min drive from Cockleshell beach back to the cruise ship, and all aboard was 4:30, so you could have longer time at the beach if you want The water is just ok, not super clear, and they have these little fish that bite (it doesn’t hurt when they bite, but you can notice it) and the fish will bite at the lady’s legs and the men’s nipples, haha! It provided some entertainment for sure! One tip is to go down a bit further on the beach to get some cheaper chairs and shade. I believe we paid 8 bucks for 2 chairs and shade. 2.00 local beers as well!

 

Now, I have SO many pictures in port, so I hope you are ready!

 

Palm Court

 

 

 

 

 

 

[aubreyc1988]

Turns out, you can get a day pass to use the facilities there and there's a simply Gardens pass, which is what we had

 

Here's the link for more info on Palm Court Gardens

 

http://www.palmscourtgardens.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

[aubreyc1988]

Adventure has Can't Stop the Rock and Invitation to Dance. Not sure if there is another.

 

I think ours was Invitation to Dance. It started out OK and went downhill from there, at least for us. I try to not ruin the shows, as entertainment is subjective I think. But it's definitely not as good as Oasis class shows, but I knew that going in.

[aubreyc1988]

St Kitt's Continued...

 

Here are some photos taken as we were driving along

 

 

 

 

We stopped for this famous view, which IS incredible!

 

 

Here's the guy with the monkey I was telling you about, although there are lots of vendors in the "monkey business" :D

 

[aubreyc1988]

 

 

 

Cockleshell beach

 

The "biting" fish

 

 

These people were playing a weird game of "Let's throw each other a bottle filled with water for hours" Must have been too many 2.00 local beers! : D

 

 

[JimAOk1945]

Thanks for the awesome review and pictures. We have sailed on the AOS twice and plan to do it again in the future. It's a fantastic ship and crew. We love the Southern Caribbean itineraries!

[CntPAcruiser]

<<SNIP>>

 

These people were playing a weird game of "Let's throw each other a bottle filled with water for hours" Must have been too many 2.00 local beers! : D

 

 

On our first cruise, we were with a group of 10, most of us younger folks, so we almost always went to the beach in port, but we could not for the life of us anywhere find a beach ball or other ball to toss for entertainment. We looked at all kinds of stores, but never found anything like a beach ball to play with. So maybe that's what happened with these folks and they were just looking for something to toss around.

[daze6399]

I mention all of the shows in my review of the 1/14/17 Adventure sailing. I didn't go to many shows, but I listed the shows and show times in the review.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2448208

 

 

Thanks! I actually went back and read through your review again and I saw the show info there.

[B&J_Pgh]

It showed up in my Cruise Planner. I did talk to RCL and they did say the offer wasn't available on every ship and every sailing. Being a year out or your cruise, I suspect they'll see how many packages sell at the "regular" rate before they start cutting prices.

 

(BTW--- I'll assume the PGH in your screen name is for Pittsburgh. I am Pittsburgh born and raised. Aliquippa specifically. Sisters live in Moon Twp. Mom lives in Upper St. Clair. Still hold my Steeler season tickets even though I live in Philly.)

assumed correctly. Suburb 20 minutes east of the city. Born and raised.

[lauraodonnell86]

Following along! Great review so far! I was on the cruise with you and the week after. I don't know if I have the patience to sit down and write a review. But I might because I want to give back to all the people who have helped me in the past!

[murphy4]

Following along! Great review so far! I was on the cruise with you and the week after. I don't know if I have the patience to sit down and write a review. But I might because I want to give back to all the people who have helped me in the past!

 

I have written a review of my jewel cruise last year. I found it helpful to just keep a "diary" of what we did everyday and then customize it with pics once we get home!

[aubreyc1988]

Following along! Great review so far! I was on the cruise with you and the week after. I don't know if I have the patience to sit down and write a review. But I might because I want to give back to all the people who have helped me in the past!

 

Just do the best you can, that is what I am doing!

 

Antigua post coming in a few! Was my fav excursion/port this time around so excited to share!

[aubreyc1988]

Day 4 - Antigua

 

So for Antigua, I had our most expensive excursion booked - Adventure Antigua Xtreme Circumnav. I searched for a while before deciding on this one. I wanted to do Stingrays, but Royal Caribbean wanted a lot for their Stingray excursion and it wasn't very long. I wanted an all day excursion, and wanted to see as much as I could of Antigua. This excursion is PERFECT for that and was an amazing value for the money.

 

Website for excursion

 

http://www.adventureantigua.com/the-xtreme-circumnav/

 

The excursion is also highly rated on tripadvisor and for good reason! We sat in the front of the boat for more "Xtreme" fun. : D The tour does exactly what it claims, takes you around the island in a fun way, stops at stingray city, and takes you to some amazing beaches and snorkeling stops. The whole tour, I was definitely WOW-ed.

 

Anyhow, onto some picture + commentary.

 

 

 

Can't get over how beautiful Antigua is!

 

 

I think there was around 10-15 people in our boat, so it was small group of us, which was awesome imho

 

 

 

 

This boat is thrilling, fast, and xtreme, just like in the name, which we love but if that isn't your thing, may not be the excursion for you. The company has a slower paced one as well, called the Eco Tour

[aubreyc1988]

Stingray City (Antigua)

 

One neat aspect of doing it with Adventure Antigua is that they pay to have a dedicated dock, so you will only be doing the stingrays with the people in the boat with you on the excursion, instead of a big cruise ship excursion. I didn't even think about this when booking, but i would have hated to be in a really large group