Thrifty Couples Adventure of the Seas 2/1 to 2/9 Trip Report

[cgolf1]

To start with us, we are a mid 40s couple traveling without our college age daughter. Being thrifty we generally don’t do specialty dining mostly because of cost, plus my wife doesn’t like the fancier foods so it would really be money wasted for her. So we are pretty much tied to the main dining rooms and wind jammer. Onboard we generally just chill and are in by 11:30 pm and up eating breakfast by 7:30. We have stayed in most cabin levels including a concierge veranda, but have pretty much settled now on insides and oceanviews. They fullfill the thrifty part of our cruising and we barely used our verandas anyways, so didn’t feel the extra cost is worth it for us. 

 

If you can see my signature you will see we started our cruising journey on Disney and have now done 3 RCCL cruises and 1 Celebrity. Our next 2 cruises will be on Celebrity. After that we will be choosing one line to build loyalty with. I will be starting at least 1 thread to figure out if one line gains you status quicker. May post it on the RCCL board, Celebrity board, or both. 

 

I will have some general ship comments up front, do a day by day with some pictures, and finish with an overall summary. I will of course answer any questions that I actually have the answer too. If I don’t know the answer I promise I won’t make one up;)
 

Picture of us is from another trip. Haven’t downloaded the many pictures we took. 

[Biker19]

And here I thought we might have something to compete with a @harryfat1 thread.😜

[cgolf1]

11 minutes ago, Biker19 said:

And here I thought we might have something to compete with a @harryfat1 thread.😜

No, his are incredible, I hope someday to be half as good at a trip review. His are the best. When I get to the end and you hear how much we spent the thrifty fits lol. A sneak peak though, the aloe with pain meds, like bio freeze, for 24 bucks was the highest amount we payed for an item that wasn’t a shore excursion.
 

This is my first full review on the RCCL side, I did one last year on the Celebrity board for the Edge. 

[gmros]

Looking forward to your trip review! I myself am a budget-conscious traveler and love to hear from like-minded travelers.

[LuCruise]

Looking forward to your review.  DH and I were also on Adventure without our kids back in December.  Really enjoyed the ship so enjoy hearing your experience.

[cgolf1]

Just wanted to add a little more info about ourselves. 

 

When not cruising, a lot of the time, we generally are homebodies. Hobbies are fishing (me), traveling (day trips and sometimes weekend trips), and cruising. Were our thriftiness comes in play is we only eat out at a restaurant about seven times a year on average. For the two of us we keep our bill below 50 including the tip. When we push close to that amount it is generally a place we will have leftovers, so it is really two meals.

 

We try to limit our fast food purchases too. When we travel on land we generally pack most meals and maybe only eat one meal out during a 3 or 4 day trip. That fishing hobby, mostly holiday gifts and sale shopping.

 

Why do we live this way? Well not being independently wealthy we would like to be able to continue to cruise and vacation after we retire, hopefully early, so we are hoping saving more now will pay off in the future:)

 

Long story short we are kind of boring people 90% of the year, but that 10% is a lot of fun:) 

[SDA1125]

Looking forward to your reveiw !

 

[audome78]

Looking forward, as we have a b2b from 2-29 to 3-14.

[voyager70]

Also looking forward as we board less than 2 weeks!

 

[cgolf1]

We flew down the Friday before the super bowl. Thankfully the flights down weren’t too overpriced. I had made the hotel reservation months ago after seeing on CC that the super bowl was in Miami the weekend we sailed out. The Holiday Inn Ft Lauderdale-Airport, 2905 Sheridan St, was the only hotel available. We booked it and glad we did. We checked a week out and still couldn’t find a better deal. 
 

Overall it was a very nice hotel. It had a gas station next to it to get drinks, and a Mc Donald’s across the street to get supper. I have attached some pictures of the pool (cold) and our room. The shower was huge, wish we could have taken it on the ship;)
 

Transfer from Ft Lauderdale airport was free, but it was 12 bucks a person to get to the port. There wasn’t a free breakfast, but not a big deal knowing we would be overeating soon on the ship. We just ate some breakfast bars we had packed in our carry on. 
 

If this hotel is priced right in the future we would definitely stay there again. 

[thegraminator]

Following  

[cgolf1]

The ship

The Adventure felt like a right sized freedom. The freedom was missing a central set of elevators. The Adventure never really felt crowded, except of course the chair hogs, but more on that later. We loved the 2 level mini golf and played that a lot. The flow rider was fun to watch, but I never got the urge to attempt the stand up surfing again after failing miserably many years ago. 

 

For an older ship, it was very well maintained. It really didn’t look it’s age. The crew was always painting, varnishing, and just doing general maintenance. I would say the Adventure was in much better condition than the Disney Magic at the same age.

 

When we did our tour the first day we found all the daily trivia sheets in the card room. That was the only time we visited the card room all cruise. The solarium area was very nice, but unfortunately we didn’t spend a lot of time there. 

 

I have attached a few random ship pictures. I didn’t take a lot this year of the ship. 

[Ocean Boy]

I just got off Adventure a couple of weeks ago. Looking forward to reading about your experience.

[cgolf1]

Our Room 

We had inside room 7669, which was aft and had easy access up and down to food and the sports deck. We love how RCCL sets up the storage in the rooms. The closet held most of our clothes and we had plenty of drawer space for the rest. The room was in good shape with little wear and tear noticed. The showers of course are still to small but you make it work. The only small complaint is it is really tight to get to the side of the bed. It is actually easier to get in bed from the end. 
 

I apologize that some of the pictures are coming in sideways, not sure how to work around that. 

[cgolf1]

My goal is to get to days 1 and 2 done tomorrow. I do have all of the Cruise Compasses so I will post those as well. 

[MTLCRUISER72]

Following along! We will be on her in 3 weeks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mike

[jacksmom09]

Enjoying your review.

[mrpayroll]

Looking forward to more. Will be on Adventure in early March.

[harryfat1]

11 hours ago, cgolf1 said:

No, his are incredible, I hope someday to be half as good at a trip review. His are the best. When I get to the end and you hear how much we spent the thrifty fits lol. A sneak peak though, the aloe with pain meds, like bio freeze, for 24 bucks was the highest amount we payed for an item that wasn’t a shore excursion.
 

This is my first full review on the RCCL side, I did one last year on the Celebrity board for the Edge. 

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the compliment. Cheap/Thrifty people have our own special bond!

 

I received the email notification from CC today that someone mentioned my name in a post even though I haven’t been to these boards for over a year so had to drop by to see what was happening. It’s nice to be remembered as we haven’t cruised since December 2017.  We went to Japan for almost three weeks last summer and spent big bucks so I don’t think I can call myself Cheapo dad anymore.  I will change my next cruise report to “Cruiser formerly known as Cheapo dad…”

 

I see you are off to a fine start on your trip report.  If you need an agent to help you make more money here at CC with your trip report, hire me as your new agent. Just need to pay me 5% of whatever CC pays you from your postings and I will help spread the word on your trip report.

 

One free tip – keep referencing the Occupancy Percentages Trend of Royal Caribbean ship as discussed on page 13 of the 2018 copy of the Form 10-K report they filed with the SEC. Biker loves to talk about this stuff. 😜

 

Edited February 11, 2020 by harryfat1
Clueless on how to use the new CC forum format

[cgolf1]

On to Day 1

Boarding as usual was simple. We got to port around 11 and drop off to stepping foot onboard took less than 30 minutes. RCCL and Celebrity have this down to a science. We walked around the ship prior to getting into our rooms and it was similar enough to the Freedom that we felt like we knew where we were going. We were happy to find that deck 4 had plenty of seating. We love sitting out on that deck watching and listening to the ocean go by. 

 

We found out that our online dining 5:45 reservation got lost, so did a lot of others, and we were able to get 5:15 which for the most part worked out. We ate lunch in windjammer and being a gluten free person I was disappointed that RCCL isn’t marking all items with allergens like their sister line Celebrity. I knew enough to make it work, but was limited. To those that say you can ask for a chefs tour of the buffet, you are correct that I could have done that. The problem is you have to wait on average probably 10 minutes for the chef to come out and then the tour of the buffet. This is a 10-25 minute process. Which means the rest of your party is essentially done eating as you are starting. Hopefully RCCL follows Celebrity’s lead in the future. 
 

I have also attached the day 1 Cruise Compass and a picture of the safe with a smaller purse and iPad mini in it to give an idea of size. 
 

 

[sj25]

You will be getting off when we get on....cant wait!

[cgolf1]

6 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the compliment. Cheap/Thrifty people have our own special bond!

 

I received the email notification from CC today that someone mentioned my name in a post even though I haven’t been to these boards for over a year so had to drop by to see what was happening. It’s nice to be remembered as we haven’t cruised since December 2017.  We went to Japan for almost three weeks last summer and spent big bucks so I don’t think I can call myself Cheapo dad anymore.  I will change my next cruise report to “Cruiser formerly known as Cheapo dad…”

 

I see you are off to a fine start on your trip report.  If you need an agent to help you make more money here at CC with your trip report, hire me as your new agent. Just need to pay me 5% of whatever CC pays you from your postings and I will help spread the word on your trip report.

 

One free tip – keep referencing the Occupancy Percentages Trend of Royal Caribbean ship as discussed on page 13 of the 2018 copy of the Form 10-K report they filed with the SEC. Biker loves to talk about this stuff. 😜

 

I definitely debated about using the thrifty couple name last year, because I didn’t want people to think I was copying your style. For us being thrifty is a lifestyle. It can be a frustrating one at times because we don’t have all the cool toys and gadgets, but once over that I am at piece with it. 

 

I work testing software and hardware for a company and it is always interesting listening to the engineers, whose family income is far greater, but some live close to paycheck to paycheck and marvel at the fact we can cruise. We take a bit of pride in that and are glad we could have our daughter experience the different islands we visited as she was growing up. 

 

Now when we book Celebrity, we have to do a lot of math lol. It is always a challenge to figure out if booking an oceanview with two perks is cheaper than an inside with no perks. If it isn’t cheaper how many drinks do we need to drink for it to be equal, etc. In some ways it is fun, but now that you have to be careful how you book to get a refundable deposit it is really a huge minefield. 

 

Looking forward to your next review, they are always a fun read:)

[CJDepew]

15 hours ago, voyager70 said:

Also looking forward as we board less than 2 weeks!

 

Are you on the Feb. 22 sailing? 

[CJDepew]

Thank you for the review. Counting the days until we board. I can understand being thrifty. I splurged on a Jr. Suite, but all of our cruise money comes from my side business. I work for a large corporation in the IT department, but have a side hustle editing books so work a lot of hours each week. It's a win/win because I actually love that work and it pays for a once a year cruise around the Caribbean while the rest of the northeast is cold and yucky.

[voyager70]

20 minutes ago, CJDepew said:

Are you on the Feb. 22 sailing? 

 

Yep