We're back from our
first trip ever on Adventure of the Seas.
That leaves just Navigator of the Seas as the only Voyager Class ship we
have never sailed on. These days,
Voyager Class ships are considered "average" in size, but I remember
when they first came out and were the largest cruise ships ever built. How times have changed.
Adventure is one of
the older "first generation" Voyager Class ships and she was last
refurbed in 2014 and received the water slides and "flowrider" in
2016. She showed some "wear and
tear" in some areas (carpets, furniture, public rooms) but, for the most
part, she is in pretty good shape considering she hosts around 3,000 passengers
a week. Our standard inside cabin was
just fine and we had no complaints or issues.
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| Flowrider and slides on Adventure |
This cruise was an 8 day Caribbean sailing that took us from Ft. Lauderdale to Labadee, San Juan, St. Maarten, and St. Kitts. We have been to most of those islands several times but we were pretty excited to see St. Kitts on the itinerary since we have never been there before.
Ft. Lauderdale is
about 3.5 - 4 hours from home so we left bright and early and arrived at about
11:00AM. Boarding was already underway
by then and we were on board by around 11:30.
Once on board, we grabbed lunch at the Windjammer and then waited until
1PM for the rooms to be ready so we could drop off our stuff and have a walk
around the ship to check everything out.
After our ship tour
and muster drill, we were off to the Diamond Club for the evening "Happy
Hour". Unfortunately, there were
some issues here during the week that caused a bit of a stir. For some reason, Royal Caribbean was
"testing" changes in the Diamond Lounge requiring people to get in
line and present their cards for every drink.
Normally, the Diamond and above nightly happy hour is open bar (select
menu) and you are waited on at your table by staff. Your sea pass card is never taken or scanned
because the drinks are free and you need your card to access the lounge. So if you are not Diamond or above, you can't
get in. This week, however, they were
swiping everyone's cards for the drinks (one drink per card) and there was a
bar set up in the room that you had to stand and wait on line for. That caused lines out the door of the lounge
which also blocked access to the small buffet they have set up. No one we talked to had ever seen this on
Royal before and the staff, who didn't seem too happy about it either,
mentioned it was something new the line was experimenting with on a few
ships. No one knew exactly what the
reasoning behind it was but some staff did mention that it was for inventory
tracking. Others thought it was to try
to prevent people from taking drinks out of the lounge and giving them away. We did still see some people
"sneaking" drinks out of the lounge and apparently giving them to
family members or friends who are not Diamond or above. Whatever the reason was, it did cause some
confusion and lots of complaints. Even
with all that going on, we still got great service in the lounge and the crew
was trying their best to keep everyone happy.
Once again, we met some great new friends and mostly enjoyed our time
there. We just hope this isn't something
they are planning on doing fleet wide.
Hopefully it's also not a sign that more changes are coming to the
lounge/happy hour.
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| St. Kitts |
If you have read any of my prior blog posts, you know we've been all over the Eastern and Western Caribbean. We've been to several of these islands multiple times, but one we haven't been to is St. Kitts. So we were pretty excited to check it out. That stop was on day 6 of this 8 day cruise. We didn’t have any excursions or anything planned so we just got off the ship and explored a bit around the port area. There is a lot of shopping in the port "village" there so we popped in and out of a lot of the shops to check out their stuff and get into the A/C. We didn't venture much outside of the port shopping area but we would love to come back to St. Kitts and check it out further. Maybe next time we'll do a tour.
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| Lunch in the dining room |
For our meals we just kind of "winged it" on this cruise. We had late seating in the dining room, but we wound up not going there at all for dinner. Some days we would eat breakfast at the Windjammer, then skip lunch and eat later in the evening at Café Promenade or in Windjammer or we would skip breakfast and have lunch and late night snacks. On seas days though, we did not miss lunch in the Dining room. This has become our new thing and we love it. Lunch in the MDR, is available on sea days and consists of a host of selections from a menu as well as a large buffet which usually includes some sort of fresh station where the staff will make you a pasta dish or salad to order. There is always also a huge selection of desserts as well. On this cruise, one of the special lunches was seafood themed and there was a whole table full of mussels, crawfish, and shrimp. Really good if you have the time to sit down and don't want to run the gauntlet at the Windjammer. We also had our required meal of Sushi at Izumi and, as usual, it was fantastic. Izumi on Adventure is unusual as it is located in the Royal Promenade along with the other shops and the pub. Great for good food and some "people watching".
Entertainment wise
we didn't go to any shows, nothing really caught our eye. We did find a great band, "Funk it
Up", that we enjoyed and checked out their sets whenever we could. We dabbled in some more trivia contests and
did OK, coming away with a few goodies.
Aside from that, we entertained ourselves and relaxed.
Debarkation in Ft.
Lauderdale was fairly smooth. We usually
do the self-debarkation early in the morning and we have noticed that more and
more people are opting for this as the line are getting longer and longer. One minor complaint about Ft. Lauderdale is
that where Adventure was docked, there is no parking garage. You have to take a shuttle to and from the
garage which does cause a bit of a delay and it somewhat of an annoyance. We had the same issue with a couple of
cruises on Freedom of the Seas from Ft. Lauderdale in the past. It's just that one location at the port that
does not have a garage you can walk to.
All other berths are fine. As I
mentioned, it's a minor annoyance and nothing that will ruin our vacation.
That's it for this
one. Next up is a couple of cruises on
Harmony of the Seas later this year.
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