Soda package/shops

Although this ship is older than some, it was a very nice ship and enjoyable itinerary. The service and food were good and the shows at night were awesome ! There was always plenty to do. The soda package is ridiculous. I got tired of looking for a soda machine that had ice or was working properly. The only free water you get is the water that they provide in a water container that has ice. You don't get a bottle of water unless you have the more expensive package. I don't understand that if you have the soda package why you just can't get ask for a can of soda or a .50 bottle of water. A problem that i always have on any cruise is with Effy. They offer free bracelets or sometimes charms each night but the giveaway is never what you think. The only time that they are nice to you is if your buying. Very frustrating! Wish all the cruise lines would do away with those very expensive stores.

Ship runs like a well oiled machine.

This cruise was one of the nicest cruises we have been on in a long time. Embarkation was quick. We had 1030a boarding time, we checked our bags and were on the ship in less than 15 mins. even with W/C assist. The attendants even took us directly to our muster stations. This ship runs like a well oiled machine. No matter who we spoke to with questions, everyone either knew the answer or was able to get someone to immediately assist us. Our room was sparkling clean and neat. I was a very nice balcony just off the side of the hump. Our room steward was one of the best we have had. He even made us towel animals almost every night and made two swans and a big heart on the bed with an anniversary card the night before our anniversary! I was thrilled with that and took the card home. Dinner in the MDR was excellent. I had requested a table close to the center rail and that's exactly where they put us. We had early dining and all the food was served hot and was delicious. Our waiters were excellent bringing us extra entrees just to taste to see if we liked them. They even sang happy anniversary to us and made us a special dessert! I never told anyone it was our anniversary. We were on a side to side with the Utopia and I did tell Utopia it was our anniversary and I guess that was shared on the first part of the cruise. We skipped the MDR only one night and that was the night we went to Izumi, where again, the food and service was amazing. We spent a lot of time in the casino, especially since this was a comped trip. The casino is very small and tight. Difficult to walk around when it gets crowded. BUT , machines were loose and I won $1200 on one and $1600 on another...neither was a hand pay but an accumulation of multi wins. There was smoking in the casino but unless there was someone next to me with a cigarette, it really wasn't too bad. Our clothes didn't even smell of smoke when we returned to the room. There were a number of times I needed to use Guest Services and they were quick and polite. I needed to make reservations for a Royal shuttle from the Adventure to the Utopia on disembarkation. This was easy to set up and everyone was so pleasant. The original person we spoke to about the shuttle was unsure but made sure he got someone who did know about the shuttle and that person made our reservation. We didn't use the pools but did use the hot tubs in the solarium. It was crowded in the solarium but the hot tubs were rarely full. We were able to find available chairs to sit & have a drink at the side of the pool or hot tub. There were LOTS of kids on the ship. I found out later it was due to the kids sail free offer but we didn't have any problems with kids at all. No noise, no kids running, no elevator problems. Disembarkation was quick but we had to wait about 1 hr for the shuttle for Utopia. I was very surprised at how many people were doing the same thing. Thankfully there was a "shuttle desk" in the parking lot shuttle area, where they showed us where to sit and wait. Thank goodness they had chairs available. All in all, we really enjoyed our cruise and will be taking Adventure again in Nov for the 10 night southern Caribbean. Can't wait.

Amazing time, Great Staff, Super Fun!

We had only cruised once prior in Royal (Allure of the Seas - had a grand suite), and honestly, we didn't care for the experience. So we were a bit hesitant, however, we really wanted to get away and this one came up for a decent last minute price (booked 6 days prior to sailing). We ordered internet and water ahead of time (slight rant, they really do deck you on the price of water. The bottles you get are 1 L though which is nice and had I known that I wouldn't have ordered 2 cases lol). We were able to get a 1 p.m. boarding time, so we decided to target port arrival for 12:30 p.m. as we were driving over from Ocala, FL. We made great time on the way and arrived at about 12:10 p.m. or so. We dropped off the luggage with the porter, parked the car, and breezed through security (though we did have to open our carry-on as we had 2 laptops in there—lesson learned: pack em separate!). We answered a few health questions just to verify our health status hadn't changed and then walked right on the ship at about 12:35 PM. We were totally blown away by how easy the entire embarkation process was. We waited around until 1 PM when we could get to our room to drop off our carryon luggage and then headed up for a bite to eat. After that, we watched our safety video, visited the muster station and then explored the ship. All of the staff we encountered was absolutely terrific including our room steward Nat who did a wonderful job all week and always greeted us by name. They're servicing rooms once per day now so he asked us if we wanted a morning or eveningtime (we chose afternoon which fit our schedule well). We then visited the maitre'd to get our dinner changed from My Time dining (they apparently couldn't honor our request for a private table so switched us to my time) to the 5 PM seating. He put us at a beautiful table right by the window and we enjoyed our table mates for the week. While on board we really enjoyed the Ignite band (they have a fill in guitarist Eduardo who is absolutely amazing at both playing and singing; I mean this dude can shred!), had fun watching karaoke, took in a few of the shows, enjoyed the walking track, fitness center (6 workouts for the week!), sunning, 2 NFL games on the big screen, a couple naps and of course all of the food! Speaking of the food, in our opinion it was fabulous and no complaints at all. The pastries were wonderful, the breads were so good and the donuts, oh yummy! Stops: Stop 1 was Curacao which is our personal favorite island that we've visited on multiple occasions including 8 nights. A lot of people go to Mambo beach, which is a very nice beach but it tends to get crowded, can be crazy at times and you also have to keep an eye on your stuff so we decided this time we wanted quieter. We opted to to go Blue Bay Beach which was just perfect. It's $12 pp for the day which included the loungers, they have 2 restaurants and a bar that you can also order food from. Unfortunately not a lot of people go there so it's $40 for 2 people unless you can find someone to share a taxi with. We're pretty sure there was one other couple from our cruise there otherwise it was just people staying at the resort and it was indeed a perfect choice and a perfect day! Afterwards we went back to the ship, changed clothes and then walked downtown and grabbed a slice of dutch apple pie from De Buren. If you like apple pie, this is not to be missed, it is amazing!!! Stop 2, Aruba where we had booked a catamaran sailing; we were originally scheduled for the morning, however the tour operator had texted to ask if we'd consider switching to the sunset sailing for no extra charge. So because they had changed our 10 pm departure time in Curacao to 7:30 pm and tacked on 2.5 hours to Aruba (so 7:30 instead of 5 PM) we were able to accommodate their request. We had a total of 7 guests on the catamaran and made 3 snorkeling stops including a warship that was sunken. Amazing time there in Aruba... we've been here several times and there wasn't anything else that we wanted to do this time. Stop 3: Perfect Day at CocoCay - we had never been here before so we were really looking forward to it. We had thought about purchasing the adult only beach but saw a comment from someone that said "if you've never been there then why don't you try the free parts and if it's not for you, then next time pay". We took that advice and were so glad we did; there was no necessity to pay anything. We chose South Beach to hang out at for the day and even with Icon of the Seas being docked there we had plenty of space for ourselves without feeling overcrowded. It truly was a perfect day at coco cay!! The food was great and once again the staff amazing. All in all, great cruise, really changed our mind on Royal Caribbean and we're already discussing booking another cruise soon. A word on our cabin: we booked an inside guarantee room and were super pleasantly surprised to get a mid ship deck 7 accessible room (260 sq ft) that overlooked the promenade. It just felt huge and was so great for us, thank you Royal! Debarkation: We got luggage tags 11; we were trying to figure out when we were supposed to be out of our cabin which we couldn't find anywhere. Later we heard the captain (who was also awesome!) made an announcement. We didn't hear that announcement but apparently we were supposed to be out by 7 AM. Our room steward never said a word about it to us and was very kind so we got to stay in our cabin until around 8:10 or 8:15 when our tag was called. We were able to roll our carryon luggage onto the elevator and then walk off the ship. Got a porter to assist and he took us to the parking garage. We left the building and were on 528 headed home by 8:41. Truly amazing! Now for the nit picks and to address all the negativity in the reviews: First off, we feel blessed to even have the opportunity to go on vacation and cruise. We don't feel superior to any other passengers or crew folk while we're there. We don't walk around expecting that if we drop a napkin someone else should pick it up and unfortunately I think the expectation level on the ships has gone far too high and results in so many of these negative reviews... that said, here's our honest take on what we saw. The ship definitely shows her age (we heard she's going into dry dock in October). The room had 2 plugs and no USB outlets; the bathroom had no plugs. These are first world problems and not a big deal. I'm sure they'll update this at drydock. Some of the carpeting is stained... we didn't smell any sewage or anything like that but there was an occasional musty smell in the hallways similar to beach hotel with carpeting. The windjammer at times would get so full that it was virtually impossible to get a table; we did walk around twice with full plates of food and had trouble getting a table and by the time we did our food was cold... that was not because they served cold food, it was because it was no longer warm; we simply adapted our schedule to times when it was less crowded and avoided these issues.... not a big deal. I've never been on a cruise that had more people driving around scooters before; in our experience most people were very kind to the scooter passengers (holding elevator doors etc); It did lead to long wait times for elevators and since we're pretty healthy we did 80% of the time choose to just take the stairs. Starting from floor 7 made this fairly convenient. The pool deck: terrible design with a small screen for movies and most of the deck has a completely obstructed view of the screen. Dining times: this would be my biggest complaint. We would prefer a 6 PM seating.... there is no such timeslot though for dinner. You either take a fixed time of 5 PM or 7:30 PM.... 5 is a bit early though it what we chose and 7:30 too late. The my time dining doesn't start until I believe 6:45 which is also later than we wanted. Again, personal preference thing but it did force us to sacrifice either dinner or an activity / show that we wanted to attend. For instance, they added a viewing of a moving at 4 PM one day; we would have enjoyed going to the movie, however, we would have had to skp the dining room dinner experience to attend so we skipped the movie. Later in the week they showed it again at 6 PM and once again we had a choice. Of course we chose to skip the movie we can watch at home but it just seems like maybe a bit more thought could be given to scheduling.... nit picky to be sure! Internet pricing is ridiculous.... water pricing is ridiculous. Oh and last thing: it really bugs us to get "perks" with our cruise member points and have the onus on us to both know about them (50% drink coupons, 50% off johnny rockets shake coupons, 10% off drink coupons etc...) and request to use them. Only one staff member took the time to mention that we had them and ask if we wanted to use them. Otherwise we wouldn't have even known they were a thing. This shouldn't be and isn't a way to "reward" someone. I'm sure there are a few other things here and there that I'm not thinking of because quite honestly, this reminded us of the cruising we fell in love with over 20 years ago! Last comments: our dining staff was truly incredible and did a great job all week for us so shout out Archie and I Gusti!! We enjoyed talking to the Maitre D as well Sandeep. Thank you everyone!!!

Awesome Adventure on Adventure of the Seas

Having sailed on Adventure of the Seas last year we couldn't pass up a return visit especially on such a low priced awesome itinerary. Before the disturbance in Haiti the itinerary originally had a call in Labadee, but was switched to Turks and Caicos. We continued to Bermuda and Coco Cay on this 8 night sailing from Port Canaveral. Embarkation was a breeze we literally walked right onboard for lunch at Chops Grille which was super delicious. The ship is well maintained throughout and will be going in for a light drydock in October for regular maintenance and new carpeting and bridge updates. We were very happy with the variety and taste of the food and beverages, all live entertainment was excellent and the crew extremely helpful and friendly. The ports were beautiful especially Bermuda and Coco Cay. I really wish Royal Caribbean would offer more cruises to Bermuda from Florida! Had a great time no complaints at all and highly recommend.