PART 1, Page 1, Post #1
Hello, friends. I may as well go ahead and apologize right now. This here review is LONG and it is only a matter of time until you get thoroughly SICK. OF. IT. Be warned!!
I made the decision about doing a review months ago, long before we departed for the drive from the area south of Chicago toward the scenic shores of urban New Jersey. Well, docks and/or piers, really. Not so many “shores” in this region of the Upper New York Bay. And the best scenery is the Manhattan skyline with the Statue of Liberty in the foreground.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. A couple of housekeeping issues here. While I love all the supportive comments that I desperately hope will follow my review, I also realize some folks become weary of the review-in-50-installments format, interspersed with sidebars, off-topic questions, arguments, quotes of extremely long and/or photo heavy posts in their entirety, and weeks of waiting to find out what happens next while the writer inconsiderately returns to the gainful employment that afforded them the resources to travel in the first place.
So you’re going to get, right here, right now, a big fat data dump. The whole deal in just a few posts in rapid succession. I will, however, break it up into PARAGRAPHS. This makes it easier to read; easier to see and perceive when the topic changes. Easier to identify what you want to SKIP. Which, if I’m being honest, is probably everything. Because this is a lot of info from someone with a weird perspective, mmm-kay?
I’m gonna try putting up all the text first, and then the photos in follow up posts. I will also, of course, be happy to further discuss anything mentioned here as well as trying to answer any questions. Try to stop me!
If you want to quote some of this in a reply comment, please just quote the actual segment you are interested in. Please don’t quote whole posts.
About me – I am Kmom, 53 year-old mother of one female child who is now going on 14 years old. In fun, I call her a “meanager” occasionally, and she actually thinks that’s pretty funny as well. Oh, quit hating! I only do it when she is actually being mean. She is so spoiled and she knows she is the center of my universe and I tell her about 8 times a day how much I love her! And the spoiled part is only partially my fault, because she’s an only child, an only grandchild, and has a father who grew up in an underprivileged home and is determined she will never want for anything.
We were travelling this trip with my husband and my mother who actually paid for our two adjacent (but not connecting) Junior Suites on Adventure of the Seas, Deck 10, rooms 1624 and 1628. Mom went on her first cruise in the early 1960’s as a young single woman living in NYC – she shared a small apartment in a brownstone on West 69th Street off Central Park West right across the street from the one shown in the movie, “The Apartment.” Believe it or not, that was a fairly affordable location in those days. She went on her first cruise with her roommate and a couple of other friends.
They sailed on The Queen of Bermuda to, guess where? They had 2 days down, then several days riding mopeds around the pink-sanded island while staying at a local hotel, before sailing back to the city so nice, they named it twice. And cruising became part of her memory wall.
Mom took me on several cruises as shown in my signature (Premier x2, Scotia Prince which was really an overnight ferry, and Celebrity Millennium). I brought her on one of my Disney Magic cruises back in the 90’s when I worked for Disney World. She had not come along on any of our modern-era cruises (beginning in 2017), so back in May of 2018 I talked her into giving it one more go. She had a lot of stipulations, like decent, uncrowded rooms for all involved, large balconies, and a mobility scooter. Since she raised a cheapskate, I tried to object based on cost, which she graciously offered to take care of, if, and ONLY IF I could get her what she wanted.
COST: It looked high from my financial viewpoint, but based on how far ahead we booked, it turned out to be a reasonable deal at $6K for the four of us for six nights. Easy for me to say, since someone else was paying. This rate included taxes and fees, prepaid gratuities, a $100 OBC per room, and additional “cancel for any reason” travel insurance. The insurance alone was almost $600 and a discretionary expense. The cost of this insurance per person was much higher for my mom than the rest of us, obviously due to older people being more likely to have a medical reason to cancel their vacations.
We used an online travel agency which I also used when we booked Oasis of the Seas a couple years ago. I have found for Royal Caribbean we do better on both rates and room availability through online agencies, unlike Carnival which I just book direct with the line as they offer the exact same terms and rooms either way.
Within a few months of booking, prices had gone up substantially and they never looked back. In fact, prices for a regular balcony room were soon equal to what we paid for these Junior Suites. I really did not have to do much over the next year or so except make a few bookings for hotels along the drive, the aforementioned in-room scooter, and a rental car for our port day in Saint John, New Brunswick to drive up to see the sea caves in St. Martins.
SORRY, I realize this has all probably been exhausting for you already. Blah blah, all this background! Getting on the ship soon, I promise!
We stayed 2 nights pre-cruise at the Hyatt Place Secaucus Meadowlands with FREE PARKING. We visited the Edison Estate and Laboratory on Friday morning, then took a very, very slow public bus through the Lincoln Tunnel to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and walked several blocks to see Beetlejuice on Broadway at the Winter Garden Friday evening, chosen by whom? That’s right, the not-always-so-mean-teenager. It turned out, that show was totally worth it. Super fun. Warning, F-bombs inside. Loved it.
If you want to hear more about this hotel and location and convenience factors, let me know.
Port Liberty, Bayonne: Saturday morning, we drove over and found Port Liberty, Bayonne, to be VERY EASY to navigate, easy parking for our big pickup truck and easy drop off for my mom at the door. Perhaps it didn’t hurt that it was SATURDAY. Security and check in were both annoying clusters, partly our fault, I suppose if I’m being honest. We 3 gals headed in and being in the handicapped line, we had no wait so we charged ahead while DH parked. We had his carry-on bag, which had some sort of power adapter that was confiscated while they questioned the meanager about it. I was on the other side of the belt waiting, because I had DH’s passport, so I couldn’t intervene regarding this questioning, and my mom didn’t really understand what the problem was. And they made my sweet, perfect, innocent little baby CRY during the power adapter interrogation. Who’s mean now?
Actually it worked a charm as they sort of dropped the ‘tude after making a little girl cry over a stupid power cord. Eventually we got that all worked out, though they did confiscate the item, wrap it up in masking tape and gave us a claim check to pick it up after the cruise.
Rude Incompetence with Wheelchair Assistance: Then we were sent over to a waiting area for wheelchair assistance. We sat for about 10 minutes while people who came in behind us were checked in on tablets and sent on their way. Since we seemed to have been immediately forgotten, I went up and asked someone if I needed to go over to one of the check-in lines and she snapped at me, “are you waiting for a wheelchair?” Yes. “Then we’ll GET to you!” Oooooh-kay.
Keep in mind, I’m already slightly salty due to the minor security fiasco. But I can just sit down and shut the *@$& up now, no problem, so sorry to be that annoying passenger who asks a question once in a while. Oh, by the way, *@$& yourself as well, madam. I got a flustered meanager here as well as an easily tired, mobility limited senior citizen on my hands. By the way, she’s a VETERAN! But WHATEVER!
A few minutes later, someone came with a wheelchair, one of the agents told him to take my mom, and we were on our way through a series of corridors and elevators. At the end of this rolling journey, we arrived on deck 4 of the ship to be scanned aboard. They asked for some sort of documentation we did not have, but I did have my pre-check in barcodes on my phone, which they used to look us up in the computer and said, “you’re not checked in.” No kidding! We’re just doing what we’re told here, folks! Let Kmom’s smug smirking commence. Oh yeah, baby! It’s commencing RIGHT NOW!
This is obviously not their first rodeo, because they have a guy right there to deal with exactly this problem. He’s the calmly smiling, non-threateningly handsome, extra-charming check-in supervisor guy whose job is to fix others’ screw-ups while placating the increasingly irritated passengers who have been mishandled by the port staff.
So super-nice guy figured THAT out for us, while we held up a long line of properly-checked-in passengers behind us (sorry not sorry, because IT WASN’T OUR FAULT!!) then into Bolero’s on Deck 4 where the wheelchair deposited my mother into a lounge chair.
It’s around noon at this point and she and the kiddo can spend an hour pretty happily in one place so they hung out while DH and I did our first quick looky-loos around the ship. At 1pm we headed to the land of instant spoilification, i.e. the Junior Suites of our Dreams.
Arrived in Houston from O’Hare on American this afternoon and had a tequila sunrise with my yumzy dinner salad at the hotel. Wasn't sure about a live review, but why the heck not? It’s just me and hubby for a whole week, for the first time in 16 years. Feeling a bit wiped out from the long exhausting drag of travel day, which barely used to phase me, but at 55 I’m not the energetic whippersnapper I once was. I got myself into a little hot water with my health assessment and with my Covid test but I’m pretty sure it will all be fine and they’ll let me board tomorrow. I already posted separately asking for help with that and it drew an interesting mix of commentary from the esteemed peanut gallery, and given me a lot to think about. Anyway I’ll see how much posting energy I can muster tomorrow and onward, and thus just how “live” this will turn out. Having friends along definitely encourages more photos, opinions, general and/or specific observations, blathering chit-chat, philosophy, emotional outbursts, maybe even a little poetry. On my last cruise in December I was feeling blue and thus conjured my long gone friend Carol (died of cancer 18 years ago) and shared our brief conversation. She always straightens me out when I’m feeling sorry for myself. You never know what you’re gonna get with Kmom, and that’s basically the point. Mostly sane except for the crazy part. Flight was on a beautiful new Airbus 319 that was nonetheless bumpy as crap the first and last half-hour. Weather in Houston is like heaven today.
