jeffr6596

We found it somewhat nerve wracking that they didn't really track the number of towels you checked in or out. One day they scanned my card and my wife's card when checking them out but only scanned my card when returning. They also did not count the towels when I brought them back, just had me throw them in the bin. I was concerned I would find a charge at the end of the cruise. However, throughout the cruise we checked towels out (up to 4 at a time) and checked towels in (sometimes one at a time) but had no charges at the end of the week. I'm unsure how their system works but it cannot be an accurate way of tracking towels. If not, I don't see how they charge people for unreturned towels. We certainly returned all towels that we used but I don't know how their system accurately tracked that.

Every other cruise line I have experienced handles MTD without any real issues. The Carnival app being used to check in works very well in my experience. Once they notify you that your table is ready you have 10 minutes to get there or they will release the table. It allows you to let them know you are ready to eat without having to stand in a long line of impatient diners at the entrance. I will say, on our recent cruise on the Adventure, my reservations (made when the window opened) were somewhat scattered with the times. After the first evening our waiter came over and said if we wanted to skip the lines we could just walk in and come to the same table every night as long as we did so at the same time. We dismissed the reservation times and showed up at 6:45 every night, walked right in and to our table where our waiter greeted us. About the 3rd night they called our room and asked why we were not coming to the MDR. When I told them we were and that we had been there every night at 6:45 at our same table, they said ok. But from that night forward they had someone blocking the path that had previously allowed our seamless entry. It wasn't a big deal. They had someone ask our room number and then immediately allowed us to go to our table. The only nights we waited more than 2-5 minutes were nights where we showed up before MTD opened. On those nights there was a long line but within a few minutes of opening the door we were sitting at our table. Overall though, based on reviews, it sounds like Royal has had greater problems making the MTD work.

But it is an upcharge to feed the pugs and another upcharge to pet them.😁

Just returned from there last week. I would go back tomorrow. But I also frequent cities like St Louis, Chicago and New York City.

I just returned from the same cruise. The coconut ranger cookies were good, but I want to know what kind of coconut cookies were on Labadee. Those were the most amazing cookies I have had on a cruise. I kept checking the windjammer to see if they were present but never found them. It may have been some variation of the coconut ranger cookie, but they were bigger and much softer on the Labadee buffet. We didn't visit NextCruise, although we had to walk through there multiple times a day to get to our cabin on deck 6. I told my wife I could find better deals online. The power of NextCruise is they get people thinking about their next vacation before the one they are on has ended. They also tap into the fact that many people don't have internet access while on a cruise which prevents them from price checking. "Buy now to save more" is the oldest sell pitch in the book. I'm glad to know I didn't pass up a deal of a lifetime 😀 We visited the MDR every night and enjoyed most of the meals. We had a great wait staff. It was somewhat annoying to have them try to manipulate the post cruise review. Our waiter and his boss both came to our table multiple times to tell us if we didn't score the food quality a 10 it would cause Royal to cut our waiter's pay. We loved our waiter and gave his service a 10. But I am not going to be manipulated into giving food quality a 10 when it was not a 10 in my opinion.

We actually thought Aruba would be the best port experience of the three. It turned out differently than we expected. The water in Aruba is beautiful, no doubt, but the beaches were all very crowded. Maybe it was because we had back to back port days and with the arrival at Aruba being early (7:30 a.m.) we were more tired than we expected. We took the city bus ($10 for all day pass) and went to the lighthouse and a couple of beaches. We took some pictures, did a little shopping and went back to the ship. Bonaire was a wonderful experience. I had discovered a little known option for a beach day by doing research before going. We went to the Chogogo Resort and for $25 each received a day pass. $10 of that was given back to us for a food voucher. The resort has a nice pool, lazy river, and beach with great snorkeling. We spent the whole day there and could have stayed another day or two. It was an outstanding experience. We loved Labadee as well. We spent the day at Columbus Cove where the water was calm and the beach amazing. We did go to the ice show and even tried to ice skate. The ice rink is really small on the Adventure so it made the show that much more impressive. To see the skaters do what they did on that surface and in that small of a space was impressive. During the open skating session we found the ice to be in very poor condition which made skating more difficult than it should have been. It was still fun though. They limit the sessions to 20 minutes and at first I thought that wouldn't be long enough. After struggling to skate in those conditions we found the 20 minute session to be plenty long enough.

Overall it was a good cruise. As compared to other cruises (different lines) I would rank it in the top 5 for me of all the cruises I have taken out of 10. Entertainment was better on this cruise than previous lines. The ports were great (Labadee, Bonaire, Aruba). Loved loved loved Labadee and Bonaire. Food was good, not great overall. I believe all cruise lines are pushing people to specialty dining. Therefore it appears they are intentionally decreasing quality of buffet and MDR options. When a person wants more than one main dish Royal will not serve it until you finish the first. That is fine. Most nights it didn’t matter. On lobster night it was a little bothersome because the lobster tail was about 3-4 oz (very very small). It would have been nice to have the steak or chicken along side the crawdad they called a lobster. Royal has exceeded other cruise lines in restricting included options to a smaller and smaller number of options. The most frustrating thing to me was a couple of small things that absolutely just rubbed me the wrong way. They had one soft serve ice cream machine and it was rationed by a staff member who served extra small cones at the end of a long line of people. The machine was only in operation during a few hours every afternoon. The other thing was when they set up a cotton candy machine in the windjammer and then charged for it. It was only $2.50 but common Royal, really? As I said, these were small issues but why would a multi billion dollar company risk creating dissatisfaction over such low cost items? And believe me, people in line were not happy. Every staff person was helpful. We had a great waiter and cabin assistant. The one time per day cleaning didn’t bother us. 6 of the 8 nights our dinner in the MDR was very very good. We certainly didn’t go hungry. Our cruise director was fun and not nearly as cheesy as most we have seen. The things to do (even on one of the smallest Royal ships) were more plentiful than other cruise lines. Will we cruise Royal again? Probably. It will be an option to consider along with ports of call and cost. I was hoping it would be so much better than other cruise lines that we would be Royal loyalist from here forward. That didn’t happen but neither was it a bad cruise. We had a great time.

Just got home from an 8 night Adventure of the Seas cruise. The food on all cruise lines has declined over the past 10 years. The MDR food was prepared as intended. It was appropriate temp and presentation and portion were fine. 2 nights there was not a good option on the menu imo. Every person’s taste is different and some might like what I didn’t. the strip steak is “edible” which is more than I can say for the strip steak from Norwegian and Carnaval. However, it is worst than most chain restaurants like Colten’s, Texas Roadhouse, even worse than Golden Coral. The obvious intention by Royal is to force people to upgrade to either the purchased steak from the MDR or specialty restaurant. Restricting the hours for free soft serve ice cream and having one machine on the entire ship was irritating. And it was rationed like cheese during WWII by a RC staff person.

Just got back from Labadee. Never felt safer. I would go back tomorrow if I could. I could spend a week there and a week at Bonaire and not get tired of either.

F27TW what makes you think that? Is it because of the low post count? Everyone starts at 0. It seemed like a legitimate question to me.

I love cruising out of Port Canaveral. It has been the easiest embarkation process I have seen. I'm headed there next week and hope I didn't just jinx myself 😀

On our first cruise my wife and I took meclizine because we were afraid we might get seasick. 1 hour after boarding we were so zonked that we went to the cabin and slept the entire afternoon until dinner time. We have never taken any since and have been on several cruises where at least one day/night we experienced the boat rocking pretty hard, hard enough that it was sometimes difficult to walk a straight line through the hallways. Neither of us have ever gotten seasick on a cruise. Now, I was horribly seasick on a charter fishing trip one time so I know I am not entirely immune. My advice would be to take some seasick supplies with you but don't use them unless you need them.

The cruise activities and entertainment have now loaded to the Royal app. I hope there are some things missing because it only shows 2 production shows and one Ice show on an 8 night cruise. One of the reason we were switching to Royal for this cruise is because we were under the impression that the entertainment would be better than our previous cruise lines. Do they really not have other nightly shows of some kind? Comedians, magicians, etc? I'm hoping those shows are just not appearing on the app. Information from recent cruisers on the Adventure would be appreciated. TIA

Which version fits on the "king" bed on RCL? I have been reading a lot of comments about how hard the beds are and I want to be prepared. We are flying so taking a foam topper will not work. However, since we want the beds to be configured together I don't want a Klymit that only covers 2/3 of the mattress either. My cruise is coming up quick so I need to get a couple of them ordered if I am going to do so. Also, if you have used an inflatable mattress for RCL beds, how did it work out? Was it a big improvement? TIA

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