Thoughts on 12/23 Adventure of the Seas Christmas Cruise

[luvdisney2010]

First, please let me say this is not a review. I had planned to do a review, but I got busy and forgot to take notes. What you will find are just some observations from our cruise and our thoughts.

 

Getting on the ship...We arrived early (around 11:00 or so) but we were not able to board until after 1:00. Apparently (so we were told), about 1000 of the previous week's cruisers did not want to get off the ship and instead wanted to continue to eat. They finally kicked them off the ship, so the new group could board. Everything else was really easy.

 

Food - We ate in both the dining room and Windjammer. Our waitstaff was good, but our food in the MDR was very slow. We had one night in which a table of 6 (different waitstaff) was on dessert before we had gotten our main course (table of 5). The other table had arrived after us. The food was meh. One night, my steak was as tough as leather. The Windjammer wasn't too bad. The French toast was cold or hard, but there are worse things.

 

Appearance of the ship - I did not notice anything major at all. I had read many complaints on CC, but I just didn't see it. We were pleased with the ship. It took a very long time for the water in our shower to get hot, but that was my only problem. That usually only happened in the morning.

 

Kids' club - DS newly 9 enjoyed the activities. He's rather picky. He was there part of the time and did things with us part of the time. He had a lot of fun there.

 

Children in general - If there were a lot of kids on board, they were either very quiet or we just didn't see them. Adventure Ocean was never extremely busy, nor were there children running around all over.

 

Elevator behavior/teens - The only bad behavior we experienced came from a group of teens one night on the elevator. They had pushed all of the buttons while playing elevator tag. One did apologize, but we saw them again later doing the same thing. Most of the group was actually from Europe. We also encountered them once in the Promenade Cafe using foul language in front of our DS. DH promptly complained, and they left. We also heard them from our balcony one night visiting friends.

 

Entertainment - We didn't find as much on this cruise as we have on RCI cruises in the past, especially by the pool. One fellow cruiser was quite disappointed about this. I thought there would be more going on during the day and evening. We did have one port runner in Aruba though. People were cheering from their balconies, and it appeared that someone from the crew area was taking pictures.

 

For those of you that have had concerns about "locals", we may have had one or two rude adults on the cruise, but they were not locals. We had a very good mix of nationalities on the cruise. We heard French, Dutch, German, Spanish, English, and Japanese spoken on the cruise. There may have been others cruisers from other places, but those were the languages that stuck out.

 

One other thing to note ... we had ordered the photo CD. There weren't as many photographers out as I have seen in the past (i.e. backgrounds set up, etc.). Then there was a computer glitch or something. We had to hand check that all of our pictures actually made it to our disk. We also had to turn in all of our photos to be placed on the disk because the face recognition software wasn't working. We were a little nervous, but supposedly everything turned out okay.

 

Prayers go out to the couple that departed in Curacao. We had to return there about two hours after we departed because there was a health emergency. The port people did a great job of having the ambulance waiting to get the cruiser transferred and on his/her way as quickly as possible. We believe it was heart-related, but we have no confirmation of that.

 

We enjoyed the cruise and our itinerary. I hope this helps anyone who may be having concerns. I know there have been a lot of negative reviews. We liked the ship. DS loved learning to ice skate and rock climb. I enjoyed being on a ship:)

[F27TW]

First, please let me say this is not a review. I had planned to do a review, but I got busy and forgot to take notes. What you will find are just some observations from our cruise and our thoughts.

 

Getting on the ship...We arrived early (around 11:00 or so) but we were not able to board until after 1:00. Apparently (so we were told), about 1000 of the previous week's cruisers did not want to get off the ship and instead wanted to continue to eat. They finally kicked them off the ship, so the new group could board. Everything else was really easy.

 

Food - We ate in both the dining room and Windjammer. Our waitstaff was good, but our food in the MDR was very slow. We had one night in which a table of 6 (different waitstaff) was on dessert before we had gotten our main course (table of 5). The other table had arrived after us. The food was meh. One night, my steak was as tough as leather. The Windjammer wasn't too bad. The French toast was cold or hard, but there are worse things.

 

Appearance of the ship - I did not notice anything major at all. I had read many complaints on CC, but I just didn't see it. We were pleased with the ship. It took a very long time for the water in our shower to get hot, but that was my only problem. That usually only happened in the morning.

 

Kids' club - DS newly 9 enjoyed the activities. He's rather picky. He was there part of the time and did things with us part of the time. He had a lot of fun there.

 

Children in general - If there were a lot of kids on board, they were either very quiet or we just didn't see them. Adventure Ocean was never extremely busy, nor were there children running around all over.

 

Elevator behavior/teens - The only bad behavior we experienced came from a group of teens one night on the elevator. They had pushed all of the buttons while playing elevator tag. One did apologize, but we saw them again later doing the same thing. Most of the group was actually from Europe. We also encountered them once in the Promenade Cafe using foul language in front of our DS. DH promptly complained, and they left. We also heard them from our balcony one night visiting friends.

 

Entertainment - We didn't find as much on this cruise as we have on RCI cruises in the past, especially by the pool. One fellow cruiser was quite disappointed about this. I thought there would be more going on during the day and evening. We did have one port runner in Aruba though. People were cheering from their balconies, and it appeared that someone from the crew area was taking pictures.

 

For those of you that have had concerns about "locals", we may have had one or two rude adults on the cruise, but they were not locals. We had a very good mix of nationalities on the cruise. We heard French, Dutch, German, Spanish, English, and Japanese spoken on the cruise. There may have been others cruisers from other places, but those were the languages that stuck out.

 

One other thing to note ... we had ordered the photo CD. There weren't as many photographers out as I have seen in the past (i.e. backgrounds set up, etc.). Then there was a computer glitch or something. We had to hand check that all of our pictures actually made it to our disk. We also had to turn in all of our photos to be placed on the disk because the face recognition software wasn't working. We were a little nervous, but supposedly everything turned out okay.

 

Prayers go out to the couple that departed in Curacao. We had to return there about two hours after we departed because there was a health emergency. The port people did a great job of having the ambulance waiting to get the cruiser transferred and on his/her way as quickly as possible. We believe it was heart-related, but we have no confirmation of that.

 

We enjoyed the cruise and our itinerary. I hope this helps anyone who may be having concerns. I know there have been a lot of negative reviews. We liked the ship. DS loved learning to ice skate and rock climb. I enjoyed being on a ship:)

 

I love how everyone on here is so careful to tip toe and side step around this issue. :rolleyes: Just say "Puerto Rican people" .. we all know what you mean.

[maxs mom]

We were on this cruise also and had a great time. Great mix of people.....no kid issues.....just really pleasant all around. The food was good and we had great service in the MDR. We were always out in less than an hour......but it was just the 2 of us and we had My Time Dining. Our waiter was fabulous!

 

Will be writing a picture review soon, so be sure and look for it.

[toto6]

luvdisney2010 thank you for your thoughts. :D

Sailing in March.

 

max'smom Will be looking forward to it! ;)

[luvdisney2010]

I love how everyone on here is so careful to tip toe and side step around this issue. :rolleyes: Just say "Puerto Rican people" .. we all know what you mean.

 

Hey, in every post I read that was negative, the term "local" was used. I love Puerto Rico, and I love Puerto Ricans. I think people get silly about stuff. That was why I used quotation marks. The funniest thing on our trip was on our flight home on Jet Blue, our male flight attendant (whatever they are called now) made a joke in Spanish that if the 3 restrooms on board were full, you should dance around like a proud Puerto Rican. If you didn't understand Spanish, you didn't get the joke. My mom and I started laughing:)