Just Back from an 8 night on Adventure

[jeffr6596]

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.

[SG65CB]

What did you do in Bonaire and Aruba? 

 

Did you go to the ice show? 

[firefly333]

I booked two of these 8 day adventures. Eastern and the southern, with the full ABC. 

 

Nice ports but considering adventure is older, not cheap prices imo. I can do a week in a inside balcony on oasis vs these inside about same price for me. But adventure has some nice ports cant hit with oasis class. 

[cruisegirl1976]

We sailed on the Adventure this past Feb and I loved the ship, it was one of the best cruises we have been on in the past few years, loved being on a smaller ship. Food was good and the service was outstanding. 

[DrProfessor]

This is all good to hear for us.  Our next cruise is Oct on Adventure to the ABC (minus the B) islands. We've never been on Adventure, but Mariner is one of our favorite ships, so this should be pretty close (although Adventure doesn't have Playmakers).

[jeffr6596]

9 hours ago, SG65CB said:

What did you do in Bonaire and Aruba? 

 

Did you go to the ice show? 

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.