Hurricane impact on Adventure refurb?

[bcarney]

This is a message for the really hardcore ship-followers here... Does anyone know if the recent hurricane that hit Freeport Bahamas had any impact on the refurbishments being done on Adventure of the Seas?  

 

There is a five day sailing after the refurb scheduled on Nov 14th, and then we're on her Nov 19th. I'm curious as to if the hurricane may have impacted the ships refurb schedule.

[WAAAYTOOO]

I don't think so, Bill. I think everything went ahead as planned.

[DocLC]

Good question since ships aren't stopping there for awhile.

[RCVoyager]

I've been watching on Marine Tracker.  The ship is not showing up in Freeport.

[Matt]

I haven't heard anything to that effect.

[jdelta]

The dry dock facility is operational.

 

According to their website: "YARD OPEN as of October 10, 2016 8:00 am EST. GBSL advises that Hurricane Matthew passed over Freeport, Grand Bahama causing minimal damage to the shipyard. GBSL confirms that the shipyard is operational as of Monday, October 10, 2016."

 

It can be found here: http://grandbahamashipyard.com/

 

 

[RCVoyager]

The Adventure of the Seas now shows up in Freeport.  I've been watching for it all week, and it has not shown up.  Now it does.

[bcarney]

Thanks, everyone.  I can sleep soundly knowing another Empress-like situation isn't going to happen. :)

[Matt]

Bad news, the storm did affect the ship's refurbishment: http://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2016/10/31/hurricane-matthew-damage-causes-delay-royal-caribbeans-renovation-plans-adventure-of-the

[bcarney]

Yeah, saw that and Erik Clauson's post on Facebook.  I'm a little bit bummed about the water slides and stuff, but that 25% credit on a future cruise will help me get over it quickly. :)

[bcarney]

Does anyone know the name of the person in charge of refurbishments at Royal Caribbean?  I'd like to send nice card to cheer them up, as they are clearly having a really bad year.

[jticarruthers]

Not in my happy place on this one ... two weeks to get some answers and then get back to my happy place though.

 

Funniest part is Chops was not available to book online yesterday and now it is ... so on the day they announce Chops wont be available after all they add it to the website for bookings :)

[Matt]

Does anyone know the name of the person in charge of refurbishments at Royal Caribbean?  I'd like to send nice card to cheer them up, as they are clearly having a really bad year.

I think the Customer Support people are the ones truly feeling the wrath

[jticarruthers]

Three strikes so i guess i am done working this issue for now.

 

Tried emailing customer service and got no where, tried calling customer service and get no where and tonight got the brush off from Michael Bayley's office directly ... at least i got the excitement of a phone call from Royal Caribbean corporate office to start the weekend off :)

 

Sent an email into his email address about 2,30 this afternoon and got a call about 6.30 explaining that this was Mr Bayley's assistant calling me and that he (Mr Bayley not the assistant) had personally read my email and asked the assistant to call and blow me off. (not actually said that way but that was the effect). I thought about pointing out that Mr Bayley had spent the afternoon bobbing around the Atlantic taking pictures with his shiny toys but decided not to prolong the call any further.

 

Result of the call - for those of us on the first few sailings post drydock (the ones where none of the upgrades are online) we should receive a printout in our cabins explaining the 25% FCC and how it will work.

[bcarney]

Result of the call - for those of us on the first few sailings post drydock (the ones where none of the upgrades are online) we should receive a printout in our cabins explaining the 25% FCC and how it will work.

 

Thank you for this information.  

 

I'll be sure to never book an RC cruise immediately post-drydock again. 

[DocLC]

Thank you for this information.

 

I'll be sure to never book an RC cruise immediately post-drydock again.

Or immediately before. Same applies to inaugural sailings.

[jticarruthers]

Coupled with favorable experiences on Vista and Escape in the last 12 months this has pretty well torched any lingering "Loyal to Royal" instincts I had left.

 

2 years ago when it came vacation time there was only one website I went too ... now there are several. Royal is still one of them just not the go to anymore.

[RCVoyager]

According to Marine Tracker, the Adventure is back in San Juan today.  Despite the issues with the refurb, I look forward to hearing how she is now that she's back in service.

[bcarney]

Or immediately before. Same applies to inaugural sailings.

Actually, we did sail on Adventure right before a refurbishment - I believe it was May 2004.  The only noticiable difference between that and a normal sailing was that on the last full day, they started ripping out the carpet on one side of the public stairwells in the center of the ship.  Other than that I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.  

 

The cool part of that cruise is Adventure normally does the A/B itinerary, and in order to get to the refurb port they combined the two and did a 10 day cruise.  It's one of my "highlight" cruises. :)

[bcarney]

According to Marine Tracker, the Adventure is back in San Juan today. Despite the issues with the refurb, I look forward to hearing how she is now that she's back in service.

We boarded yesterday. The kids slide and splash area near the pools was open, and they turned on the Flowrider sometime during the late afternoon or evening after they solved an issue with a chlorine injection regulator. The big slides aren't open, but they seem to be intent on having them operational as soon as possible.

[True Romance]

Were any of the cabins refurbished?

[bcarney]

Well, I'm only staying in 9381 and 9376 so I can't speak for all the rooms, but for those they have not been refurbished.

[Gain123]

How does the rest of the ship look? Does it look like it has been refurbished? I would have thought they would have done more to it then just add the slides, flowrider, etc. I thought they were going to be doing the rooms. We are travelling in May with a group and wanted our rooms together so in order to do so we had to go on the sixth floor, all balcony rooms, but no one told us that the  balconies have a half metal wall instead of glass. So when you sit down on the balcony you can't see out to the water right below you unless you are really tall. We didn't find this out until after we booked and then when I called to complain that no one explained that to us they wouldn't help us move rooms. Also conveniently the exact number of rooms that we needed came open together on the 7th floor. Only three rooms would be a change category, which would mean an increase of $400 for those three rooms, but when we are spending $22,000 I would think they would spare the $1,200.

 

Did you stay in a hotel in San Juan before your departure?

[jticarruthers]

None of our three cabins were refurbed. In general I would say she needs to go into drydock for a few weeks 😉 will add more detail from home tonight. Not a bad cruise but disappointing in many many ways for us.

[RCVoyager]

I thought the rooms were getting new carpets and mattresses.  No?  Both are needed.  I've been on the ship twice in the past 18 months.  I love it, but it needs some attention.

[jticarruthers]

Definitely no work done in the 3 cabins we were in except for maybe the mattresses.

 

Mirror frames were rusted, paintwork chipped, temperature control for the shower did not work, sink did not drain, toilet had some bad staining, sink water pressure was set on "fire hose", curtains to balcony stained, set of duvets provided for the fold out bed had ink stains, extensive rust on the metalwork of the balcony .... apart from that everything in the room was in good shape.

 

The mattresses may have been new, all three of our cabins described them as sleeping on stone slabs which does seem to track with what i have heard about the "new" mattresses that RCI is installing. Cabin attendants indicated no "egg crate" toppers were available exact words were "no longer available" ... not sure if that meant they dont have them anymore or that they were all gone already. All 3 cabins though they brought extra duvets, piled them on the mattresses and then put the sheets on over that to give it some padding.

 

Before i launch into full rant let me do a couple of disclaimers:

 

1. Cruising is a 1st world vacation and therefore being unhappy with a cruise is a 1st world problem. i get that and for people that have never cruised, may never cruise and would love to cruise a lot of the things i just listed or will list next may indeed be "petty" but you know what, when you cruise regularly and spend a lot of money regularly on cruising you earn the right to expect a solid product and to vent about it when it isnt delivered.

 

2. There is such a thing as a bad cruise ... Titanic comes to mind as does the infamous Carnival Poop cruise a few years back ... with that as the definition of bad cruise, i have never taken one and hope to never take one. This was not a bad cruise, we had a generally good time. However, it was disappointing in a lot of ways and has earned the status of our worst cruise ahead of our 4 night cruise on the Carnival Inspiration way back when we first started cruising.

 

In general, we felt the ship was not ready to be accepting paying passengers, way too many ongoing items still from before and during drydock. Frankly i dont know what the hell they did accomplish in the four weeks in drydock because a lot of the items being worked on should have been simple, no brainer drydock items.

 

I already ran down the cabin condition so i will head on to the rest of the ship.

 

On the positive side:

 

Flowrider was working.

 

Kids splash park (although very small) was working (about half the time).

 

No problems with poolside bartenders or with waitstaff in the windjammer. Not sure if it was related to staffing up for Chops and then not having a Chops or just an Adventure thing but there was a swarm of bodies in both locations constantly checking on you. in fact it was almost a problem of too many people !! One morning in Windjammer we had one staff member just hanging out at our table ... we think he was bored and didnt have any other tables to check on so he basically just stood there watching us eat and drink. As soon as a cup was empty he offered to refill it and as soon as a plate was empty he offered to take it. Got to the point of being creepy very fast.

 

Diamond Drinks was a nice perk, didnt really try the lounge and the rest of the coupons are basically a waste but the drinks were useful and worth having as a perk.

 

Staff in general (waiter and room attendant in particular) were top notch. They were good, attentive and cared about what they were doing, etc.

 

Disappointing items (going for an all inclusive list but i may have to come back for some edits later):

 

Windjammer for dinner - limited/uninspired selection on the couple of times we went up.

 

MDR for breakfast - Did breakfast one time, every item was stone cold, even the items we ordered to replace the items that were cold ... service was good though.

 

MDR for dinner (sort of) - Food was generally good from a flavor standpoint, except for the steak dishes. The steaks in MDR were all very poor quality and they had some serious issues cooking them to the right temperatures. Food in general was always served on the cold to warm side rather than hot. Butter rarely melted on anything at our table. Again, service was good but its hard when your not controlling the food being delivered. Turkey dinner on Thanksgiving was good, lobster night was good.

 

MDR bar service - was not offered a beverage in MDR once in the 5 nights we ate there.

 

Boleros bar - Experience 1: No frozen drinks available at Boleros. Son wanted a virgin daiquiri with dinner, since drinks were never offered in the MDR, Dad had to go get it ... Boleros told me they dont make frozen drinks, try the Casino bar or upstairs on the promenade. Casino bar doesn open til 9. Run up to Champagne Bar .. nope no frozen drinks there ... told me it was an RCI decision to "differentiate" the bars and that only the sports bar on the promenade could make frozen drinks ... so 20+ minutes after leaving the table to get son a drink, dad returns with frozen daiquiri in hand.

 

Boleros bar - Experience 2 (sort of): Frozen drinks available at Boleros along with Apple Cider. My parents wanted frozen drinks to take into dinner ... I walked up just as they were ordering them and was about to say "they dont make them here" but the bartender said no problem took their cards and dissapeared. Apparently he headed up to the sports bar (or some other bar) made the drinks and then returned with them about 15 minutes later. Yay for customer service for that guy. Of course one of the two bartenders was gone for 15 minutes right before dinner so lines were now really long. Turned to me and asked what i wanted, i asked for a Heineken and a Strongbow (Diamond drink eligible items). Takes my card and dissapears again ... apparently no cider stocked at Boleros so he went to get me some. Another 15 minutes goes by and he returns to a berating from the other poor bartender but a grateful me. I rate this as a dissapointment from the standpoint of what freaking moron doesnt stock an array of drinks at the bars right by the restaurant , the bartender was awesome.

 

Sports bar (sort of) - First loved the sports bar and didnt know AOTS had one right in the middle of the promenade (right across from the pub). However, if you are going to have a sports bar you should probably staff it, like, when sports events are on TV !! Thanksgiving Thursday i was one of about a half dozen sitting in the bar waiting for kickoff of the Lions game. No bartender, no sound but the tvs were on at least. We all tried turning on the sound, no go. We took turns walking over to the pub to buy beers to bring back to the sports bar. Finally mid 2nd quarter the bartender shows up and turns on the sound.

 

Pub (sort of) - The pub itself was fine, the fact that the pub had no draught beers available was not. Drydock item; old draught system removed, new system not working yet .... oops.

 

Elevators - No refurbishment, lots of creaking and banging .. several broken railings ... no day of the week signs.

 

Pool deck - They were working on the deck throughout the cruise. Basically carving out small damaged sections and then packing it with new plastic/mix, letting it set and then sanding it down. Unfortunately it is a little unsightly ... first couple of times i thought someone had projectile vomited across the deck and carefully steered the family back to the other side of the ship. Finally found out what the deal was and just ignored it after that.

 

Battery is dieing so i guess its time to stop here for now ... again lots of negatives listed but the cruise was generally good just the bad stuff sticks out.

[DocLC]

Sorry to hear about your disappointment. I completely understand your point of view on these and agree. I've had good experience with Royal overall, but have had minor issues over the last several cruises. None that ruined any of the cruises, but collectively add up to being annoying. So much so that we haven't booked our air for our June cruise, despite record low airfare, waiting to see how our next cruise goes.

 

We had a similar issue with the beds on the Serenade over the summer and were told egg crates were no longer available for sanitary reasons since they couldn't be easily cleaned. The same solution with the duvets was offered to us, too.

[bcarney]

We are were on the same cruise (nice to meet you BTW!) so I'll make some comments as well.

 

The mattresses may have been new, all three of our cabins described them as sleeping on stone slabs which does seem to track with what i have heard about the "new" mattresses that RCI is installing.

 

Mirror frames were rusted, paintwork chipped, temperature control for the shower did not work, sink did not drain, toilet had some bad staining, sink water pressure was set on "fire hose", curtains to balcony stained, set of duvets provided for the fold out bed had ink stains, extensive rust on the metalwork of the balcony .... apart from that everything in the room was in good shape.

My mattresses were new; I liked them, but then again I could sleep on a pool table so I'm not one to judge here.

 

RE: the cabin, no issues for me except for the first day, the water from the shower went out the drain and then back in through a drainage hole behind the toilet. I yelled at my kid for not closing the shower doors (he's that lazy), only to find out later that a friend in another cabin had the same issue.

 

In general, we felt the ship was not ready to be accepting paying passengers, way too many ongoing items still from before and during drydock. Frankly i dont know what the hell they did accomplish in the four weeks in drydock because a lot of the items being worked on should have been simple, no brainer drydock items.

 

I tend to agree with this for the most part. The Diamond Lounge and pretty much everything in the 13/14th floors was redone with the new color schemes, but there was a lot of stuff that should have been done that was not.

 

I "stumbled" across a room full of carpeting and Izumi branded items on the starboard side of the spa area; I tried to take a photo but a rather large man blocked my way and forced my out of the room before I could do so. I assume it was their staging area. Staff was replacing some of the carpeting in the hallways on the 9th floor during the cruise.

 

 

Windjammer for dinner - limited/uninspired selection on the couple of times we went up.

 

I didn't go there for dinner. Breakfast was "ok", but there's only so much you can do with eggs. And avoid the smoked salmon on days 5-7.

 

Pro tip: Walk past the main section near the entrance and go to the back. Much shorter lines for omelets etc., amd the same food with less people.

 

I didn't find the Windjammer too crowded, mostly because it appears to have been laid out for the ship plus the extra 100 cabins they didn't add during refurb.

 

MDR for dinner (sort of) - Food was generally good from a flavor standpoint, except for the steak dishes. The steaks in MDR were all very poor quality and they had some serious issues cooking them to the right temperatures. Food in general was always served on the cold to warm side rather than hot. Butter rarely melted on anything at our table. Again, service was good but its hard when your not controlling the food being delivered. Turkey dinner on Thanksgiving was good, lobster night was good.

 

Same here; our waiter has a couple of 8 top tables where only 2 people showed up, so our food arrived warm. My kid had steaks each night, they were "Applebee's" quality at best.

 

MDR bar service - was not offered a beverage in MDR once in the 5 nights we ate there.

 

Our guy showed up at least three times each night during dinner! I wound up breaking even on the drinks package due to him. I only had to show my card and sign the receipt once on day one - unless my wife had a drink, he just brought the drink and said thank you.

 

Boleros bar ...

 

 I didn't go to Boleros due to the stench of all the cigarette smoke coming from the casino. I couldn't stand more than a few moments in the area. Piss poor planning putting Bolero's there. Waste of space. Would have been better off putting a gigantic fan there blowing the cigarette smoke back into the casino.

 

Pub (sort of) - The pub itself was fine, the fact that the pub had no draught beers available was not. Drydock item; old draught system removed, new system not working yet .... oops.

 

I did think that was weird, but the waitress Julia(?) made it better by locating a strong IPA for me and keeping it in stock for the cruise. Large tip earned.

 

Elevators - No refurbishment, lots of creaking and banging .. several broken railings ... no day of the week signs.

 

The no day of the week signs are standard for post refurb ships I've been on. Sad, but true.

 

Pool deck - They were working on the deck throughout the cruise. Basically carving out small damaged sections and then packing it with new plastic/mix, letting it set and then sanding it down. Unfortunately it is a little unsightly ... first couple of times i thought someone had projectile vomited across the deck and carefully steered the family back to the other side of the ship. Finally found out what the deal was and just ignored it after that.

 

Same here; they would have at least used the same color putty. It did indeed look like fresh vomit.

 

The mix of the old blue and white vinyl chairs vs the new orange/yellow/white ones on the pool deck was jarring.

 

VOOM internet was nice when it worked; I had a day where I couldn't connect at all. And having to log in on my phone every 20 minutes was a real PITA.

 

RE: The R Bar/Champagne bar - the mixologist named Virginia there is ... well, enjoy her now, because she's going to be famous one day and working at much higher end establishments. I met her in 2012 on Vision, and now she's on Adventure and makes her own bitters and other ingredients for her drinks. Top notch, A-1, Best In Class, etc bar tender. I was part of a "rum enthusiasts" group on the cruise, and after meeting her she changed the Drink of the Day the last day to one of her creations. It was fabulous! I can honestly say this one person /made our cruise/.

 

One member of our group was an experienced Celebrity/Azamara cruiser. She was totally turned off by the cabin's color scheme and some of the ship that wasn't yet updated. She made a number of "flashback to the 90s" comments. I doubt she will sail RC again.

 

I was fine with the cruise and the ship. I even booked the same rooms for the same week next year; however, while we received a 25% credit for this cruise because of the refurb being incomplete, the same cruise in the same exact cabins is 25% more than what I paid this year. I have until August to decide...and at the new pricing vs the condition of the ship...I may pass.

[jticarruthers]

Bill, let me know if you are able to apply the 25% disct to thanksgiving next year. My understanding is that it excludes holiday sailings but since they still (one month later) haven't issued the FCC we can't check yet.