Adventure of the Seas 9 Night Canada & New England Cruise 9/29 – 10/8/2022

[MarkusB]

Here a short summary of our latest cruise on the Adventure of the Seas. The good stuff first:

·        Ports of call were great: Boston, MA - Bar Harbor, ME - Portland, ME – Saint John, NB – Halifax, NS. Regardless of the colder and mostly rainy weather we enjoyed mostly self-guided tours. The Hop-on/Hop-off “Pink Bus” in Saint John was great and provided a good overview of the area. The final walk through the city was nice too. The 7-hour “Top 10 best of Halifax tour” was nice, but way too rainy and cold. We even had a leak in the bus dripping water on us due to the heavy rain. Tour guide was great, and we heard some really good stories.

·        Stateroom 6694: This was our first Junior Suite. The location was on deck 6 in the aft. Perfect for this cruise, because of the location the balcony was never too cold. The obstructed view did not bother us at all.

·        Staff: As always, the staff on Royal Caribbean ships are extremely friendly and helpful. We noticed a few novices, but they did their best and we felt always welcome.

·        Embarkation: Except for a small hic-up ad the port where they had issues checking us in, we were boarded within 30 minutes of arriving at the port at 11:30am. We could even access our stateroom around 12:45pm – Great!

·        Specialty Restaurants: We had the UDP and enjoyed the good select of food and hospitality of Chops, Giovanni’s, and Izumi.

Here some not so good things:

·        Organization: This was one of the worst experience we had with Royal Caribbean. Not sure who was in charge, but that was a mess!

o   Tender in Bar Harbor: You had to get tickets (good idea), we where told our group could leave the ship approximately between 9:00 am and 9:30. Well, they were an hour late. The staging area was crowded. Some may believe COVID is over, but it was not pleasant sticking together like cattle.

o   Shore excursion staging for Halifax: Everybody had to go to the Lyric Theater around the same time. Get in line, all the way down to the stage, show their tickets, get a sticker (for the bus number), get all the way up and wait, and wait and wait. Until they got call. Again, more than 40 minutes delay for us.

o   Disembarkation: Same story as above, everybody cramped into Studio B (the Ice range, and of course it was cold). The overhead monitors were unreadable. We were supposed to leave the ship at 8:30am but ended up with roughly 50 minutes delay.

·        Headline shows:  Some shows where not great at all. The Comedian Michelle Balan on the first night was really bad, we left ½ way through the show The show on the 2^nd night didn’t impress either, the singers where off a few times. Dario’s “El Caucho” show was nice and the Ice show was good, too. We skipped the rest of the shows.

·        Windjammer Café: I am pretty sure the selection on the buffet in previous cruises was more divers, changed more often and catered to special dietary needs. There was absolutely no change on the breakfast buffet in 9 days I could see. The lunch had some varieties, but besides craving station it was always something like hamburger, cheeseburger, Hot dogs. There was a small selective change for dinner, but not much.

On a different topic: When looking for transportation to the airport, stick with official taxis, Uber of Lyft. We walked past the lane towards the taxi signs and ended up in a small van with 9 people as a group taxi for $22 / person. Generally, not a bad idea, we had done this before in other places. This was not a good choice! The loaded the van full, I was in the back, the luggage constantly slipped towards the passengers, and I had to hold it back, so it did not hit anybody on the head. The driver wasn’t driving carefully (OK, we were in New Jersey you could argue), but he hit every pothole at full speed. Most unpleasant drive in a long time. My wife asked for a receipt – nope, asked for a transportation license – nope, we took photos of the drivers license and the license plate. This was reckless.

Anyway, overall we enjoyed the cruise, but the next trip will be back into the Caribbean for some warmer weather.

Markus

[FireFishII]

Thanks for the summary.  I am just looking at the New England/Canada cruises. I hope that one will be in my future soon.

 

[wstephensi]

Thanks.

We are doing the same cruise in 3 days.

How was boarding?  Did they make you stick to your arrival times?

We have an 11 arrival time.  I am hoping that showing up about 10:30 will not have us waiting too long.

[MarkusB]

 

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How was boarding?  Did they make you stick to your arrival times?

We had an arrival time window from 11:30 am to noon. We arrived around 11:20am. We went right through (OK, we had also a Jr. Suite, not sure if that makes a difference). The boarding was quick for us, except that we had to go 3 rounds until they could ready our boarding passes. They had a technical issue with 2 readers.

Markus