First Ever Cruise & The Review (sorry for the delay) AOS 4-9-2014

[lolayoga1111]

To begin, I meant to do this the day or so after I returned from our cruise … in early April. That didn’t happen, but it’s happening now! This will be my review of:

1. My first cruise

2. The first cruise after dry dock on AOS

3. The cruise in which I became engaged on!

 

This is also to give back to this community. I had no idea what I was going into when we booked a cruise but with this website, I was confident stepping onto the ship. I read mostly about “tips” for first time cruises. Some I used, some I didn’t, some I wish I woulda!

Let’s get started.

[cruiselife4me]

Can't wait!! Congrat's on your engagement!

Mary

[lolayoga1111]

We flew into FL April 8th and stayed at a hotel, Hotel Ocean, in Miami Beach. We’d never been there and figured it’d be good to see what it’s all about. Well, we saw. And that was enough seeing probably for a life time. $10 for a beer? Thanks, but no. But, we just aren’t partiers (don’t confuse that with drinkers). I did enjoy walking around Ocean Blvd in the morning though before going to the port and I loved all the culture. The walkability is great in the area. Our hotel ROOM was also fabulous. It was like a chic apartment. Loved it. But, the LOBBY? gnats, gnats, gnats everywhere!! Ew. The bfast was also a big disappointment. Watery eggs. The service was also bad, but that is just Miami Beach from what we observed in our 1 day/1 night stay. Everywhere was terrible. Hassled beyond belief just trying to walk but no one was nice. So, that's the PRE Cruise stay review. And I'm sorry to not like Miami Beach so much, but we just truley did not have a great experience there.

 

I also have a ton of pictures that will be uploaded from the pre-cruise stay & the cruise...

 

Embarkment Day:

We woke up in Miami Beach, I took about a 2 mile walk and enjoyed Pink Berry (but not the service - side story, walked in. First and only person there. Wait, wait and wait patiently for the person to come from the back and assist me. While I'm waiting, another couple comes in. The worker finally comes up front, no apology, and takes my order - a smoothie. She then takes the couples order and proceeds to make theirs first. The couple stops her and says, "hey, we were here 2nd you should help her first". The woman says, "no you're order is easier" and proceeds with making theirs. And for the record, theirs was NOT easier. What is with service there?!!!) and a walk on the beach. Then headed back to the hotel and packed up. The hotel receptionist called us a cab about 11AM and it was there within 5 minutes. Now, I do not recommend staying in Miami Beach prior to a cruise simply due to the $20 cab ride! However, we got the port and found our way to Adventure of the Seas and stared in awe at what we were about to be on for the next few days! Since the ship had just come back from a different country they had some pretty lengthy inspections. We waited patiently for about 30 minutes and then went through security. That was a breeze. We had 1 bottle of champagne, no steamers, no extra outlet things. And we also only had carry-ons. Then we waited in lines and lines and lines. Finally, the lines were over, it was home stretch; we were ON BOARD OUR FIRST CRUISE SHIP EVER.

 

Stay tuned~

[Keith1010]

Look forward to your review.

 

Keith

[BillOh]

I enjoy all reviews. Will happily wait for yours.

[bigeck]

Sorry to hear you didn't like Miami.

We were on Adventure Ta from Miami and stayed 3 days. We stayed at Beach Plaza on Collins and thought it was excellent value. We done a full day tour the first day it was great. City tour then cruise round the island where the stars live followed by the evergaldes.

The next day we done Bayside then hired bikes to watch the ships leave.

Ate in an Irish pub the first night then TGI's the next, then a diner on Lincoln Rd. Service and food was very good. We had a good few drinks and never paid anything like $10.

We are on Indy in November and instead of staying in FLL we are thinking of going back to Miami beach.

[barbienj]

Following....

[swinny123]

Looking forward to your review ..... On our first cruise in August on AOS :-))

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[hancogran]

Can't wait for your review! Adventure of the Seas is one of our favourite ships..we sailed her on a Southern Caribbean from San Juan. :)

[lolayoga1111]

Thank you silver_cloud!

[lolayoga1111]

By this time, it was about 1PM. We decided to see if our rooms were ready and put down our heavy (my heavy) carry-on. It was! Room 8648.

Now, I had read that the rooms are tiny, minuscule, too-small-to-move :rolleyes:. Well, yes it is small. But, we loved it! We thought it was more than enough room honestly. We had a balcony, which is a definite must-have. Now, ya’ll might get down on me for this, but we left our balcony door open :eek: almost the entire time we were in our room, incl. sleeping. It was lovely. The shower was my only complaint with the room. I have long, crazy thick, curly hair. My elbows kept hitting the shower when I’d try and brush it. And I literally flooded the bathroom once. Forgot to close the door all the way, go figure, you have to close the shower door… moving on.

Our room attendant was superb – Romeo. We tipped well as we really appreciated his efforts in making us comfortable during our stay.

After unpacking we headed to eat at … The Windjammer Café. Now, I’ve heard horror stories from this place. But, we were hungry. And you know what? It was fine. :eek: We found a seat. We ate. Nothing much to it! My finace loved the antipasta bar and I loved that they had fish.

After that, we hit the pool for the take off party. Really we needed to start drinking! Whew. The pool area does get crowded. The water was too chilly for me anyways though so we headed up to the top deck where there were tons of loungers. We baked in the sun for hours. It’s my favorite pastime then went to shower and get ready for dinner. I want to say we ate every night around 8-8:30PM. There was never a wait. This also just so happens to be the night that I was proposed to! So, that set the mood for the entire trip – happy, happy, happy.

 

 

Im still working on getting photos uploaded! Thank you everyone for following along. Whats to come:

 

review of premium drink package

mytime dining

customer service

[lolayoga1111]

Actually, it appears I can only post photos using a link, is this correct?

[Clarea]

Actually, it appears I can only post photos using a link, is this correct?

Yes, if you want to post larger photos, you must use a link. You can post very small photos just by using the attachment feature.

[lolayoga1111]

Ok, so I uploaded them to Shutterfly, trying to find the link there..

[lolayoga1111]

Edited May 28, 2014 by lolayoga1111
Fail #1

[rjrice1]

Subscribing... we go on the AOS in 32 more Sundays..

looking forwards to pics.

Cathy

[lolayoga1111]

http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47a4db09b3127ccef66dbc127e7600000040O00AYtWrNy2cOW4Pbz4C Edited May 28, 2014 by lolayoga1111
failed #2

[lolayoga1111]

Thanks Cathy! As soon I can figure out HOW!

[lolayoga1111]

Ok! I have it down.

 

So, first off SORRY for all of those posts. If anyone can't tell I'm really not that saavy at this website yet. :p

 

So, anyways as I was saying in the review. Our room attendant was great! I posted a photo of one of the towel animal he made us. Sadly, I had to disassemble it in order to clean up the bathroom when I flooded it. :rolleyes:

 

Here is our balcony and the view from it. I was torn on whether to do the aft my first time because of the rocking I might've felt. So we stuck with the normal balcony. Not at all disappointed, but we are doing the hump on our next cruise. Still cautious about sea sickness. We'll chat about that too in the review though.

 

 

 

[Carolynne67]

Following with great interest.:)

[lolayoga1111]

While at the Sail Away Party I slipped into the restroom, before we had actually SAILED away. When I came back outside, I was momentarily confused! I was MOVING. The boat had began sailing as I was inside and I hadn't felt a thing. Seeing the shore stay still while we were moving was quite a bit. So, I just sat down and forgot about it. And whadaya know? No issues. Maybe it was also due to BONINE. The One Thing that I was nervous about – sea sickness! :eek: I have terrible motion sickness, cars and trains. Never planes though. From a recommendation on here, I took Bonine. I started the morning of the cruise and took 2/day. I didn’t feel a thing until the last night we were going much faster than we had been. It still wasn’t a problem. I will still take the Bonine next time (yes, it’s already booked). I met a wonderfully nice woman & her family from the UK while lounging as well! If you're out here, hii!

 

I'll stop here and chat a little about THE PREMIUM DRINK PACKAGE. One of the most talked up topics here. So I really won't get into too much but I'd be more than happy to answer any questions!!

 

We did run into a little snag on the first day. We pre-purchased the Premium Drink Pkg online and our cups were in our rooms but our stickers weren’t placed on our cards at boarding. We did not and still have not (I took them home) used the cups as we don’t drink soda, but they are nice, solid cups! :) However, we figured when they scanned the cards, they’d see we had the package. <<wrong. Well, 4 drinks later I had a feeling and I asked one of the pool bartenders, if they knew we had the pkg. They didn’t. They told us we needed a sticker and had to go to Guest Relations. I was mortified. I hadn't been tipping because we'd been moving from place to place and had prepaid all gratuities (more on that). Has anyone had to go to Guest Relations? HOLY LINES! Ugh. So we went there and I was told the cost of the drinks would be taken off. Well, we get our receipt the last evening and two of them were not, and these are not cheap drinks. So, had anyone stood in the Guest Relations line on the MORNING OF? :mad: Never again. I knew from reviews that we should check our bill on our TV the night before, but I didn’t think we’d have any charges since the only discrepancy I thought I took care of. Anyways, there’s my rant on THAT.

 

More on drink package:

Looooved it. No receipts to sign, that was probably #1 best thing. #2 is not feeling guilty when I toss a drink out. I loved that if I didn’t like something I didn’t have to beat myself up over wasting $13. Also, it’s hot! Drinks melt. Did we get our monies worth? Maybe, Maybe not. We’d like to think so. But we are in agreement that even if we didn’t, it’s still worth it. We’ll also be buying it for our 7 day honeymoon cruise next June. However, 7 days is the max because it IS a lot to drink. And honestly, if it wasn't our honeymoon we might not even do it for 7 days. Probably 5 night and under. It just helps us relax by not having to keep track of every drink, every receipt. We're budgeters. It’s vacation and for us, that means it’s ok to be a little frivolous when in our “real lives”, we are not. The only extra I had to pay for was the Starbucks speciality alcoholic drinks. And I think we ended up spending $10 total on espresso the entire trip. So, certainly not worth the upgrade to Ultimate (for us). Here is how a day at sea went for me drink wise.

 

Morning:

1 bloody mary or alcholic coffee

 

Afternoon:

6-7 mixed drinks

 

Evening:

4-5 glasses of wine/mix drinks

 

I was never "wasted" I was never obnoxious. Never disturbed anyone or drank the entire bar. But, it's vacation and if I want a constant buzz then so be it. :D I also loved the endless bottles of water. I'm a huge bottled water fan and took it with me off the ship to save money there too.

 

We also used this as a time to try new things. I can honestly say, and I'm not proud, but I probably set down 8 of my drinks over the cruise. I don't know what was happening but those bartenders were HEAVY handed! And for some, that's fine. But whew. I also didn't like a lot of drinks but I was being adventurous. That's MY take.

 

Cheers! Any questions? I'd be happy to answer them.

 

More to come (I'm working!) :p

[rjrice1]

Ok! I have it down.

 

So, first off SORRY for all of those posts. If anyone can't tell I'm really not that saavy at this website yet. :p

 

So, anyways as I was saying in the review. Our room attendant was great! I posted a photo of one of the towel animal he made us. Sadly, I had to disassemble it in order to clean up the bathroom when I flooded it. :rolleyes:

 

Here is our balcony and the view from it. I was torn on whether to do the aft my first time because of the rocking I might've felt. So we stuck with the normal balcony. Not at all disappointed, but we are doing the hump on our next cruise. Still cautious about sea sickness. We'll chat about that too in the review though.

 

 

 

 

If you take ginger tabs two days prior to cruise and every day on the ship you should be fine..

Also buy those yummy ginger chews (health store) really helps

Cathy

[cruiselife4me]

Yea we have pictures! So happy you had a good cruise and looking forward to hearing about the rest.

 

Sent from my QMV7A using Forums mobile app

Edited May 28, 2014 by silver_cloud

[PathfinderEss]

Enjoying your review, and photo's.

[lolayoga1111]

If you take ginger tabs two days prior to cruise and every day on the ship you should be fine..

Also buy those yummy ginger chews (health store) really helps

Cathy

 

I've heard that before & almost bought them, but the Bonine was less expensive at Walgreens at least! I might have to check out ginger chews though at a health store, thanks!