Average Cruise

This was the 6th cruise sailing with Royal Caribbean and the second time on the Adventure of the Sea. We sailed on a number of cruise lines including Carnival, Norwegian & Princess. To be honest, we felt this time around, the cruise on the Adventure of the Sea was not up to par compared to our previous experiences.

 My wife and I felt improvements are needed on this Royal Caribbean ship, especially for the entertainment offered on the pool deck & lacking production shows, if they want to keep up with the other cruise lines.

We realize were on a Caribbean Cruise, but that Caribbean music by the same group over and over for seven days, playing the same style music, gets boring. We have been on other cruise lines that have way more variety for their pool deck entertainment.

In addition, of the seven nights & only two nights with production shows with the Royal Caribbean singers & dancers, we felt the entertainment lacked. In addition, why did was a production show scheduled on Super Bowl Night?? That made no sense what so ever. One night in place of a production show was a mediocre comedian, anther night was an impressionist & then anther was a flutist. The night the flutist played the theater was not even half full; we never ever saw a so called production show lacking so much audience. Then to top it off, before the first song was even over, rows of people including my wife & I got up and left. We felt this was the worst show we ever witnessed on a cruise ship.

We also felt the food this time around was not up to par also, especially in the Windjammer Lunch Buffet. Thank god there were hamburgers every day, it lacked variety.  I wanted to mention the great service we received from Alina Khafizova every day at the Windjammer Buffet, and she even filled in as our assistant waiter at dinner, she went over and beyond, very helpful & friendly.

We did observe on a number of occasions though that the tables in the Windjammer do not get cleaned properly. It seems the tables are wiped off with just a rag with no cleaning spray of any sort, so they are left streaky & unclean. 

I was totally shocked to witness a couple tables being wiped off by a left over cloth napkin after clearing there dishes.

The main dining room food had good & bad choices. The chicken marsala was terrible, thick chunks of chicken, not pounded & tenderized, that were very tough. The marsala sauce was very bland / tasteless.  Another night deep fried fish was served, we could not eat it. Why not broil it instead?? We even told the female waiter in charge of the dining room that improvements need to be addressed if she wants to keep up with the other cruise lines. Also, we noticed you could only get shrimp cocktail on formal nights and they did away with it on the other nights. In September of 2015 we wailed on the Norwegian Breakaway and I had mentioned at our dining table that the one thing we really liked about Royal Caribbean was they served shrimp cocktail every night and then to find out the first night of the cruise Royal did away with it. As far as our wait staff team, Rommel  Isidro and Maksym Kolesnikob were both outstanding.

Our stateroom attendant was outstanding, friendly & helpful l. She always left our room spotless & cozy. The refrigerator in our cabin did not chill anything and needed to be replaced.

I must mention, something needs to be done for safety reasons especially when entering the Ice Show. When those doors open it’s like a stampede, there needs to be some order when entering.  Also, Royal Caribbean management needs to inform their staff of the saving seats for the show. I mean people were saving rows of seats. I had mentioned to a few of the attendants that it is not fair to save that many seats at one time, but nothing was done to correct it. I blame management for not training them properly. We were in line 15 minutes prior to the show and ended up sitting 2 rows apart because of all the seat saving, there was no order what so ever.

My wife & I feel Royal Caribbean Cruises went downhill since our first one. But if these changes could be addressed, they could be back on top like years ago.