Thread: Adventure of the Seas; September 6, 2009

Just booked tonight

I fell in love with the itinerary:

Sept 6th San Juan; embarkation
Sept 7th @ Sea
Sept 8th Oranjestad, Aruba
Sept 9th Willemstad, Curacao
Sept 10th @ Sea
Sept 11th Roseau, Dominica
Sept 12th Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas
Sept 13th San Juan; disembarkation

Anyone else going to be onboard? Or is it just my DH and I?

WOW - you have booked I am soooo surprised

I can see why you fell in love with the itinerary. Its really good.
I love Aruba, Willemstad.

Which cabin did you get this time????

I'm all booked

I got spoiled and/or raved too much about my GS to DH on BOTS so we're in a Grand Suite I'm hoping there's a couple price drops, but without Robin onboard, not sure if they'll happen

We were at Aruba before in 2002; I'm sure it's changed since then, especially since the Natural Bridge is no longer there. We just hopped in a cab and had the driver take us around to all the tourist spots for the day, I think the tours we wanted were sold out? But, that was before I knew you could prearrange them on your own and not have to go through the ship, so I'm prepared now!

Congratulations, Judy!

You don't have that long to wait now. I'm sure you will need it after all the house "stuff" going on!

Thank you Char You are so right

It appears that DH and I won't have a problem with lounges at the pool onboard AOS with any CLFers holding them

I can't believe no one is going from here part of the fun of cruising for me is all the planning and talking about the planning. My DH does not find listening to me, whether it's in typed or verbal form, FUN! I'm joking partly about this...he doesn't mind talking about what we'll be doing closer to the sailing date; but I'll talk about all of this from now until we board the ship

I've decided that I would copy luckybluesman's idea of talking about the cruise pre-cruise (Thanks Lee ) I've been filling up the Star Princess Med cruise roll call thread talking about my plans with Lars Nothing like going into a roll call for the Med for 2010 and hearing all about the Southern Caribbean in 2009

I thought maybe some new cruisers may benefit from some of my discussions, planning, etc. Plus, the Southern Caribbean and AOS will be talked about in a more appropriate place

We are flying into San Juan the day of the cruise. We have a dog which needs to be dogsitted, so the less time we're away the better for her and my MIL, the dogsitter, she's not spoiled is she? The dog, not MIL

Being in Philadelphia, USAirways is our hub and there are 4 non-stop flights down to SJU on the day we leave. The 4th we can't use as a backup as it would get us into SJU too late. We opted for flight #2 of the day so we wouldn't have to be at the airport at 5:30 am And flight number 3 could be our backup if it wasn't full. For the return flights there were 3 non-stop back to Philadelphia, but the 1st one we didn't stand a chance of making at 8:50 am. The 2nd one was filling up so we chose the last non-stop, hoping the SJU airport would be less crowded later in the day.

I paid what I think is a pretty good deal for our airfare at $254.20 per person. But the deal could have been better if DH would have made up his mind 4 days prior when the airfare would have been $224.20 per person!

Now that airfare was booked, it was time for us to book the cruise

DH and I were on Explorer OTS last September sailing from Cape Liberty to Bermuda. I booked a Balcony Guaranty for that cruise and I will be more careful with booking guarantees now We were assigned a D3 (Cabin 6524), so we had been upgraded above our category, I was expecting an assignment of an E2 or E1. But, we were all the way forward on the ship, a place neither of us had ever been before on our previous cruises. We were way too forward for the seas we encountered and said we would never book a guarantee again

DH was not all that thrilled with EOS. The ship layout was not to his liking and he kept comparing it's layout to all the other ship's he had been on. I thought I would never get him on another Royal Caribbean ship

I, on the other hand, had already booked a cruise onboard Brilliance OTS with my friend prior to even booking Explorer so I didn't have as much of a problem

My cruise on Brilliance was awesome! I'm getting a little ahead of myself here; so I'll explain in more detail....
When I returned from Bermuda there was a sale on Suite Guarantees...so I reviewed the deck plans with a magnifying glass to make sure no suites were all the way forward. After satisfying myself there weren't, we went for the Suite Guarantee, yep, right after saying I'd never book a Guarantee cabin again!

We thought we would be assigned Junior Suites and imagine our surprise when we were assigned Grand Suites I came home from that cruise and informed DH how much he would have loved the Grand Suite and if he would try Royal Caribbean again, I promised him we would book a Grand Suite

As we were looking online at the cabins that were available on the Royal Caribbean website, he noticed the price for a Junior Suite was $500 less per person and said he would be okay with the Junior; but I said no, I promised you the Grand so we booked it! We also booked with a residency rate for Pennsylvania which is $250 less per person than the normal fare for this particular sailing. I also had a Crown & Anchor coupon for $125 off the cabin. So the pricing wasn't too bad, or so I thought....

I booked on a Wednesday (5/27) night and open my email Friday (5/29) morning to see an email from Royal Caribbean regarding a promotion for FamilyTime. This promotion is $50 off per person PLUS $150 Onboard Credit, so it's "value" is double my C&A coupon! This promotion is also combinable with residency rates, and the email was for certain sailings booked between May 11th and June 30th, of which this AOS cruise is included, but the CVP at Royal didn't mention it when I booked and I just received the email on May 29th, 2 days after I booked

I called Royal Caribbean and spoke with someone who said I would qualify for the price adjustment since I had just booked, but I couldn't use my C&A coupon. Not a problem, the promotion is still twice the amount of my coupon. My adjustment is still pending and tomorrow will be 3 weeks since I called when I received the email. If the adjustment isn't showing tomorrow, they will be getting another phone call.

It took another phone call

I called RCI on Friday 6/19 and got a different rep this time. She put me on hold and contacted C&A to remove my coupon so that her request for the promo wouldn't be blocked by the coupon. I received an email confirmation dated today and the promo has been applied to my reservation

I'm hoping this may help someone if they ever encounter the same issue

Now that the pricing has been finalized I can make my final payment this week and keep watching the price to see if any decreases happen.

Onto the Ports

We won't be doing anything pre-cruise in San Juan since our flight arrives the same day as embarkation.

Aruba; we booked a 4 hour Harley Tour directly through the Harley Dealer as it's 1/2 the price of the same thing offered by RCI I don't know why? But I sure don't mind paying LESS for something!

I also emailed a rancho in Aruba to see about a possible private horseback ride. I'm still not sure if we're going to attempt this. I really want to try, but DH isn't 100% sure yet. I have time to work on him though

Curacao; we want to kayak and RCI offers a trip that is approx. 3.5 hours. I haven't been able to find the same tour through private operators so we'll probably just book this through RCI. The tour is in the morning and we're planning to return to the ship, shower, change and then walk around the port area in the afternoon.

Dominica; We want to Whale Watch in the morning while here. I've contacted a private tour company and have all their info. The price is $18 less per person and their boat is smaller than the operator the cruiseline would use. The private operator has a smaller maximum passenger number so it wouldn't be as crowded but they require a non-refundable deposit, even if the ship didn't make it to Dominica....not sure if I like that part; it's a 20% deposit; which equates to $10/per person

I'm hoping the whales cooperate and that we will have enough time to possibly see Trafalgar Falls via taxi in the afternoon. This wouldn't be pre-booked and we would just negotiate with someone after the whale watching.


I haven't figured out St. Thomas yet...lots of options and I can't make up my mind

We may do a ship sponsored post-cruise tour in San Juan that will end with an airport drop-off. Since our flight leaves at 2:40 pm; we can't do the tour that I would love to do, the El Yunque Rain Forest Tour I didn't know that the flight would need to be leaving after 4:30 pm. We would miss our non-stop flight back home if we tried to change to something that late. Oh well, next time in San Juan, we'll fly in a day early or stay a day after the cruise to see this.

Judy, so glad I get to read your "plans". You have such a wonderful way of doing things right!