Background:I sailed April 10, 2011 on Royal Caribbean's Adventure of the Seas. This was my 7th cruise. I've cruised Carnival once, Princess twice and this was my fourth Royal Caribbean cruise. I've cruised out of California twice, Florida twice, Vancouver once and Copenhagen once. This was the first time I've departed out of Puerto Rico. I sailed with my roommate. We are 46 and 51. This was my roommate's second cruise.Hotel:We stayed pre cruise at Posada San Francisco, a family-run "hostel" located on the fifth floor of a building overlooking Plaza Colon in Old San Juan. There are nine bedrooms and six bathrooms along with a kitchen, dining area and two balconies. The bathrooms are all shared and they do NOT come with blow dryers. Only the bedrooms have air conditioning. The main selling point for us was that the rooms were $45 a night. For that price, my roommate and I each had our own room and were able to stay four days pre-cruise and three days post-cruise at PSF. Had we stayed at the Marriott or other high end hotel we would've only been able to afford one day before and after the cruise. PSF is a bare bones establishment. There are NO luxury amenities, so if you're looking for a pool you'll need to go elsewhere. If you're just looking for a place to crash the night before the cruise then this might be your place. Note that the owners require that you have your flights booked before they will hold a room for you. It was clean and its central location made it easy to walk all over San Juan, although there is a free trolley which stops in front of the building. There is also a laundry / dry cleaning establishment two doors down from the building. We did laundry twice. First time was same day for $13. Second time was next day for $8.Ship:We sailed on Adventure of the Seas, a Voyager-class ship. This was my third Voyager-class ship (Mariner and Explorer being the other two). It was in excellent condition. Everything was bright and shiny and I didn't notice any wear and tear except for some grey paint on white walls on our balcony.Activities:The only ship-sponsored activity we attended was the first art auction. It was okay as art auctions go. Wasn't particularly impressed with the art and didn't have the free champagne, but it was my roommate's first art auction. I will say that I liked that Art Actually doesn't tack on an additional 15% commission on top of the purchase price. And some of the prices justify purchasing the art if just to get the frame. Some of the frames were very nice and I know how expensive it is to frame art. But most of the art didn't start being available until over the $200 mark.We did have spa treatments. I had a manicure during the first sea day which was nice. It was a standard manicure with cuticle softener, milk bath, salt scrub with hand massage followed by the nail treatment. At Dominica we also had the Top to Toe spa treatment we signed up for on embarkation day. It was $99 (you had to attend the 8pm spa drawing in order to get this treatment at this price) and included a Frangipani scalp massage, a shoulder massage, and a foot and hand massage. I also added on a hot stone massage for an extra $25 and it was worth every penny. It was sheer bliss and I loved the feel of the hot stones. After our massages we went down a deck to the steam and sauna rooms. Unlike Princess which uses eucalyptus in their steam room, Adventure had pure steam. I loved it. We also used the dry sauna and the Jacuzzi. It was a very relaxing afternoon.Service:Except for one instance at Cafe Promenade, the service was superb. I have no complaints. Our cabin steward was Codan and he was excellent. Our dining room staff was Olga and Lanchana and they were delightful.Port & Shore Excursions:This was mainly a shopping trip for us and we didn't do any shore excursions, except our own in St. Thomas. In St. Thomas we walked from the port to the Paradise Point Sky Tram. We were able to walk out of the port shopping area, cross the street, turn left and then it was only a five minute walk to the tram. Our walking was certainly faster than those in vehicles. Traffic was especially heavy heading into town away from the port. A roundtrip ticket was $20, although for $28 you can get the RT ticket PLUS a Baileys Bushwacker, a very yummy drink and quite potent as well. We didn't prebook this, but I would recommend that you do this first thing in the morning since there will be less people up there.After the tram we caught a taxi to take us to Blackbeard's Castle. You must take a taxi because it isn't within walking distance of the pier. This was a fantastic excursion and I heartily recommend it. Do a Google search for it and don't hesitate to do it. We didn't prebook this; we just showed up and bought tickets with no problem. I do recommend that you start at the top and work your way down because there are a LOT of steps and it is much easier to go down than up. This is NOT a good excursion for anyone with mobility issues.Summary:Our cruise was from San Juan, Puerto Rico and we went to Curacao, Aruba, Dominica and St. Thomas. The weather was consistently 83-86 degrees. We only had five minutes of rain in St. Thomas, although it was overcast and looked like it would rain in Curacao. We brought small travel umbrellas with us and found they were used more for blocking the sun than for rain. This was also the smoothest sailing I've ever been on. There were hardly any swells on the ocean and it was almost as smooth as glass. If we had been on a pirate ship we probably would've had slack sails.Travel to Port of Embarkation:We flew into Puerto Rico on the Wednesday before our cruise on a nonstop from Logan (Boston) on JetBlue. Flight took four hours and was uneventful. At the baggage claim I snagged a porter to help us with our luggage and to take us to the taxi stand. The taxi rates are all preset so no negotiating is necessary. It took us about ten minutes to get from the airport to PSF.Before I start I just want to say that this was the WORST embarkation process I've ever been through. On embarkation day it took us about ten minutes to get from PSF to the port which was great. Caribbean Princess was also at the Pan American Pier with Adventure. We were let off in front of the area where we were to drop off our luggage (to the right of the building). There were two lines to stand in at this point. It doesn't matter which line you stand in. You keep your luggage with you at this point. We got in the baggage line and waited until a little after 11 a.m. before they started collecting the luggage. It quickly became mass pandemonium in front of us. The people in line in front of us couldn't get their act together and were trying to fill out the health forms, juggle food they had bought five minutes earlier, and move their luggage. While they were off to the side dealing with this we turned over our luggage and then moved to a new line created to the left of the baggage line. Some of the women from the group that had been in front of us tried to cut in to be in front of us again. I don't think so! The second line started moving and we were eventually split into two lines to go through security. No one had told me I would need to have my laptop out of my bag for security and I panicked because my reading glasses had already gone through the scanner. I had to have a security officer open the lock to get the computer out. It was a nightmare. After that we were directed to another line to stand in before we were called to a counter for check in. At least that part went easy.After we received our Sea Passes we were directed to some white plastic chairs to sit in. It was a tight fit with my bags but I made it. We had to wait about 20 minutes because four passengers on the ship hadn't disembarked or been located yet. Finally a cheer went up at the front of the room and people started moving. We got up when told to and followed the long line into a larger room and up an escalator. We got off that and were then split into two groups, one forward and one aft of the ship in order to board the ship. We took our boarding photo before moving up to the ship itself to get our photo taken for our Sea Pass. Then it was a simple matter of getting an elevator to take us up to Deck 11 for lunch in the Windjammer.Stateroom:We had E-1 corner aft cabin 7688 on Deck 7. This is the one with the huge balcony and the round porthole opening on the side of the ship. I had its sister cabin, 7388, on Explorer and loved it. I heartily recommend this cabin and have nothing bad to say about it. Yes, it is waaaay in the back of the ship, but because of its distance I actually LOST weight on this cruise ;o) There were two loungers, two chairs and one small table on the balcony. We never had a problem with soot during our cruise. Nor did we have a problem with chair hogs ;o)Dining:We were at table 565, a table for eight, during the first seating. When I booked this cruise two years ago I was confirmed for a table for two. Needless to say I wasn't pleased to find myself at a table for eight. We requested a table change from the headwaiter and were told we would be notified the next day if our request had been granted. It wasn't. But by then we had already had dinner with our tablemates and we didn't mind since there was only one other couple at the table. They were missionaries in Bolivia and, aside from one night when one other couple came down for dinner, it was always just the four of us for dinner every night. We had a wonderful time with them and as mentioned above, our waiter Olga and assistant waiter Lanchana were fantastic.The menu has changed a little from my last cruise with RCI (2006), but overall it was standard cruise fare. On embarkation day at the Windjammer my roommate had a hamburger, a Waldorf salad, a fruit salad and some dessert. My turn and I just had a garden salad, a fruit salad and some of the infamous Honey Stung Chicken which was just as excellent as everyone here on CC had been raving about. It was basically fried chicken with no bones. But it was so incredibly moist and tender. Probably my most favorite meat dish on the cruise. A close second was the prime rib in the main dining room. I was disappointed not to see my shrimp sandwiches at Cafe Promenade, although my roommate is going through withdrawals now that she can't get their coconut cookies. We also ate at Johnny Rockets for lunch during our Aruba day and were so full we had to skip dinner that night. We ordered dinner from room service instead and it ended up being way too much food. We ordered 2 Caesar salads (full size portions, not small), 2 honey-stung chicken dinners with sweet potato fries (3 pieces of chicken) and 2 cheese plates (5 different kinds of cheese with grapes and 3 packets of crackers). I was still too full from lunch to enjoy it all.Children's Clubs:No kids so no kids clubs.Entertainment:We didn't go to any shows. We spent most of our time on our ginormous balcony reading books.Disembarkation:We were assigned luggage tags that were neon green 57. According to the paper they gave us, we were due to disembark around 10:05. We actually didn't leave the ship until after 11 a.m. since we were going back to PSF with two friends of ours from Barbados and they were neon green 64. I wasn't particularly impressed with how they handled announcing numbers. There were no loudspeaker announcements. The paper said we could stay in the library as a "quiet" area, but it certainly wasn't quiet there with all the people jibber jabbering at each other. No announcements were made there either. People left when their papers said they would be allowed to disembark, but I know for a fact that our neon green 57 wasn't let off until after 10:45. Everyone else was kicked off en masse a little after 11 a.m.Since our friends were non-US citizens they had to go to a different line than we did. We made our way down to the large room where all the luggage was kept. By now there wasn't much luggage waiting to be claimed. We found ours easily. A huge gripe here was that someone messed up the connector belt on my roommate's luggage so that she couldn't hook it with another piece of luggage. For all intents and purposes these two pieces of luggage are now worthless since they can't be hooked together. Thanks a lot RCI.There were three customs lines to get into. The one on the far right seemed to be favored by large family groups. The middle and left lines were moving much faster although the left line was the fastest so we got in it. It was a smart decision because that line was really moving. Getting to the front of the line I discovered that the middle customs official was taking people from the left line, not the middle line. The middle line was sharing one customs official with the right line. Not sure if it's always like that, but it was for our cruise.We breezed through customs, grabbed a taxi and quickly got all our stuff onboard. Inside, the taxi driver told us that traffic was very heavy into OSJ because there was some kind of race going on. It sounded like the same one that Schmoopie had encountered about a month ago. His taxi driver wouldn't even take him into OSJ because of it. I told our driver we were staying in OSJ and we were in no rush, just get us into OSJ. Not a problem. It only took us about 30 minutes instead of the 45 he thought it would take.Airport:Since we flew out three days after our cruise, I want to let you know what it's like to leave when there AREN'T nearly 10,000 people trying to fly out the same day. I found on Cruise Critic some excellent advice for dealing with the Luis Munoz Airport in San Juan. First thing is to get a porter. The porter will then make sure that your luggage is taken though the agricultural inspection station and then to the check in counter. It was worth the $10 I paid the porter. After that it was through security. I made it through okay. My roommate was scanned because she forgot that she had a bottle of water in her carryon bag. It took us 40 minutes from the time we were picked up in Old San Juan to getting to our gate to catch the plane. Yet another reason to fly out on a day when no cruise ships are disembarking.