Adventure of the Seas

Adventure of the Seas is the third of the five Voyager-class ships, ordered in 1997 for around $500 million and built at Kvaerner Masa-Yards in Turku. She launched in January 2001 and sailed her maiden voyage on November 18 of that year, which is two months after September 11 and explains her godparents: New York City firefighters and police officers, rather than the usual actress.

What the Voyager class did

It is easy to forget how much of a modern Royal Caribbean ship was invented on these five hulls. The Royal Promenade, a four-deck-high interior street running about four hundred feet through the middle of the ship, with bars and shops along it and inside cabins looking down onto it, was new here, and every large ship the line has built since has a version of it. So was the ice rink. So was the rock-climbing wall bolted to the back of the funnel. At the two ends of the promenade sit atriums eleven decks tall.

The idea was that a ship could be a place rather than a means of transport, and it worked well enough that the rest of the industry copied it. What that means for a passenger in 2026 is that Adventure has the bones of a much newer ship and none of the newness: at about 137,000 tons she is a little over half the size of the Icon class, with 1,700-odd cabins and a promenade that is still the best room aboard.

She was modernized in stages rather than all at once. A $61 million refit in 2016 added a FlowRider surf simulator, waterslides, expanded mini golf and more staterooms, she was the fifth ship in the fleet to get the treatment, and a second drydock in early 2018 added specialty restaurants and new cabin categories. She has not had a Royal Amplified refit on the scale of Liberty’s or Harmony’s.

The ship that restarted the Caribbean

In 2021 she got an odd distinction. Royal Caribbean, still shut down and unable to sail from United States ports under the rules then in force, announced it would resume Caribbean cruising with Adventure of the Seas operating from Nassau in June 2021, vaccinated crew and proof of vaccination required of guests. She had spent much of the previous year laid up around St. Maarten, after an outbreak among her crew at Falmouth, Jamaica, in May 2020.

For a stretch of that summer she was, effectively, the whole company.

Where she actually sails

Florida, on short itineraries. The bulk of her schedule runs from Port Canaveral, with roughly a quarter of it from Fort Lauderdale, and it is almost entirely Caribbean with a couple of Bahamas sailings mixed in. Lengths run four to nine nights and the median is five, so this is a ship doing long weekends and short weeks rather than proper voyages. That continues through spring 2028.

Port Canaveral puts her an hour from Orlando, which is the same logic that keeps Utopia of the Seas there, and it means a good share of her passengers are attaching a few nights at sea to a theme-park week.

Who she suits

People who want a genuinely large ship (ice rink, surf simulator, waterslides, a promenade with real bars on it) for noticeably less than the newest hulls cost, on a sailing short enough that the age of the cabins does not matter much. Families do well on her, and the four- and five-night format suits first-timers testing whether they like this at all.

She does not suit anyone comparing her directly against an Oasis- or Icon-class ship. There is no Central Park, no AquaTheater, no neighborhood structure to spread three thousand people out, and the cabins are 2001 cabins: small, with a shower you will notice. Nor does she suit anyone booking for the destination; a five-night Caribbean run out of Florida is two ports and a lot of sea, and the ship is the reason to be aboard.