first time cruiser on RC - need help

[SoDakDisneyMom]

Hello! My husband and I have only cruised once on DISNEY several years ago. On a whim last night we booked a cruise for just the two of us on Adventure of the Seas. We got a guarantee oceanview balcony room. Apparently this means that the ship will assign us our room. Am I going to regret this decision? When do we sign up for our embark/disembarkment times? I believe I signed up for traditional dining at 6pm. How do we know which restaurants are the included ones? I don't think we will pay the extra for any of the speciality dining.

Is "The Key" add on extra? Is it hard to get into shows? Will this guarantee us seats?

Any other advice anyone has would be great for these newbies!!

 

[OKW Lover]

I'll try to answer some of these questions, more or less in order:
No, you probably won't regret your decision to book a guarantee that room. Pretty much all of those rooms are nice.
I have no idea about the embark/debark times. Sorry.
Traditional dining will be in the main dining room. The other restaurants will be an extra charge. You may find that the specialty dining is a nice change for a night. Make it a special, romantic night perhaps?
I have no experience with the Key as we always sail in suites which give pretty much the same benefit. You'd have to look at the individual parts of the Key program and decide which you would really use.

Enjoy your RCL cruise. Don't spend a lot of time comparing it to your DCL experiences. Its not better/worse. Just different.

 

[hdrolfe]

Guarantee Rooms have always worked out for me on RCL, I don't think you'll regret that. You can see when it's assigned by logging in to your account and checking your reservation, one day your cabin number will appear like magic!

I don't recall having to book an embarkation time, just show up. But things may be different now so I can't really say. For debarkation, you will get information in your cabin a day or two before debarking and if you aren't happy with the timing you should be able to go change that for a different time at the customer service desk. Or you can self debark, and carry all your bags off (again, this was precovid so may change).

For dining, you'll be in the main dining room, your table and which dining room will be in your cabin. Again, if you don't like it you can speak to the Maitre De, usually on embarkation day.

Adventure of the Seas is a smaller ship so you shouldn't have trouble getting into the shows regardless of the Key. I have never gotten it. Again, covid might change how they seat people for shows though. The Key comes with wifi for each person, and a special lunch on embarkation which you might like? I believe it gets you into the shows in preferred seats, but if people aren't in those seats a certain amount of time before the show starts, they will seat others there, so you still need to be there 15 minutes (or more) before the show starts. I don't know that the seats are better than regular ones though.

Enjoy your trip! Adventure is a fun ship.