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Liberty May 9 Southern Review


pirate4me2
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Alright everyone, I have just returned from my cruise on the Carnival Liberty and have decided to try my hand at writing a review! I know I will not rank up there with the great Cruise Critic reviewers like Chris & Cass, Wrigley, Radio, GAPearl, and others, but I want to try and help future Liberty cruisers the way other review writers helped me. Unfortunately, this review will not have any photos as when I went to transfer my photos just now my camera informed me that my memory card is corrupt. I am more than a bit peeved as I had a bunch of photos, and now I have nothing to show my family from my vacation!

Anyway, enough drama, and on with the part everyone is waiting for: my review (or attempt at one)!

My husband and I booked the May 9 Southern itinerary cruise out of Port Canaveral on the Carnival Liberty the day that Carnival released the 2014-2015 schedules for this ship. After reading great review after great review about the Liberty, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about! I booked this date as a post tax season celebration for myself (this was my first year doing taxes at work) and an end of semester break for my husband (he is finishing up his 2 year degree). We both had reasons to take a celebratory cruise!

We drove to Port Canaveral from Western NC the day before the cruise; it was about a 9 hour trip. I got us a room at Radisson Resort at the Port after hearing about them on here, and let me just say that they were totally worth staying at. They have a cruise package you can book that includes your stay, parking for the duration of your cruise, and a shuttle to and from the port. When we arrived we found out that we had been upgraded to a suite for free, and it was a nice, clean and comfortable room. The pool was great to swim in and the shuttle to and from the port was very efficient and hassle free. We will stay here again in a heartbeat when we sail from PC!

We ate dinner at Fishlips after hearing a lot about them on here, and they lived up to my expectations…great food, great service, and great atmosphere. We even got to see dolphins playing while we ate! The owner came out and spoke to us for a bit and he is very friendly. I highly recommend dining here if you get the chance.

We took the 10:30 shuttle to the port, and I just want to say that Port Canaveral is now my favorite port to sail from. From the time that we got to the port to the time we were on the ship it was maybe 20 minutes. Everyone that we met that was part of the port staff was very friendly and smiling. I loved the experience! We were onboard by 11.

We booked an aft cabin, cabin 8450, after seeing the amazing balcony photo Chris & Cass posted in their review. The balcony really is amazing, it had 2 loungers, 2 regular chairs, and a table on it and there was STILL room to move about! I love to read and nap on the balcony on sea days, and this one was perfect for that. I also loved the location…up one deck to all the action at Lido! I was worried about overhead noise in the cabin, but the only noise I heard was a little chair scraping during the day (really not bad at all) and the noise of people jumping in the pool (the room is right under the adults-only aft pool). I actually found the “swish-slosh” noise of the pool water quite soothing. I am a light sleeper and had no trouble sleeping at all. Our stateroom steward (his name was Jerald I believe) was fantastic all week long.

Our first day consisted of exploring the ship, and I must say that she is a lovely one! I was in love with the color changing chandeliers all week long…they are absolutely gorgeous! The whole décor of the ship is just elegant, it is by far my favorite of the ships we have been on now. Other than a blown light bulb here or there, she really is in good shape. The staff was always out cleaning, wiping surfaces down, and keeping Liberty looking her best.

The cruise director for this cruise was Brittany Boyd, and while she was nice enough, I really felt like she was our worst CD to date. There were not as many activities that we wanted to do as in the past, but we still found ways to amuse ourselves. There was a lot of trivia (I mean A LOT) and there were the other usual activities such as the Marriage Show, Gender Showdown, etc. but I just felt like she let the ball drop some as far as activities go.

We ate dinner the first night in the Diamonds Steakhouse (it was a surprise for the hubby) and it was fantastic. Our server was hilarious (I wish I had written her name down!) and the food was amazing. Hubby and I both got the crab cakes for an appetizer, and they are DELISH! He then got the Caesar salad, which he said was really good, and I got the spinach and mushroom salad…oh my goodness was it good! I could have eaten just that for a meal if they had a meal sized one and been happy, it was that darn good! He got one of the steaks for his entrée, the Cowboy, and said it was great. I got the lobster ravioli and it was really, really good. For dessert, he got the Chocolate Sampler, which we both felt was just OK. I got the cheesecake, which was HUGE, and while it was good, I have made better cheesecake at home. We felt that while the rest of the meal was fantastic, the desserts are the weakness of the steakhouse. I will say, we did not leave hungry, they sure know how to feed you!

Needless to say, after that meal we were not up to doing too much! We had wanted to go to the Welcome Aboard show, but we fell asleep well before that.

I will continue tomorrow with Day 2, a Fun Day at Sea. Please bear with me, I will try and write about at least one day each day until I am done, but I will be returning to work. I promise to get this finished though!

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I am glad to hear that there is a lot of Trivia. We enjoy it. And that you thought the ship was lovely. We sail on the 28th of June.

 

I thought your review was very well written I enjoyed reading it and look forward to following it when you post more.

 

If you have the Fun Times..would you post them?

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I am glad to hear that there is a lot of Trivia. We enjoy it. And that you thought the ship was lovely. We sail on the 28th of June.

 

I thought your review was very well written I enjoyed reading it and look forward to following it when you post more.

 

If you have the Fun Times..would you post them?

 

I do not have the Fun Times, but if you have any questions about any activities feel free to ask...my mind is still pretty fresh on what went on, so I may be able to tell you if there was a certain activity or not.

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Great start ,looking forward to the rest.We are a few months away from cruising on the Liberty going to the same ports.I totally agree w/you on leaving out of PC,cruised twice so far from there ,great embarkation and debarkation both times.

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Many thanks for taking the time to write this. We're thinking of taking a cruise on Liberty in an aft cabin and have already got our pre cruise stay at the Radisson booked!

Edited by peteukmcr
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Thanks so much for taking the time to write a review. You did an excellent job. I love it so far! I am sorry about your pictures!

 

We will be on the Liberty in July in cabin 8450, too...first aft ever! I have heard it was hot during the day. That's okay since we don't plan on using it a lot during the day. We do want to sit out in the afternoon before dinner. How was it on your balcony around 4:00/5:00? When did you most use it? Can't wait for coffee in the morning and Bailey's in the evening!

 

Also, you said you were on board quickly...did you have FTTF? We got it but am now wondering if we should cancel it. Do we really need it at this port?

 

Thanks again for the review. Looking forward to reading the rest.

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Yay!!! I am so excited to see another Liberty review!

 

Take your camera card to Radio Shack. They always have a young aspiring IT kid at ours that once fixed a laptop for us. We were going to toss it in the trash because the wires had burnt inside the computer... It ended up working for 2 more years after the kid rigged it :D

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There is a free program called photorec that may be able to recover some if not all of your pictures. It is available here: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

 

It does not have a fancy interface, but works and is free. I was able to recover several hundred pics from my parents sd card from their Alaska cruise.

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Thanks so much for taking the time to write a review. You did an excellent job. I love it so far! I am sorry about your pictures!

 

We will be on the Liberty in July in cabin 8450, too...first aft ever! I have heard it was hot during the day. That's okay since we don't plan on using it a lot during the day. We do want to sit out in the afternoon before dinner. How was it on your balcony around 4:00/5:00? When did you most use it? Can't wait for coffee in the morning and Bailey's in the evening!

 

Also, you said you were on board quickly...did you have FTTF? We got it but am now wondering if we should cancel it. Do we really need it at this port?

 

Thanks again for the review. Looking forward to reading the rest.

 

You will love the cabin, the balcony and views are incredible. It was hot during the day, more than the other aft balcony I had on the Breeze. I used it anywhere from 11 to 5 during the day. Morning had lots of shade, then around 1 the sun came out and I could "bake" myself as my husband said.

We did have FTTF, I forgot to mention that! It was great to be able to drop off carry ons right away. Our luggage also arrived quickly.

Enjoy your cruise, Liberty is a really great ship!

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Yay!!! I am so excited to see another Liberty review!

 

Take your camera card to Radio Shack. They always have a young aspiring IT kid at ours that once fixed a laptop for us. We were going to toss it in the trash because the wires had burnt inside the computer... It ended up working for 2 more years after the kid rigged it :D

 

Thanks for the tip, I will try that!

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There is a free program called photorec that may be able to recover some if not all of your pictures. It is available here: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

 

It does not have a fancy interface, but works and is free. I was able to recover several hundred pics from my parents sd card from their Alaska cruise.

 

Awesome, I will look into this tonight! Thanks!

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Our first day at sea, Chris (my dear husband) and I slept in. I think maybe it was the food coma the steakhouse put us in, but we slept pretty late for us…9:30! We got up and went to the sea day brunch, which we loved on the Breeze in November. Chris had the pancakes, which he said were OK. I had an omelet with spinach, onions, peppers, and cheddar, and it was really good. I also had a side of hash browns and chicken sausage. We were sat at a big round table with 8 other people, and the conversation was great.

After brunch I decided to take advantage of the awesome balcony to read and I hung out there until about 11:30. We then decided to wander to at atrium and try our hand at 90’s pop trivia…we stunk at it! That was Ok though, we would later succeed with another round of trivia. J

For lunch we decided to go to the Steakhouse Cooking Demo, thinking that the samples they gave of the food items would be small and perfect since we had had a late breakfast and were not wanting anything large for lunch. The demo was great! The chefs made a mushroom cappuccino, which was really, really good. Chris is not a mushroom fan but even said it was good! They then made my baby spinach salad I enjoyed so much the night before (did I mention how GREAT it is?), and then came the main dish: a broiled Supreme of Free Range Chicken served on mac and cheese with a side of potatoes. The sample they gave was a really large size, enough to be an entrée! I tried it but didn’t care for the chicken, I gave it to Chris, but I did eat the potatoes and mac and cheese, which was really good! Dessert was a tiramisu, which was also really good. I enjoyed watching the chefs make the dishes, and we left with a little recipe booklet with the dishes they made. I highly recommend the cooking demo!

We headed to our Cruise Critic meet and greet one of our roll callers arranged, and it was a fun filled hour of meeting people and enjoying some STRONG drinks. They don’t hold back when you have a paid meet and greet, let me just say! We stayed the whole hour, until 3, and then wandered the ship some until it was time for dinner.

We had Anytime Dining, and we decided to go first thing at 5:45. Anytime Dining is held in the Golden Olympian dining room, and the Liberty has the new menus. She does still have tablecloths on the tables each night, for those that are curious. This first night we looked at the menu and felt that there were not as many options as there use to be. I am not a picky eater, but I even felt a little let down with the options. Tonight was the first of two elegant nights for this cruise, and everyone looked great. Chris of course ordered the Prime Rib, which he said was excellent. He loves his red meat, but I don’t eat it much, so I ordered the Penne Sicilian (I think that was the name?), it was a pasta with eggplant, plum tomatoes and zucchini…it was FANTASTIC! We both had Caesar salads as well, that is our favorite appetizer. We opted to skip dessert, as tonight the service was very slow and we really were not tasting anything on the menu. As far as the service, it took 15 minutes to just get our drinks, and about 2 hours total for the meal. I do not mind a nice, relaxed dinner, but we (as well as some others we spoke with) felt that the service was slow in this particular section of the dining room. But hey, we were on vacation, so we didn’t mind too much. We missed the early showtime of Let It Rock (or maybe it was called Just Rock?) so we went instead to the Dive in Movies, which were showing Ride Along and Grown Ups 2. We got blankets and watched both, so that was our only activity for the night. By the time they ended it was 1:30, so we walked around the mostly empty ship to see what was going on. There were a few people in the Piano Bar, so we stopped in for a listen. Barry Meijer is the current Piano Bar player, and he can really play the piano! His voice is kind of raspy, which I am not a fan of, and I didn’t care for his song choices this first night, but he is a really nice guy and is working on learning more songs.

At about 2 we decided to call it a night and hit the hay. I will pick up with our second sea day!

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Due to our late night at the movies and Piano Bar, we slept until about 10 on our second sea day. We decided to go to brunch again, and I got the Caesar salad with chicken in it and the huervos rancheros. The salad is listed under “Starters” on the menu, but don’t be fooled…it is huge!! It is also really good. The huervos rancheros are OK, but not one of my favorite brunch items. Chris had the steak and eggs, and he doesn’t eat eggs but said the steak was really good.

After walking around the ship to see what was going on, we decided to head up to the waterslide and try it out. Oh my gosh, it is a lot of fun! We went down it 3 or 4 times, and I was surprised that there was hardly any line for it at all, totally unlike our Breeze cruise in November. I will warn you though: the deck gets REALLY hot and burned the bottoms of our feet. We quickly learned to wear our flip flops up and then take them off and hold onto them when we went down the slide. Hot deck problem solved. J

After doing the slide, we hopped into the pool right there next to the waterslide exit and just enjoyed people watching for a little while. I decided to get out when a mom and her baby came in and the baby had on a diaper…I try not to let things get to me too much, but I did find that disturbing. Please don’t bash on me for that, I just find it kind of gross. We went to the aft pool, which is adults only, and just sat on the edge where the water is shallow. It is also a lot easier to find an empty chair around the aft pool than the main pool, which had no empty ones to speak of on this sea day.

We stayed out at the pool until 3, when we had a cabin crawl arranged with our fellow roll call members. This cabin crawl was great, we had almost every type of cabin available to see! Someone had a Captain’s Suite, another had a Grand Suite, an aft extended balcony (us), regular balcony, oceanview, and interiors. I loved seeing all the different cabins!

We finished about dinner time, and this time we asked to be seated in a different section than last night. The service was much quicker, but still very..I don’t know how to describe it. The waiter did his job, but only to the bare minimum to get by. My water glass went dry, and it was just…lacking I guess it the way to put it. The menu was good tonight though. We both got the Caesar salad (I am sure you all guessed that by now, huh?), and Chris got the baked ziti, which he said was pretty good. He also got a side of green beans, which I tried and they were pretty good too! He ordered a baked potato to try too, and we both said it was good. I ordered the steak tacos, which were the highlight of my trip. Just kidding, they weren’t the highlight of my trip, but they were the highlight of my MDR experience this cruise! And remember how I said I don’t eat a lot of red meat? For me to say that is the ultimate compliment. I could have eaten a second plate of those tacos, they were that good. Again, tonight we skipped dessert; we just were not feeling it.

After dinner we went to the ventriquilist (I know I terribly misspelled that, sorry!) show, which was really funny, and then to the comedy club, which we enjoyed. I forgot to write down who they had in there, sorry. We enjoyed both shows though. Chris wanted to go to the Piano Bar again, but I wasn’t feeling it, so he went and had a good time while I went back to the room and read a book. I know, I know, lame right? But hey, I am on vacation and just wanted to relax. It was a perfect end to the second sea day.

Tomorrow…Aruba!

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You two are Night Owls! And I really enjoyed your review. You mention the steak Tacos. Were they on the crisp tortilla shells or the soft flour ones? ( One of best friends had been married to a Mexican National before coming home to Alabama and she had learned how to cook Mexican Food. She did something like that and goodness...We did not eat all day when we were invited over....it so good . she made her own refried beans. Started with pinto beans. She is back in Texas now....

 

The New Table...I am looking forward to trying it. it did seem that a green salad was on the side menu most nights. I am about green salads like you and your husband are about Cesar Salad. Did you notice that?

 

It sounds like you had a great time. I love to read that. I will keep following your travels. You are an excellent writer as are so many on this message board. I read your review and I am smelling the salt water.

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Thanks for taking the time to write a review,a well informative one at that. I have been on the Liberty a few times and she was my fav ship....until I tried the Breeze. The Liberty will always have a special place in my heart and I would cruise on her in a NY minute anytime.

 

We always do Your Time Dining and tell the waiters (there is only 2 of us), the faster you can get us fed and out of here...the better $$$. We now get in and out in less than an hour and it is still enjoyable for us.

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You two are Night Owls! And I really enjoyed your review. You mention the steak Tacos. Were they on the crisp tortilla shells or the soft flour ones? ( One of best friends had been married to a Mexican National before coming home to Alabama and she had learned how to cook Mexican Food. She did something like that and goodness...We did not eat all day when we were invited over....it so good . she made her own refried beans. Started with pinto beans. She is back in Texas now....

 

The New Table...I am looking forward to trying it. it did seem that a green salad was on the side menu most nights. I am about green salads like you and your husband are about Cesar Salad. Did you notice that?

 

It sounds like you had a great time. I love to read that. I will keep following your travels. You are an excellent writer as are so many on this message board. I read your review and I am smelling the salt water.

 

The steak tacos were on soft shells, there were 2 on the plate. They had strips of steak, pico, cheese, guacamole, and a side of black beans and corn. Oh, they were delish! I love Mexican food.

Most nights there was a green salad on the menu. I do not remember exactly what kinds, but some of them did sound good. I love my Caesar salad though.

Thanks for the compliment on my review! I will try and post about Aruba tomorrow hopefully, although it will be my first day back to work so I am not going to make any promises.

Edited by pirate4me2
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Thanks for the review! So excited to read the rest! We are on the Liberty June 20 and sooooo excited! Glad to know the first formal night is the second night on the ship - first full sea day, correct? Is the second one on Grand Turk day or the last night? Thanks again!

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Thanks for the review! So excited to read the rest! We are on the Liberty June 20 and sooooo excited! Glad to know the first formal night is the second night on the ship - first full sea day, correct? Is the second one on Grand Turk day or the last night? Thanks again!

 

Yes, the first formal night was the first full sea day and the second one was Grand Turk day. Have a great trip, you will love the ports, they are gorgeous.

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Thanks for this review, sorry you lost your pics, I would have liked to see them (probably not as much as you'd like to have them back, though!).

 

I feel like I'm getting a preview of my cruise. We booked your same room (8450) for the same itinerary in September.

 

Do you mind if I ask how much you paid for the meet and greet, and how many people you had? We were talking about this in our roll call and someone mentioned the cost had gone up considerably. There's about 35-40 people in our roll call so far, not sure how many of them want to participate in the roll call but some have expressed interest. Also where was it held?

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