Liberty OTS - 9 nt Bermuda/Caribbean review + compasses

Hey all!

Just got back from the 9-night June 18 to 27 sailing on Liberty OTS this morning. We are a family of four with two younger girls ages 6 and 8. We stayed in a balcony stateroom on deck 6 starboard aft.

This is actually our second time sailing on Liberty. We also sailed on Liberty out of Miami back in 2008. We've also sailed on this exact same itinerary 3 years ago aboard Explorer.

1. Great ship, overall the ship is in really good condition. If I had to pick one area that they need to fix, it's the stupid elevator buttons. The buttons in some elevators don't light up, and the deck 11 button in one aft elevator doesn't work at all. And why does the recording say "Decka nine"?

2. Sailing out on day 1, the weather was kinda drizzly and chilly. Only a few brave souls were in the pools. Weather was pretty good most of the cruise if I recall, mainly in the 80s. We had a few showers here and there, but nothing unexpected in the Caribbean. Winds and surf were rough on Day 8 though, with warnings to stay inside. I remember Explorer rocking quite a bit on the way back to Cape Liberty three years ago too, not sure if it's a coincidence.

3. The main seating and second seating times were changed to 5:30 and 8:00 a few days before we sailed. Not really sure why, as I heard that previous cruises were 6:00 and 8:30.

4. We had main seating, which was good with kids. But for a 5:30 dinner and four people to get showered and dressed, we felt like we were stopping what we were doing at 4 to get ready. They had photographers just about every night so we were able to get in family photos on most nights.

5. Speaking of photos, we always had the intention of getting as many pictures as we could. We even took advantage of pre-ordering our photo CD with a digital copy of all of our pictures prior to the cruise for $249. You can also get this price onboard if you order at the beginning of the cruise. After that, it goes up to $299. We ended up with the CD with 127 total pictures, including all of the formal and casual portraits, pictures with the characters, dining room pictures, Labadee pictures, etc.

6. On the first night, our dinner service was very slow. Took a little over two hours before we were out of there a little after 7:30, which meant we missed most of the welcome aboard show. We did stop in the theatre but they already had the comedy act on stage, and frankly we didn't find him very funny so we left and went to the pub. :)

7. We're not cocktail or mixed drink drinkers, we mainly drink beer so we spent quite a bit of time at the pub. Other than your typical yellow piss macros available all over the ship, we were able to find a couple decent ones at the Hoof & Claw. We mainly drank Sam Adams Rebel IPA, Redhook Longhammer IPA, and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale most of the cruise. One of the bartenders mentioned they had Victory Summer Love on a previous cruise, but they didn't have it any more. :( Note that they don't always list correctly what is available, so you have to ask. For example, the Rebel was never on the beer menu or on the shelf above the bar that shows what bottles are available.

8. On the second night, we asked our wait staff for expedited service for the remainder of the cruise. Our family of four was sitting by ourselves so there's only so much to talk about after spending most of the day with each other, so the faster service helped to keep things moving. We were usually out of the dining room by 6:45-7:00, which was great for us. We were usually able to make the early headliner shows at 7:00 and send the kids off to Adventure Ocean afterwards. The expedited service did put more pressure on the wait staff though since they were bringing out our appetizers when other tables were still ordering, etc, so we tipped them extra in the cash envelopes on the final night.

9. My wife and I had decided to take a night and go to Portofino for dinner in the middle of our cruise. We wanted to pick a night in the middle because we knew that Adventure Ocean will usually do kids' dinner in the middle nights of a longer itinerary. However, don't feel pressured to pre-reserve a night for specialty dining. I'm pretty sure you probably can make the reservation the day of and still get in. We dined on Day 5 in Portofino, and there were maybe 5 other parties in the entire restaurant, and we had a 6:30 reservation. These specialty restaurants never seemed to ever be half full.

10. The In The Air headliner on day 2 was awesome and illusionist Jason Bishop on day 3 was really good too. I know I read some mixed reviews from earlier cruises, but we enjoyed his show. We skipped the ventriloquist on day 4, not really our thing. We would have liked to see the headliner on day 5 that had all 23 musicians, but that was our Portofino night and they only had one show at 7:00. No show for us day 6 since that was Saturday Night Fever for the second seating guests. We saw SNF on day 7 and really enjoyed it, I'll get to that in a second. We did not care for Savannah Jack on day 8. (I don't think they're going to be on Liberty again though). And the farewell show was your typical farewell show.

11. Regarding Saturday Night Fever, we did not take our girls and were glad we didn't; there are adult themes that I don't want to explain to a grade schooler. I would have taken them if they were teens but definitely not under 10, but I saw a lot of kids there. Other than the adult themes, one thing I did observe of the kids that were there is that some of their attention spans are not that long. Our girls have gone to (age appropriate) Broadway shows so it's not something we'd think of, but some of the kids there were obviously getting fidgety and bored halfway through the 90 minute show (it says 82, but it's closer to 90) and were being annoying. Some of the more courteous parents took their kids and left, but some did not. Keep that in mind if you're going to take your kids as it's a longer show.

12. The Encore ice show was pretty cool. Studio B is kinda chilly though, so if you get cold easily, bring a jacket or something. The one girl in the show was having a bad day though, cuz I think she fell on all of her jumps.

13. The main dining room menu order was exactly like someone had posted in another Liberty 9-night thread. A few specific items were slightly different than previous posted. My girls enjoyed trying new things. My 8yo's new favorite thing is Caesar salad, she ordered one every night. Also big fans of the prime rib, roasted duck, carpaccio, and lobster. My 6yo had 2.5 lobster tails on day 8. :) One night they did decide they wanted some comfort food so they ordered the mac and cheese off of the kids' menu. You can tell they are not taste tested with kids as it was terrible-- it was literally a bowl of penne noodles with a slice of slightly-melted American cheese on top.

14. You cannot find a decent burger on the ship. Every place on board cooks the patty until it's a hockey puck. And they don't melt the cheese for a cheeseburger either.

15. Service at the Windjammer was hit or miss. Some days the service was great, with the waiters were very conversational, bringing drinks around and clearing tables promptly. Other days, there were empty tables with dirty plates piled high on them and we had to chase down a waiter to clear the table.

16. My favorite breakfast at the Windjammer was taking a biscuit (very good, I usually grab one by the gravy as that station usually has higher turnover than the biscuits by the bread), taking either a fried egg (found at the Jade area) or a pre-made ham and cheese omelette, getting some bacon (gotta hunt for the crispy bacon) and making a breakfast sandwich. My wife had to run around and get the ingredients, but she made breakfast burritos with the peppers and onions scrambled eggs, shredded cheese, sausage and salsa.

17. We did lunch in the dining room a couple of times, nothing really spectacular food-wise but at least you're not with the masses up in the Windjammer. Lunch items in the Windjammer weren't really terribly unique or extraordinary, but I gotta say the best thing I had for lunch there was the Chicken Tikki Masala. It was so good I went to get seconds and thirds. I wish I had some naan to go with it though.

18. There are Purell stations all over the ship, but one of the oddest places NOT to have one was by the self-service soft serve ice cream machine "Sprinkles" by the pool on Deck 11. My 8yo also commented as to why it's called Sprinkles if there aren't any sprinkles. (Jimmies to some of you!)

19. My wife and I enjoyed going to many of the morning brain teaser / puzzle challenges. We also went to a lot of the trivia challenges too, but there was one guy on board that really knew his trivia and he won quite a few of them.

20. Our girls really enjoyed Adventure Ocean. They were both in the Explorers room for 6-8 year olds. They each made girl friends on day 2 that they spent time with throughout the rest of the cruise. They would actually plan their own times to meet at the pool or go back to AO and tell us where they wanted to be. Coincidentally, their friends and we were all staying in the same starboard aft area of Deck 6; one was even right next door! Truly an odd coincidence.

21. There was an AO incident early on in the cruise, I think it was day 3, where many of the girls came out of AO complaining about one youth staff member nicknamed "Rainbow". (Apparently all of the staff have nicknames like Minnie Mouse, etc.) Rainbow was apparently being mean and yelling at all of the kids if they didn't do exactly what she ordered them to do. We (the parents) went and talked to the hotel manager. We were contacted later in the day by the Adventure Ocean manager who promised to have a talk with her entire staff after that day's shift was over. There were no further problems after that.

22. This was the second time we've been to Bermuda, and it's one of our favorite ports. Three years ago on Explorer, it was too early in the season to go to the beach, but this year we went to Horseshoe Bay. We spent most of our time in that little protected cove off to the right. We got off the ship early and intended to get one of the $16 (round trip) shuttles to Horseshoe Bay. Instead, the ticket seller wasn't there yet so we ended up paying $7 cash per adult one-way (kids were free). We got there by like 9am when it was still a very sparse crowd, and it's just amazing over there. The fish in the water are beautiful; one of the other passengers had brought some whole grain Cheerios to feed the fish. Lots of interesting things to explore in the cove area, and if you go around to the main beach there's a little cave in the rocks to go explore in too.

23. We did not get off the ship in St. Maarten. This was our fourth time there, and since we're not cruising to shop and we've already been to the beach in Bermuda and have Labadee later in the cruise, there really wasn't anything for us in St. Maarten. We stayed on the ship, got some extra pool time in, got a needed nap, and just relaxed without a lot of people on board.

24. In San Juan, we had the Food and Culture tour excursion planned. Unfortunately things didn't go well at first. They were pointing fingers at each other, but either the ship or the tour company got things wrong. Our tickets said meet at 8:45am but no tour guide showed up at that time. The crew member from the ship got a guide from the company down to the port a little after 9am, and the guide told us that the ship got the tour times wrong, and the first tour wasn't supposed to leave until 9:30 when the restaurants opened. However, after waiting around until close to 9:20, the rest of the tour was fantastic. Our tour guide Victor was amazing, he is working on his masters in architecture so he was told us all about the architecture of the buildings in Old San Juan as we walked past them including great information about the city wall. Our first stop was a tea house where we had a waffle topped with a local farm cheese. At our second stop, we all made our own mojitos and mofongo-- simply delicious. At our third and final stop, we had the most amazing flan. The map that the tour company provided showed many more available stops in Old San Juan, so if we could request a different set of stops, we would definitely do this tour again the next time we cruise to San Juan.

25. Also in San Juan, a couple blocks north of the port in Plaza Colon, there's a specific jewelry maker that we've been visiting every time we've been in San Juan over the past ten years. It's become a tradition for us to buy custom made (he's makes it right in front of the girls) bracelets from him. We have to keep going back cuz they keep outgrowing them!

26. Labadee was Labadee. We got off the ship relatively early. Instead of waiting for the tram with seemingly the rest of the ship, we hiked out to Nellie's beach (it's only like 5 minutes) and got a great spot in the shade for the day. People we saw waiting for the tram showed up 20 minutes later and were complaining that there wasn't any spots in the shade left. We rented a couple floats and generally just played in the water all day. (Interesting fact- The price of the floats change daily, anywhere from $15 to $17. The guy had to go get the price before he could rent them to us.)

27. I wasn't there, but my wife overheard that Cafe Labadee ran out of food at lunch, and many of the people returning from excursions were not happy. Don't know if it's just that location that ran out of food or the other two did as well. I didn't really care for any of the food there anyway, the chicken was probably the "best" thing there. Ribs were overcooked, burgers were dead, cole slaw had no dressing on it.

28. We decided to carry our own bags off the ship during disembarkation. Very happy we did, as we happened to be outside of the main dining room on Deck 4 when they started disembarkation around 7:40am. We were in the car and on the road by 8am.

29. We were also one of the first ones on the ship as well during embarkation. In the terminal, we were given a #1 Blue priority boarding card (there was also a #2 and #3), whereas most of the other passengers had a yellow boarding card. I don't remember these blue and yellow boarding cards from our trip three years ago on Explorer, but then it was also the old terminal and everything was a mess to begin with. When they started boarding a little after 11am, they called #1 Blue first, and we were in the first dozen guests or so on board.

30. Someone in another thread had mentioned they bring a power strip to charge all of their electronics. Well, suffice to say that that afforded us a trip to the naughty room.

Interesting things overheard during the cruise:

A. On Labadee- "If Royal Caribbean wants to charge you for everything, they should make this stop the first one in the cruise instead of the last. By the time you get to day 7, you're out of money!"

B. On Day 8 in response to the Captain's announcement that the surf was rough- "The Captain's going so fast cuz I heard that there's another cruise on this ship after us so we have to get back in time." I'm pretty darn sure she was serious.

C. At the Captain's talk on Day 9, one grumpy old man- "Why couldn't we spend more time in San Juan? I don't like Bermuda but why couldn't we just skip Bermuda and spend more time in San Juan instead? You're the captain, can't you let us stay in San Juan longer? I don't understand why we had to leave at 1pm." (Note- he went on for another minute, repeating himself over and over.) Captain James basically replied and said that the itinerary is set by the main office in Miami and Liberty took over the same itinerary that Explorer had been sailing for many years, and that he should check the itinerary before booking the cruise.

And the thing that everyone's been requesting:

Cruise compasses

Adventure Ocean compasses

Thank you for taking the time to post your review. Sounds like you had a great vacation.

I enjoyed your review. We were on the June 4th sailing.

Thank you. I enjoyed your review.

Thank you for your review and the compasses. We are cruising with our children and 3 grandchildren (ages 3 to 10) so the kids programs are very helpful.

Appreciated your insight and look forward to the Liberty in a couple weeks :)

Was there any draft beer in pub or just bottled? We sail on Nov and Bcc is a beer person

I also was on the same cruise, it was our first time on Royal in 20 years. We had a great time. A few notes. The only major problem we had was only one of our 4 suitcases was in the terminal this morning. Took about 25 minutes to find them, none of them had the tag on them, never have had that problem before, also weird that 3 suitcases could lose the tags?

My wife and Daughter did the horseback ride on St Marteen, they wanted me to says it was a great tour.

I had read a lot of problems with getting drinks ( with everyone having a package) Before we sailed, well I never had a problem getting drinks, we also had a lot of waiters walking around. The two guys working the Squeeze bar on the pool deck were great.

Overall it was a great trip.

Thanks for posting your review and the compasses... Glad you enjoyed your cruise, looking forward to ours!

How was your stateroom and balcony?

Enjoyed your review and welcome back. We were on the June 4 sailing - same itinerary.

Very disappointed to see the change in times for dining. The Main Seating at 5:30 is very early and conflicts with the happy hour times in the Diamond Lounge. We'd enjoy having a few drinks in the hour before dinner beginning at 5:00. And, as you mentioned, it cuts into pool time in the afternoon. Did they give any reason for the change? Would these be the new dining hours going forward?

Was there any draft beer in pub or just bottled? We sail on Nov and Bcc is a beer person

I did spot some beer on tap, but it did seem many of the draft taps were empty. I recall seeing Becks on tap in Hoof & Claw and one of the macro light beers on tap somewhere on the pool decks.

How was your stateroom and balcony?

It was a place to sleep and shower. :) We had a sofa bed that pulled out for the girls to sleep on. When it was pulled out, it did make it pretty tight in the room.

We didn't spend a lot of time in the room though. It seemed like we were always out and about.

For this itinerary, I did come up with one tip though. Unless you like getting up early and watching the sun rise, if you get a starboard room that has a oceanview or balcony, you only have to deal with the morning sun on the last couple days of the cruise as you sail back north.

Enjoyed your review and welcome back. We were on the June 4 sailing - same itinerary.

 

Very disappointed to see the change in times for dining. The Main Seating at 5:30 is very early and conflicts with the happy hour times in the Diamond Lounge. We'd enjoy having a few drinks in the hour before dinner beginning at 5:00. And, as you mentioned, it cuts into pool time in the afternoon. Did they give any reason for the change? Would these be the new dining hours going forward?

No idea why it was changed for this cruise. The June 4th sailing was 6:00 and 8:30.

No idea why it was changed for this cruise. The June 4th sailing was 6:00 and 8:30.

Great review and thanks for compasses. I actually hope these are the new times. I chose late seating for my group as most of us really enjoy that time before dinner and like to maximize our pool days. But 830 is kind of late to start dinner with finishing time usually Taking you past 10. We're leaving in 4 days so we'll see then.

Very disappointed to see the change in times for dining. The Main Seating at 5:30 is very early and conflicts with the happy hour times in the Diamond Lounge. We'd enjoy having a few drinks in the hour before dinner beginning at 5:00. And, as you mentioned, it cuts into pool time in the afternoon. Did they give any reason for the change? Would these be the new dining hours going forward?

We are on the 7/16 cruise and our dining hours were also changed to 5:30 and 8:00. It doesn't really impact us since we have late dining but I agree that 5:30 is too early.

We are on the 7/16 cruise and our dining hours were also changed to 5:30 and 8:00. It doesn't really impact us since we have late dining but I agree that 5:30 is too early.

How would I find out if my times were changed? I'm leaving 7/2.

Thanks

Edit

Nevermind just saw it in my reservation

Very happy and I agree 530 is way too early

How would I find out if my times were changed? I'm leaving 7/2.

Thanks

You can check your dining time by logging onto the RC website and looking at your reserved cruises. On the vacation summary page, dining time is listed under "preferences and requests."

 

 

 

30. Someone in another thread had mentioned they bring a power strip to charge all of their electronics. Well, suffice to say that that afforded us a trip to the naughty room.

 

This caught my attention. Could you please elaborate on what happened? I've brought one of these on countless cruises, RCI and other lines, and have never had a problem with this. It's going to really be tough if we can only use the small number of outlets in the stateroom.

The main dining room menu order was exactly like someone had posted in another Liberty 9-night thread.

Which thread was this posted in?

Thanks for the compasses!

Thanks for your review. We were on the June 4th sailing and had MTD reservations every night at 6:00 for 12 family members including my two great nieces 6&4. They had a blast at the Adventure Ocean, my niece and her hubby were pleased with it. As far as the shows go, I preferred Savannah Jack over Saturday night fever, SNF was kinda boring.

This caught my attention. Could you please elaborate on what happened? I've brought one of these on countless cruises, RCI and other lines, and have never had a problem with this. It's going to really be tough if we can only use the small number of outlets in the stateroom.

There was a thread right before we left about some things to bring on a cruise that you may not think of. We added some items to our packing list based on that thread like a power strip, magnetic clips for the cabin walls, etc.

Well, the piece of luggage that had the power strip in it didn't arrive in our cabin with our other luggage. Later on in the first night, we got a voice mail that we needed to go to deck 1 to the naughty room to get it.

My wife went down and it turned out it was the power strip that got flagged. They took it away, and we picked it up on our way out of the terminal on disembarkation day.

There was a thread right before we left about some things to bring on a cruise that you may not think of. We added some items to our packing list based on that thread like a power strip, magnetic clips for the cabin walls, etc.

 

Well, the piece of luggage that had the power strip in it didn't arrive in our cabin with our other luggage. Later on in the first night, we got a voice mail that we needed to go to deck 1 to the naughty room to get it.

 

My wife went down and it turned out it was the power strip that got flagged. They took it away, and we picked it up on our way out of the terminal on disembarkation day.

Well, I usually bring it in the carry on luggage. Like I said, we've never had a problem with a power strip on any line or on any ship. Has anybody else had an experience like this lately? Did they change the rules?

There was a thread right before we left about some things to bring on a cruise that you may not think of. We added some items to our packing list based on that thread like a power strip, magnetic clips for the cabin walls, etc.

 

Well, the piece of luggage that had the power strip in it didn't arrive in our cabin with our other luggage. Later on in the first night, we got a voice mail that we needed to go to deck 1 to the naughty room to get it.

 

My wife went down and it turned out it was the power strip that got flagged. They took it away, and we picked it up on our way out of the terminal on disembarkation day.

I had a power strip in one of our checked bags on the June 4 trip and I was not called to the naughty room. Perhaps it differs based on who is scanning.

Judy

thank you for posting the compass and the great tips going in two days can't wait

Interesting things overheard during the cruise:

 

A. On Labadee- "If Royal Caribbean wants to charge you for everything, they should make this stop the first one in the cruise instead of the last. By the time you get to day 7, you're out of money!"

 

B. On Day 8 in response to the Captain's announcement that the surf was rough- "The Captain's going so fast cuz I heard that there's another cruise on this ship after us so we have to get back in time." I'm pretty darn sure she was serious.

 

C. At the Captain's talk on Day 9, one grumpy old man- "Why couldn't we spend more time in San Juan? I don't like Bermuda but why couldn't we just skip Bermuda and spend more time in San Juan instead? You're the captain, can't you let us stay in San Juan longer? I don't understand why we had to leave at 1pm." (Note- he went on for another minute, repeating himself over and over.) Captain James basically replied and said that the itinerary is set by the main office in Miami and Liberty took over the same itinerary that Explorer had been sailing for many years, and that he should check the itinerary before booking the cruise.

I love reading these things!

My favorite comment from our last cruise...

After C&A Trivia, a grumpy old man said to his wife, "Well that was just a bunch of useless information!" and rolled his eyes. I wanted to respond, "Well first, its TRIVIA, and second, it is C&A trivia!" But I bit my tongue! :o