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Carnival Liberty Seven Night Western Caribbean - March 22-29, 2014


CruiseFlicks
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We are a family of four that did the Carnival Liberty's seven night Western Caribbean itinerary ex-Miami, returning home last Saturday. I have been planning to write a detailed description for a few days now. Let me get started with a link to all of the sale papers and Fun Times booklets that we got on the cruise:

 

Fun Times - 03/22/2014 - Page 1

photostream

 

Fun Times - 03/22/2014 - Page 2

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Fun Times - 03/22/2014 - Page 3

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Fun Times - 03/22/2014 - Page 4

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Fun Times - 03/22/2014 - Page 5

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Fun Times - 03/22/2014 - Page 6

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PS: Does anyone know why Flickr photos show up as broken links? I have seen similar links on other posts as well - I use Google Chrome (hopefully it is not a browser thing)

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Hmmm! Can't see the pics/fun times.

 

Please right click on the broken links and select 'open image in new tab' - that works for me. Hopefully, someone can help me fix the issue. :-)

Edited by CruiseFlicks
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Right clicking on the links and opening in a new tab works perfectly. Thank you for taking the time to post them! I look forward to reading your review, as we are on the Liberty Western in two weeks. Any chance your went to the piano bar? I can't find any info on the current piano bar player.

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Right clicking on the links and opening in a new tab works perfectly. Thank you for taking the time to post them! I look forward to reading your review, as we are on the Liberty Western in two weeks. Any chance your went to the piano bar? I can't find any info on the current piano bar player.

You are welcome. I am now uploading to photobucket like most everyone else is :-).

 

I did go to the piano bar ... when nobody was around :-( Seth was the piano man for our cruise, but I do remember reading a list of Liberty piano men in one of the posts on this very forum, as to who will be on and when. Unfortunately, I do not remember much more than that.

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You are welcome. I am now uploading to photobucket like most everyone else is :-).

 

I did go to the piano bar ... when nobody was around :-( Seth was the piano man for our cruise, but I do remember reading a list of Liberty piano men in one of the posts on this very forum, as to who will be on and when. Unfortunately, I do not remember much more than that.

 

Thank you for that information. I was curious about how he did.. I can't find any reviews of him specifically. Did you stay? Or was it busy at other times?

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In September 2010, we - me and DW, DS(9) and DD(5) - cruised on the Disney Wonder; it was a three night cruise with halts at Nassau, Bahamas and Castaway Cay. Most everyone we met said that Disney is the ultimate in cruising and once you go on them, you won't like the competition and that kids wouldn't enjoy the cruise either.

 

Though we liked the cruise, it was a ho hum kind of experience and we wondered why people like to cruise, and especially Disney.

 

- Nassau Bahamas: We did not really spend too much time off the ship. As we were not terribly water-friendly, we did not even consider going to Atlantis. So, we just left DD in the kid's club and strolled around within hearing (sort of) of the ship.

 

- Fireworks in the sea: It was not as great as we had been given to believe by friends.

 

- Castaway Cay: Now this was something we really enjoyed. Though the snorkelling - me and DS - was a disaster, we enjoyed renting bikes. All four of us got custom-sized bikes and we had the run of the island (as did others, of course). We biked all the way across to the other side (if memory serves me right) and climbed the lookout post and took pictures of the Wonder. Biking across the huge airstrip is something I still remember vividly - I have never ridden a bike on such a vast pavement elsewhere.

 

- Food: We are vegetarians of (Asian) Indian origin, so the food was more of a miss than a hit for us. We were not terribly thrilled by the wait staff either. We are not heavy into drinks like soda, so the prospect of unlimited beverages did not really endear itself to us.

 

- Though the kids had a wonderful time there, I have a recollection of hassles getting the kids in and out of the kids club on the Wonder. Just that we had to wait everytime we checked the kids in or out. Even to register the kids and get the armbands - IIRC - was time-consuming.

 

- Disney character appearances were another touted selling point. However, we found the lines to be as long or even longer than what we encountered at the (local to us) theme parks, plus the wait for the pictures with the princesses kept us from getting off the boat quickly at Nassau (even though we did not really have anything major planned).

 

Oops! This was supposed to be a review of a Carnival Cruise. Sorry, I got carried away with the comparison. What I was trying to say is that we did not really get why folks cruise - to us, even though we had fun in Castaway Cay, it did not feel worth the nearly $2000 we spent on one of the smallest sized cabin on the ship (though we did not really feel that it was too small for us).

 

So, this year, when we started planning for a vacation, our first choice was Europe. Too expensive - it got scratched pretty quickly. Second up was the Northwest. I had grand dreams of landing in Calgary/Victoria/Seattle/Portland/Edmonton/wherever, rent a car for a nice full circle drive in a week visiting Glacier Park, etc. Priced the air tickets for sometime in July. Scratched that as too expensive as well. Well, I was left with needing to "use or lose" a week in the next four months and a staycation is not really my cup of tea (or coffee).

 

So, we looked at cruises ... longer than 3 day variety, so we could explore the world, not just the Bahamas. I saw an excellent deal on Norwegian. Whether from Tampa or Miami, they were pricing at about $1600 for us for the Western Caribbean circuit. Unfortunately, whoever I spoke with said that Carnival was better, especially the food. With that in mind, the only option we were left with was to pony up the additional $400 plus drive down (four hours - at my driving speed) to Miami.

 

The Disney cruise we had booked nine months in advance and had plenty of time to plan. The Carnival cruise was booked just about a month or so in advance. So, we barely had any time to plan. We had no excursion booked when we went on board the ship - we called our travel agent who confirmed that there was no price difference whether you booked online with Carnival or did so on the ship. The only issue might be that the tour we wanted might be full. Well, we didn't really have a choice anyway, so that was that.

 

Similarly, I procrastinated filling out the details online with Carnival and realized too late that there was a 72-hour pre-cruise deadline for pre-registering the kids for the clubs. So, that also now needed to be done on the ship.

 

Enough with the preamble. On with the review:

 

We turned in about midnight on Friday excited to be on a cruise after quite a while. It took some time to finish packing. Between the four of us [sURPRISE] I had the most luggage. Usually, I have the least. I don't know if I was committing a mistake or the rest of the family. For the weeklong cruise, I had one airplane check-in size bag and one airplane carry-on size bag. There were only three more carry-on size bags for the rest of the gang. Worst case scenario - someone would be doing laundry and that person was definitely not going to be me :-).

 

Next morning, we woke up early - I had set an 8 am deadline for leaving, in the unlikely event of an issue with the car. As we had prepaid for parking in an off-port facility, we were antsy about taking our newer vehicle with us. In any event, we went with the older car and fortunately, needed to take only a couple of breaks - one for gas and one for the restroom.

 

It was stormy in the Fort Lauderdale area and we had stop-and-go traffic for about five miles or so. I was a bit worried that it would get too close for comfort (for me that would be getting aboard the ship at 2 pm for a 4 pm stated departure). Fortunately, once we got past that one long bottleneck, the traffic - and, more importantly, the sky - cleared, and we got to the parking lot right after noon.

 

Car parked (safely, of course) at Safe Cruise Parking

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Miami skyline from our shuttle bus

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The line at check-in - not too long but not too short either; we had not received any notification of when to come or not come to check-in, so we presented ourselves just before 1 pm. We were group # 39, I think.

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More to come ...

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Thank you for that information. I was curious about how he did.. I can't find any reviews of him specifically. Did you stay? Or was it busy at other times?

I am sorry - I should have been more clear. I went to the Piano bar when no one was there just to take some photos of the room (it is set up sort of like a giant piano) and video. They had this cool effect of changing colors of the piano keys around the room which I just had to video. I will post it soon :-)

 

As to the piano bar, please ask the question on the other thread - there is a thread by folks who were on the same cruise. A roll call thread or something. They will be able to help you for sure.

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Now I can see your pics. Looking forward to the rest of your review.

You're the first person I've come across to say they didn't care for Disney. I would love to try them one day; but right now I can't justify the cost.

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I am sorry - I should have been more clear. I went to the Piano bar when no one was there just to take some photos of the room (it is set up sort of like a giant piano) and video. They had this cool effect of changing colors of the piano keys around the room which I just had to video. I will post it soon :-)

 

As to the piano bar, please ask the question on the other thread - there is a thread by folks who were on the same cruise. A roll call thread or something. They will be able to help you for sure.

 

Thank you! I'll check your roll call. :)

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The Carnival Victory was docked right behind (or ahead, depending on the point of view) us - both facing west towards Miami - but left before we did. She - and later, we - had to go further in and turn around. I don't know what the rules are about reversing, i.e., why is it not an option? Is it the length of the channel that is the issue or is it some other issue? Also, I don't know what governs how the ships dock - on 29th, I saw another ship come in and do the turn around before docking so she was facing the sea when docked.

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The Victory has almost completed her turn around with the American Airlines Arena (Miami Heat's homecourt) in the background.

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As she completes her turn ...

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... people look out ...

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... as she sails away!

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As most everyone else on the Victory was waving at us, this one dude had his priorities straight. I am sliding, come hell or high water! ;-)

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In the meantime (and, to be honest, before the Victory sailed away, which makes this post non-chronological), we had helped ourselves to the Lido buffet. From a cursory glance at the items on the buffet, it appeared that Italian dishes dominated (but I could be wrong because, like I said, it was a quick glance to figure out which items were vegetarian). I ended up getting a couple of cold Italian pastas that I did not really care much for then headed over to my kind of food, i.e., the dessert section.

 

I got a piece of the Mango Mousse ...

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... and a few of those delicious strawberry pop cakes. Any other day I might have devoured a couple of the other items on show; however, once I had finished what was on my plate, there was just no room for more :-(

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That "more" could've been jello or the crumb cake ...

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... or whatever else the staff served up next!

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It is so neat seeing these photos. :) I was on the Victory's Mar 22 sailing. I was telling the friend who sailed with me how nice it was seeing the Liberty because I had sailed on it last year, and knew I would be missing out on Guy's Burgers. Lol.

 

Did you by chance meet anyone from Curacao on the ship? We shared a shuttle from our hotel to the port with a large group from that island and they were going on the Liberty.

Edited by deetrayn
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It is so neat seeing these photos. :) I was on the Victory's Mar 22 sailing. I was telling the friend who sailed with me how nice it was seeing the Liberty because I had sailed on it last year, and knew I would be missing out on Guy's Burgers. Lol.

 

Did you by chance meet anyone from Curacao on the ship? We shared a shuttle from our hotel to the port with a large group from that island and they were going on the Liberty.

Unfortunately, we did not. We are not huge social animals (other than online :-) ... so did not really meet a lot of folks. That said, I did meet some folks on our trips from: Switzerland, Italy, Chicago, Tennessee, Canada (northwest and northeast). But I exchanged contact information with only one person. DS surprisingly did better, given that - I thought - he was less social than me ;-)

 

Great photos, looking forward to the rest of your review.

Thank you.

Thanks - it is my pleasure to relive the cruise :-)

Edited by CruiseFlicks
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When we were getting on the ship, we had been informed that our room would not be ready until 1:30 pm; however, as it was already past 1:15 pm when we came onboard, we decided to check out the room and, sure enough, we were able to get in. We put our carryon items in the room, looked around, figured out the safe - nice to work it where it locked based on my driver's license (I was the only one who needed to use it for the duration of the cruise, as I was really antsy of losing our passports, which were all in there throughout). We did notice that some other rooms already had their bags outside, and wondered why our check-in bags were yet to make it.

 

Anyway, we left the room after a few minutes and headed up to eat. Not much to say here, as the lines were pretty short and plenty of seating was available. We looked around and deduced that the food setting was a bit Italian based on the available options (we could be wrong on that - look forward to being corrected). Anyway, like I said in a previous post, we ate the available options - but we wondered about the food being cold. As we are not connoisseurs, I don't know whether that specific food item is supposed to be eaten cold or warm (unfortunately, I do not remember the item name). Oh well, bottom line, we were full by the time we exited the place and that is what mattered (to us) as we had only eaten snacks since leaving home before 8 am.

 

After eating, we went to the Venetian Palace (or Victoria Lounge - for the duration of the cruise, I kept mixing them up) to get kids registered for their respective camps. As I noted earlier, I was unable to pre-register them in time. This process took a good half hour including their presentation.

 

That done, we headed outside and I looked to see if I could spot a table tennis (ping pong) table. Sure enough, I found that there were a couple available. DS and I checked it out for a few minutes. I can hold a rally pretty good and DS can do a fair job of it; however, the wind killed the session, though we did get our exercise to make up for the food.

 

In between, DD had discovered the slide and was reasonably impressed (especially given that we have not visited the local waterparks - Disney or Wet 'N Wild - in the last year or so). Other than the food, it was the water area that had helped us select Carnival over Norwegian (for a similar itinerary, we had choice of either the Epic or the Pearl, if I remember right).

 

We were then called for the muster drill. For Disney, we had had to go to our room, wear our life jackets and then present ourselves in the muster area. Here, we only had to go there and supposedly watch the crew demonstrate. I cannot speak for the other areas, but in ours, the crew did not demonstrate anything I recall seeing. Besides, the line was three deep and were not organized by height. Had there been a true emergency, the crew would have had to do a lot more than they should have been required to had the passengers been adequately forewarned. Be that as it may, we were thankful that the cruise was uneventful in this regard. In retrospect, if there is one issue I can find fault with Carnival, this is probably it - especially given that the last year or so they have had the most (famous) incidents with their ships.

 

Just to maintain proper sequence, I must mention here that all these events occurred before the Victory sailed away (an earlier post).

 

Photo time:

 

Long (infinite?) corridor which sure appears much longer on any of these stateroom floors than it actually is

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Area where we had the kiddie camp registrations

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Chandeliers(?) inside ...

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... and outside

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Whirlpool area where some folks were relaxing. I have a feeling that they were either informed that they needed to leave or they had something else planned, because the area was empty a few minutes later

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I didn't realize that there was a limit of six photos per post. So, these next four will be in their own separate post now :-)

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A view of the ambience

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Terminal area as seen from the ship

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This Celebrity cruiseliner departed as we were in the muster drill

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Our ship's tail

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I also learned that you can only post once per minute (at most) ;-)

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And then, it was our turn to leave - we were a couple of hours late I believe, assuming I am right in thinking that our official departure time was 4 pm. The engines revved up, the tail started emitting smoke ...

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... the gangway plank is pulled ...

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... and Carnival's official videographer is in business.

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Though we were out of there, we were not really out of there (yet). We first had to do the turn around dance. A slight turn to the right first ...

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... followed by a thrust to the fwd starboard side so we are facing the Miami skyline at close quarters ...

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... and we are turned around and have the Atlantic Ocean in sight.

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Looking forward to your review. I can't get the FunTimes to work on iPad but will try later with laptop.

 

We did Liberty western out of Miami last sept., loved it. I agree, those strawberry pops are yummy!

We loved it so much we're booked for Liberty western this May out of Port Canaveral so we can drive.

 

Please let us know about the menu. I know they've been slightly tweaking the new menus and it would be great for an update. Very interested in desserts, Creme brûlée?

Also, did you order anything off menu?

 

Thanks

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This is the closest I could get to the prow of the ship (I believe I was either on Deck Six or Deck Seven or Deck Eight). I saw (ordinary) folks getting their photos taken by each other and thought I could get there as well, but was informed that that was the crew area.

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All these yachts gave the area the feel of a regatta in the making.

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A Miami tour bus in action

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Ferry being loaded with cars

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Palm trees swaying in the breeze

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