96 hours "Live" Part Deux, Freedom of the Seas - August 28, 2016

Welcome to my second ever attempt at a semi live review. This is kind of a follow up to my first attempt http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2224900

It is also a farewell to one of our favorite ships, Freedom of the Seas, First of her Name (blatant GOT reference), as she will be leaving for Port Everglades this fall. Port Canaveral however, gets Oasis of the Sea the next day, more or less.

Hopefully FOS will provide a decent internet connection as she is equipped with genuine O3B equipment similar to Oasis and Allure. The 96 hours refers to the amount of free internet I should be getting as a D+ member. I'm not sure if it will be two 48 hour blocks or four 24 hour blocks. I hope to use the mainland cell towers for as long as I can on Sunday afternoon. After that you can look for me on Monday.

Once again, welcome aboard. I promise it will be a fun week.

Well, maybe not as much fun as Andrew on Allure, but a good time guaranteed.

BTW, Royal really needs to work on the grammar in the pic above.

1 DAYS, really. :rolleyes:

So let's give everyone a little background on this trip.

We actually booked this cruise in April 2015 onboard Oasis while waiting for our cabin to open. So it was around 18 months ago. I really wasn't paying attention when we booked the western itinerary and I just figured it would be Labadie, Falmouth, Grand Cayman and Cozumel.

I actually figured out we had a different voyage booked when I was looking into booking a cabana in Labadee and discovered we were not going there. :confused:

To further complicate things, a little storm by the name of 99L is/was threatening to shuffle things around, but that seems to have dissipated.

Freedom's itinerary last week was Eastern, but they ended up in Costa Maya and Cozumel to avoid the storm. According to friends onboard, we will be sticking to our planned itinerary.

If you had a chance to read my last review you might remember there were a few things I was specifically interested in.

The changes post drydock, internet speed, the sundeck expansion above the new cabins, drink prices, crowding, cabanas, our Aft JS, etc..

I may follow up on some of those topics. I also created a poll on what to do with the enlarged St Tropez deck since it was basically empty. The consensus was to leave it as is and add more lounge chairs.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2247076

Things I'm interested in this week are Internet speed, trying my hand at Periscope, jdurland if you are interested (I make no promises), any talk of new menus, the quality of Johnny Rockets burger vs other venues, the new itinerary, and our attempts to avoid the storm.

Oh, and we will be staying in one of the new cabins on Deck 12, 1890 to be exact. So if we do get some rough seas it should be a blast.

I may be attempting on commandeering a lounge chair for our balcony since they are basically right out our door. :o I'll let you know how that works out.

Will be following with interest. I toured the new cabins last summer. Liked the family one for DD, SIL and their triplets. Maybe someday...

Just a couple more pre review tidbits I'll share with you. The last time I did this I had no idea how to post pics from my phone, so I had to add them via quotes of myself. PIA. Plus they were thumbnails of poor quality :( The only ones that looked good were added post cruise via my Shutterfly account on my laptop.

I have since learned both how to add them in the original post and how to post full size pics via Tapatalk. I have also added a eyefi wirless card to my Canon DSLR.

This is the greatest thing ever. It transfers all my DSLR photos to my smartphone so I can add my camera shots straight into Tapatalk. I think WiFi is standard on more modern cameras, but I don't have one of those. :( Maybe next year. ;)

Awesome.

Can't wait to follow along all week. We sail on the Freedom when she comes to Port Everglades in November

Welcome to my second ever attempt at a semi live review. This is kind of a follow up to my first attempt http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2224900

 

It is also a farewell to one of our favorite ships, Freedom of the Seas, First of her Name (blatant GOT reference), as she will be leaving for Port Everglades this fall. Port Canaveral however, gets Oasis of the Sea the next day, more or less.

 

Hopefully FOS will provide a decent internet connection as she is equipped with genuine O3B equipment similar to Oasis and Allure. The 96 hours refers to the amount of free internet I should be getting as a D+ member. I'm not sure if it will be two 48 hour blocks or four 24 hour blocks. I hope to use the mainland cell towers for as long as I can on Sunday afternoon. After that you can look for me on Monday.

 

Once again, welcome aboard. I promise it will be a fun week.

Well, maybe not as much fun as Andrew on Allure, but a good time guaranteed.

 

 

BTW, Royal really needs to work on the grammar in the pic above.

1 DAYS, really. :rolleyes:

Following along John. Looking forward to hearing what you can find out on the new menus.

You might be so,e to get more than the 96 hours of free internet. You should be sold to use your first coupon for the first 2 days free and then use the second coupons $ value to purchase the package for the remaining 3 or 4 days depending on the price.

Have a great cruise.:)

Woo hoo. I'm looking forward to this. Safe travels John and we might see you in a port next week.

Andrew

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Speaking of cameras, my Canon body is kind of dated, EOS T5, but I have an extensive list of lenses to mate to it. Sometimes people ask what folks use to take pics with so let me give a quick rundown.

Super wide angel 10-22, good for landscapes and large groups.

60 mm macro, great for closeups, but hard to focus if you really want to get close. I may try and use it for food porn.

50 mm f1.4, this is my newest toy, great for low light and portraits. Still learning how to use it

70-300 mm super zoom, this is my favorite lens. I use this all the time for taking pics from my balcony in Cocoa Beach. Cruise ships, rocket launches, etc..

And my walk around camera is a trusty Nikon Coolpix. No wifi card though, so it won't get as much use. Maybe when i get home for follow ups to the trip.

Finally, the Smartphone, an HTC One M8. Decent wide angle, zoom is awful.

I also may use a knock off GoPro.

This concludes the technical portion of my review. I hope I haven't scared anyone away.

Nice start John. I have to go back and read your other review now.

Good Stuff, see you tomorrow

Almost done for tonight. Here is the link to our roll call. Pretty active for a late summer one week Caribbean cruise, almost 1,000 posts and 100+ sign ups for Meet and Mingle.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2185292&page=50

This will be my 8th trip on Freedom and Laura's 16th. It was a fun ship these past few years. Our first trip was B2B in August 2009, 7 years ago, wow.

Here are a couple of fact sheets I borrowed from the Web.

And here is a link to our menu's. I got this from Bob (Clarea) he knows everything. :D

http://www.royalcaribbeanpresscenter.com/download-press-kit/7/

Like I said earlier, this may be changing soon, but I doubt for our voyage.

Finally here are two more interesting links.

Cocoa Beach weather cam (actually the view off my balcony :D)

https://map.bloomsky.com/weather-stations/eaB1rJytnpS4n5Wk

Follow us on Instagram (pics of Bella, Sunrises, Rocket Launches, Cruise Ships, and Cocoa Beach, FL)

https://www.instagram.com/durlandjohn/

These are both in my signature, but most smartphone users don't see signatures.

Oops, forgot to introduce myself earlier. I'm John, LaLa is actually Laura, and Bella is our Princess Diva Westie.

Can't wait to follow this review! Have an awesome cruise and thank you so much for sharing!!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Following along, looking forward to your reports and photos, we will be sailing on the Freedom this Fall.

I started following you on periscope. I'm very interested in your report since I'll be on FOS 9/4. I really want to know how the Internet is. I want to be able to skype with my kids at home. This is our first trip without them.

I'll be taking pics with a Ricoh GR 2. I rarely use my dslr anymore.

Following along John. Looking forward to hearing what you can find out on the new menus.

 

You might be so,e to get more than the 96 hours of free internet. You should be sold to use your first coupon for the first 2 days free and then use the second coupons $ value to purchase the package for the remaining 3 or 4 days depending on the price.

 

Have a great cruise.:)

That's exactly what we did on the Freedom last month, I believe we only ended up paying around $10-$15 for Internet access till the end of the cruise. By the way 48 hour for D+ was 2 x 24 hours - I had to create a second account after first 24 her period had expired.

I'm looking forward to following you on this review. I always enjoy your posts, so I'm sure this review will be fun! :D

We had been looking at sailing on Freedom from the time we first started cruising in 2011, but it took us until this past May to finally to sail on her. I totally fell in love with that ship on our cruise, so as much as I was hoping for an Oasis class ship to come to PC, I am really disappointed that Freedom is leaving. Now I'm hoping I will enjoy Oasis in November as much as I think I will! :cool:

She spoke to me.

Woke up at 4:40, walked outside and there she was. Grabbed camera, put big lens on, adjusted the settings, and voila.

She's about 5 miles south of the port entrance.

Not totally clear, longer exposure than ideal.

Back to bed, not quite 5am

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

Can't sleep, so decided to watch her go by Jetty Park.

I'm sure this will catch up with me tonight [emoji6]

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

The first pic should remain static, and the second will update automatically. 99L is the orange X above Cuba. Hopefully it won't affect Liberty to much this week.

Looks wet in the FL straights today. We should go through overnight.

Link to National Hurricane Center

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gtwo.php

Sorry for the oversized picture in Post 18. I still need to work on that in the future. :o

From the Cruise Critic Write a Review guidelines.

Tips for writing a great review

Background information

Hotel information (if any) N/A, we live here. :D

Ship information

Activities

Service

Port & shore excursions

Travel to embarkation port This won't take long ;)

Cabin

Dining

Children's clubs N/A, but I'm sure I'll comment on their behaviour :eek:

Entertainment

Disembarkation

Summary

I should be able to get the rest of this accomplished

Sorry

I'm following along .. did this itinerary three weeks ago --- I like it a lot more than the typical Western.

Interesting to see if the internet speeds are as consistent as they were when we sailed.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1_emBH29ux0O9p3FXsbyf0fXiHrs

Also love to have an update on the new menus.

Hope the traffic to the port isn't too bad :) .

mac_tlc

Thank you for doing this. I'm always amazed at folks that can post such wonderful pics. I try and am lucky to get one posted. I want to follow this along as my best friend is sailing along with you. They wanted a chance to sail Freedom once more before she moves further South.

Have a super cruise.

Thanx

Erika