CruiseFlicks

I will work on the narrative during the weekend; for now, let me put up the Fun Times for Belize ...

Heading out on the Carnival Liberty this Sat...getting very excited. Hubby and I have only sailed with Princess....anyone have any Liberty specifics they want to share? Anyone off a recent voyage that can speak to things we shouldnt miss out on! SUPER EXCITED!

Check out my ongoing thread. I am assuming that you will be doing the Exotic Western Caribbean as well. Have fun!

I will need to photoshop/crop a couple of others, but for now I present ...

CD Brittany Boyd from Canada

One of the first crew I saw - the official cruise photographer

Assistant CD Wally (where from?) and Entertainment crew member Bethan (from England), who was a hoot - here she makes a funny face as we prepare to disembark

Head waiter Alexander from the Philippines

Our waiter Dexter from the Philippines

This photo is begging for a caption. I had just taken it by chance, but now it looks like a humanoid!

Some more photos of the sea - these are from inside the bus so they are not as clear as the previous ones.

Barbara, our guide, informed us that this is the area where the locals come on thier days off. The island has practically no crime, she said, because there is not much place for the perpetrators to hide ... and only four gas stations for gas!

This is the Cozumel version of Disney's EPCOT. What we had misinterpreted as a trip to a Mayan village turned out to be a trip to a "Mayan village" (just like the Mexico at EPCOT that I'm visiting with DD later today) :-) Here is a sneak preview ...

Wow, those photos are fantastic! The water looks amazing, thanks for posting these and an informative review!

Thank you and you are very welcome!

How is the layout of the ship? How was the service, CC recommend this ship, just wondering if it's still good. I looked on my cruise international app and it doesn't show 2.0 upgrades.

On our last day on the ship, I walked up and down the ship, taking photos everywhere. Though I took layout photos on each deck as well. For some reason, not all of the came out very clear. Here are a couple that should give you a good idea of the overall layout.

Staterooms are primarily located on Deck One, Deck Two, Deck Six, Deck Seven and Deck Eight. There are staterooms on other decks as well, I believe, but not as many.

Deck Nine (Lido) is the most happening place on the ship. Most evenings, there was either a party or dancing up there, or they screened movies. We went to watch the party/dancing, but did not watch any of the movies. Plus, most of the non-dining room food experiences are to be had here. The area is called Emile's and has multiple buffet locations (I believe there are three) are available and have the same items (I did not compare, but they looked pretty much identical); the Blue Iguana Cantina serves Mexican food; there are multiple locations for beverages and ice creams; there is a 24-hour pizza place; there is a deli place (which I never visited); Mongolian Wok (which also I never visited). I trust I have not missed much. You can also take a flight of chairs up to Fish and Chips, but I never went there (maybe I should have visited once to take a photo).

There is a slide for kids (and adults) that I also went on during the first sea day. Of course, I made the mistake of lying down and snorted sea water at the end of the slide. It was not funny!! ;-) There are several pool areas and though DD and DS spent time with other kids, neither DW nor I spent much time there. I did step into one of the whirlpools the last morning.

You can get towels in this area and also get balls for volleyball, basketball and table-tennis (ping pong). Note that passengers are responsible for the blue beach towels which are also allowed off the ship. If you borrow any, they will be held against your 'sign and sail' (or whatever the correct term is) card. If you don't return them, it is a steep penalty - $22 per towel, if I remember correctly. Four of these towels are provided in the staterooms.

Deck Five (Promenade) was the second most frequented deck by me. It has general entertainment areas such as video games, the casino, the sports bar, the piano bar, the alchemy bar (if I remember right, because I never went in there), future cruise counter, a beverage place (where you would need to pay to be served), and a general walkway that would be swarmed by photographers and photographees ;-) on most evenings, especially the two formal nights. Deck Five also has a couple of areas that sell perfumes, clothing, and where they have sales throughout the cruise.

Sports Bar

Deck Five, Deck Four and Deck Three have a unique arrangement in that one cannot go from front (Fwd) to back (Aft) of the ship on either Deck Three or Deck Four. So, I would typically press the elevator button to Deck Three, realize my mistake, then walk up two decks and walk across, breathing in a generous dose of cigar/cigarette smoke coming out of the casino. Alternatively, this exercise can be performed on any of the other Decks (other than Three and Four) but I found it easiest to go up to Five. The one thing I remember the most about Deck Four is that this is where the library is located which I visited once and also where all the photos are laid out. There were really too many of them. I really think Carnival would be doing the guests a favor by just creating CDs and selling them for a nominal surcharge. Plus for sure, there would be much less wastage all the way around.

The main show rooms and lounges were on Deck Three and take up vertical space upto Deck Five. The Guest Services, Shore Excursions, and the lobby are all on Deck Three. The main dining rooms are on Decks Three and Four.

Spa Carnival is on Deck Eleven and Camp Carnival (9-11 year olds, I think) is on Deck Twelve. I forget where Circle C (12-14 year olds) was. The older kids also had a meeting place somewhere near the mini-golf and basketball/volleyball court area - I am not exactly sure where. There is a jogging track that is a ninth of a mile per lap. This is located in the mid-ship area on Deck Eleven.

For getting off the ship, we usually walked out of Deck Zero either onto the gangway or into a waiting tender. The medics are also on this deck. I didn't have a need to go there, but DW had to make a visit - more on that later.

I have jumped back and forth, but hopefully you now have a general idea of the ship. Obviously, we loved the ship and the cruise. Needless to say, we loved all of the staff as well.

Our Cozumel tour began with a 30 minute ride along a nice road in an air-conditioned bus until we came to a beach. This point had been advertised as a location with multi-colored sea and sure enough, it reminded me of the Pacific Coast Highway in California. Our guide Barbara informed us that the sea here supposedly displays seven colors that ranged from green to blue with turquoise, jade, etc interspersed ... in other words, colors that a stereotypical male probably cannot distinguish from one another ;-)

We enjoyed walking around, getting our feet wet - literally - and taking photos. A local dude brought his pet iguana with him and permitted kids to borrow the animal for photos. Of course, he was rewarded for his friendliness :-)

After Barbara had informed us tourists about its benefits on the drive there, DD refreshed herself with tender coconut water for what I then thought was a royal sum of $3 (I am familiar with paying in the pennies for those in the India of my childhood - with inflation, all bets are obviously off) ... more to come on this. She even got the inner flesh of the coconut carved out to eat, which she shared with DW and DS.

After a drive for about 30 more minutes along the coastline, we reached ther second stop of the excursion - a 'Mayan village'

Some photos now:

We were joking that we would get the rickety schoolbus; instead we got the posh looking A/C bus ...

... and soon we were underway

I can identify green and blue. :-)

And this looks like Pebble Beach almost

More colors

Another photographer in action

Because the Carnival Elation was on its way to dock next to us and we had a good 45 minutes to an hour before we were supposed to meet our tour party, I decided to hang around near the ship and take a few photos of the Elation docking. In the meantime, DW, DS and DD decided to follow the rest of the crowd into "real" Mexican territory and come back in a few minutes.

A short preamble is in order here. We were not planning to do much in Cozumel once we returned from our tour; however, we were unsure what the food arrangements would be for the group, if nay, after the tour. So, DW had packed some cookies that we had brought with us onto the ship ... and I had 'smuggled' a couple of burritos and cheese sandwiches from the Iguana Cantina. All these items were in a relatively heavy bag. So, I was literally left holding the bag as the rest of the family ventured into uncharted waters ... umm ... land.

To cut a long story short, Elation docked, and my advance party returned ... with a story. Apparently, it was illegal to carry food into Mexico (now we were learning!) - a few of the other passengers had had their precious cargo separated from them and shown the dustbin verily like it happens at airport security counters :-(.

Given all this, we had a (Hobson's) choice - whether to return to the room and unload all our precious cargo (thereby risking missing the tour party) or carry everything in with us and be prepared for the worst. In the event, we didn't really have a choice - we went in well prepared (not!). Thankfully for us, the security folks were not as vigilant - or they had assumed that everyone had walked on by ... or they confused us for natives (we were not too many shades off anyway) ;-)

So, we didn't have to throw anything away. Unlike other passengers who we saw boarding the ship with crates (OK, only a 24-pack) of water, we had carried no water in with us. And unlike our previous cruise, this time around, we had been so unprepared that we had not even brought an empty water bottle with us. Be that as it may, by the time we reached the end of the pier, both DD and I were thirsty and were getting hit pretty hard by the sun.

Thankfully for us, the first shop we came upon had water ... and not only that, the going rate was at a discount to what we were offered in the Liberty prior to alighting from there. So, we got our water ... and waited for some more time for our guides to show as the crowds started building up.

Here are some photos:

Carnival Elation approaches the dock

Sisters of the same mother berth together (pardon the pun)

A popular rest area

Replica of a Mayan ruin?

I liked how this photo came out. The restrooms are behind me in this photo - the original restrooms were apparently closed for renovation; this photo came out pretty good I thought

One for the tourists

The Carnival Liberty was the first ship to dock at Cozumel on 24th. As we got off the ship, the Carnival Elation was coming in. I saw the perfect opportunity, handed the camera to DS, motioned him into proper position and told him to take a picture in such a way that the boat was 'cupped' in the V of my palm. I stood in a stance that I thought was ideal. However, being the one behind the camera, DS moved me around to (what he thought to be) a better position. I realized too late - when downloading the photos on dry land (here in FL) - that there was some miscommunication between father and son on the term 'boat' ;-)

The boat I wanted to show up in my palm ...

... the photo DS took (if you look closely, you will see that there indeed is a boat in it as well)!!

Like I mentioned earlier, this was our second cruise. For our first cruise,we had booked the stateroom nearly 10 months earlier than the cruise date. Besides, it was a three-night cruise with a day in Nassau and one in Castaway Cay. As a result, we had had ample time to plan whether to purchase any excursions or not.

This time around, though we purchased the tickets about a month or so before the cruise date, it was - for us - a last-minute decision. As a result, we did not really have a lot of time to plan out the cruise, leave alone the shore excursion. Suffice it to say that we did not even get the kids pre-registered for their respective camps.

Anyway, we had to figure out pretty quickly what we wanted to do so that the tickets didn't run out. As there was plenty of disagreement to go around on the choice of what to do, I hit upon an idea. We had been given a list of all shore excursions - subject to availability and guest minimums (if not enough cruisers expressed interest, an excursion could potentially be cancelled - though I have no idea how often that happens). I decided that I would - on the first night after the rest of the family had slept - read through the descriptions and X out those I definitely had no interest in (or it was too pricey in my opinion). In the morning, DW and kids could look through the one not Xed out and select what they wanted to do ... while I watched cricket at the Sports Bar. Cricket was being played - the World Cup - in Bangladesh during our cruise. The timings were ideal for me - the games were in the evening, i.e., very early in EDT/Ship's Time.

As a result of this arrangement, we decided the following:

- Cozumel: local tour and "Mayan village" (about $30 per person; three hours)

- Belize: a visit to Xunantunich (about $90 per person; included lunch; seven hours)

- Roatan: the aerial chairlift to the beach ($12 per adult and $7 per kid)

- Cayman Islands: nothing appealed to us

Here is some background. DS is pretty good at swimming. I am OK. DD can swim but I would put myself above her in skill level. DW is not a water person (for that matter, none of us is, but I am saying this in relative terms ;-). Besides, we (DS and I) did not have a good time with our previous snorkelling experience so we were not candidates for subjecting ourselves to more of that. Also, living so close to SeaWorld in the Central Florida area means that we are inured to the attractions of dolphins and sting rays and the like (if not turned off by the one that killed Steve Irwin). So, it was easy for us to unanimously cross out the shore excursions that involved any of these.

In addition, I wanted to keep the budget as low as we could while still enjoying as much as we could. So, we did not want to choose the most expensive item on the list at each place.

We also did not want to get really tired out after taking excursion after excursion in the sun for four days in a row. We were reminded of this on the fourth day, but more on that later.

Last but definitely not the least - in fact this was probably one of the biggest factors - we wanted to make sure that if we were, in fact, going on a longer excursion at one of the tender ports (Belize and Grand Cayman), we had to go with Carnival, as we did not want to get left behind for any reason! In any event, we opted for Xunantunich instead of the ruins in Mexico because a) we wanted to do one or the other, b) the Mexican one was (if I remember right) more expensive and c) the Xunantunich one took us a long way into Belize (it was only later that I realized that not only did it take us across the width of Belize, but that it also almost took us into Guatemala!).

i really enjoyed reading your review. Thank you for posting the Fun times. your pictures are great.

 

Actually, I have been highly irritated at Carnival Management..( The beards..not crew and staffs on ships. they are extraordinary nice and hard working folks)

 

You have about sold me on booking aboard the Liberty.

 

Did it have a sports bar? For My Husband, who only is obsessed during football season, but it would be nice to know.

 

My daughter...a vegan who is also a marathon runner and slim as anything ( she reminds me of this when I say she needs protein and more iron) ate the Indian alternative entree three times. One of the wait staff was concerned that she did not know how spicy it would be, and he asked her if she was sure. when she ate every bite, and shared with her husband, he came over and joked with her. that was such a nice gesture. They go to Indian restaurants, Thai and Arabic ones too. the younger generations are much more cosmopolitan than our generation was...and I mean past 60, which I am. My idea of spicy is home made chilli.

 

This is probably way before your time, but when we were young "the Prophet" was the spiritual big thing. Not in not being a Christian any longer, but studying the writings..poems of that book. I think he was Hindu. Maybe Buddist.We took some verses from it and made them into our wedding vows.

My favorite still......."Not a single leaf falls from the tree without the knowledge of the entire tree." That is so true.

Thanks again for the review.

Thank you for your kind words, but I really hope I haven't sold you on the Liberty. I say that because a review is obviously pretty subjective. And though I was all gung ho when I got off the ship, reading other posts here and understanding their perspectives makes me aware that I could still be a minority (though maybe not on the "Carnival" section of the Cruisecritic boards :-) So, I would really hope that you do your homework and talk to other folks as well. To give you a few quick examples ...

- occupied chairs on the Lido deck: We couldn't have cared less as we are not into sunbathing. So, if that is a big issue, you would need to check on what others say about it (whether chairs were available or not)

- evening shows: Though we did watch a couple, we are not big fans, so I have no clue of where they rate compared to the competition.

- stand-up comedy: Ditto.

- We didn't enter the casino ... except to sidestep the throngs waiting for their evening photos ;-) ... so cannot give tips there either.

- Sports Bar: Yes, this I can talk about. If the same crew is still on board, I am sure you will be happy (and you will likely be happy even with the replacements). Dimitor at the Sports Bar was nice enough to set me up with the cricket match I wanted to watch on both the Sea Days. Besides, they leave the TVs on overnight and the door open, so if you get there early in the day (they man the area only in the afternoons, unless it is a Sea Day) you can watch (no sound) whatever is on. The one snafu is that you cannot depend on the specific channel that you want being on. Even though the staff had set the channel I asked for, on two of the days, the pre-programming kicked in and switched it out at night (that makes sense, as the pre-programming is probably set so that the more popular games will air in the mornings when staff is absent).

- I was unsure whether it was worth anybody's while for me to post Indian food photos, but now it looks like I have two votes. And as two > zero, I will include those photos as part of the narrative. [it really is a different era from when you were a kid or when even I was a kid - now folks post photos of anything and everything they fancy, don't they? ;-) ] Nice to know your daughter is a marathon runner and a vegan to boot. I wonder how she gets her vitamin B-12 - I am under doctor's orders to take those chewies. BTW, I walked/jogged my first 8k last weekend. That is about as far as I would want to subject myself to ;-)

- I am sorry I don't think I've heard about The Prophet. I will google and find out. Like you said, it is probably a Buddhism-related book.

Cozumel day dawned with a few clouds in the sky. Because of them, I managed to get a couple of good shots at the sunrise.

A close-up ...

We ate at the Lido buffet area. As I wrote previously, I got a couple of burritos and helped myself to the salsa, lettuce, etc. I also discovered the yummy cheesy bread at the same Blue Iguana Cantina area.

As we were eating, we looked out and found out that passengers were also disembarking from the ship onto Mexican soil. But we had plenty of time, given that we were supposed to meet our excursion part (more on that in the next post) at the end of the pier only at about 10:30 am ("SHIP'S TIME," as we had drummed into us multiple times throughout the cruise!!).

Didn't really understand what this structure was all about - any idea what those yellow bridge-like things are called and what their function is?

After taking our time, we came down and stepped off the ship; upon alighting, we came across this mermaid as part of the 'gangway pictures'. She's the Carnival incarnation of Ariel. ;-)

We then observed how the ship had been secured to the pier/dock.

Cozumel Info

Fun Times

LOL 2cruzen, I wasn't even gonna go there but you didn't hear us, what you heard would have been the two ladies in the cabin next to us, woke both DH & me up twice during the week, they have a very healthy relationship!

 

Sorry we didn't get to meet up and I cannot believe last week I was having a Bailey's on my balcony and now I am having it on my living room sofa!

 

Kindle Fire using Taptalk app

I was on the Liberty the week before you and only got done posting the first sea day last Saturday/Sunday - been busy during the week. You are pre-empting my review - I am NOT HAPPY.

Just kidding. :D Enjoying your posts and photos.

PS: I am just slower ... but the tortoise always wins the race ;-)

I thought that I could go back and edit my original post, but am unable to do so. So, here are the Fun Times once more, this time from Photobucket.

Do you happen to have the kids club schedules? I'm interested in the activities on the first day - like orientation and the family dance party. Just wondering what time they are in case we try to boon the steakhouse.

 

Thanks!

 

 

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I was unaware of a family dance party, but then I did not really check out those schedules - it was between DW, DS and DD. Let me see if I can find those schedules - I might or might not be able to find them (I am the packrat of the family). :-( If I do, I will scan and post.

I re-posted the Fun Times for the first day - the youth program orientation took place at 5:15 pm on Day One (in our case, this was before the ship sailed out).

Here are the Fun Times for the day 2 of our cruise - the first Sea Day.

Thank you. I am making a book of our cruise at Walgreens for J.R. for Christmas. Shhh! :D I think he will love it & it has been extremely easy to do (except for choosing the photos to use :eek:).

I will eventually get around to scrapbooking our trip & then I will probably use almost all of our photos! :D

Juli

Check out winkflash - every now and then they run a sale of their 100 page photobooks for about $35 including shipping.

After dinner, I don't remember doing anything of note that first night. On the morning of the second day, I got up pretty early to watch the sunrise. It was the only day I could get a decent photo of the sunrise. I walked/jogged/ran about a couple of miles on the jogging track on most of the mornings. Here are a few photos of the sunrise, the jogging track and other folks enjoying the sunrise:

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

I will upload the Fun Times chronologically in my posts. That way everyone should be able to view them.

What is the difference between Western Caribbean and Exotic Western Caribbean.

I am sorry I cannot really help with the menu too much because we went off menu after that first day. I did not even pay any attention to the non-vegetarian options anyway so I won't be of much help either.

I don't think we had Creme brulee even once - that said, I probably would not have had it because we had got it during our Disney Cruise and I did not really like it all that much.

Did you mean to ask if we ordered anything outside of the menu when you said "off menu"? Either way, my answer is that we got the Indian vegetarian dishes daily, plus a couple of days we got the vegetarian entree from the menu as well. But other than that, we did not get anything outside the menu. Well, DD got chocolate milk almost everyday, but we did not even ask for the kid's menu, which folks here have discussed in other threads.

And just like that, it is time to get ready for dinner. Here is a shot of the towel animal left in the room ...

... and a couple in the corridor where the stewards have been practicing :-)

We were assigned table 379 in the Silver Olympian Restaurant on the Lobby Deck (Deck Three). As our room was in the aft of the ship, it was just a couple of flights of stairs up. But, as we later learned, it was difficult to get to the lobby this way. One had to go all the way to Deck Five, walk across the cigarette smoke infested area surrounding the casino then walk down to get to the lobby for Guest Services/Shore Excursions.

We had a chick-pea based entree for dinner, which was the only vegetarian option of the night, but we were set for the rest of the cruise because we requested an Indian vegetarian option if available (and it was, of course) - we were pampered royally for the remainder of our time on the ship.

I, a melting chocolate lava cake virgin, opted for the tiramisu (an OK choice but obviously not the best). DD went for her favorite Apple Pie. DS went for the lava cake and suddenly, I was a lava cake virgin no more! Don't remember and can't tell by the photo what DW had.

Some unique buildings

Are we there yet? We are ... almost ...

... and then we are in the Atlantic Ocean!

This is the best I could get of the sunset that day :-(

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.

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

A Miami tour bus in action

Ferry being loaded with cars

Palm trees swaying in the breeze

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 ...

... the gangway plank is pulled ...

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

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 ...

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

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