BuffettFan1

Looking at the deck plans, it looks to me like 6371 would be over the MDR and not the Promenade. I would assume a quieter atmosphere there. Even so, from our last couple of cruises (FOS and LOS), the Promenade was not real loud unless there was something like a band playing or the parade going on. On our last cruise we were in 6224 on LOS, which is at the front of the ship and over the edge of the Star Lounge and if there was any noise from below, it wasn't anything memorable. Certainly nothing more than the normal noises from people in the hallway talking and going in and out of their rooms.

I have been researching this a little as our next cruise we will have our 1 year old son with us. On the royal caribbiean blog dot com site there is an article Cruising 101: Bringing an infant on a Royal Caribbean cruise that has a lot of good info. One part of that article says "Royal Caribbean offers a program called "Babies 2 Go!", where parents can pre-order Huggies diapers, wipes, and cream, as well as organic Gerber baby food to their room both before and throughout their cruise."

I haven't read about anybody using it. If they provide the food and diapers I am sure they have their price markup on it, but it may be worth it to not have to transport all of those supplies, especially in our case where an airplane is also involved.

I will keep following this thread to see what others have to say about all of your questions.

I can't speak for Carnival, but I sailed on LOS last year. The previous posters are both correct, the beverage package works just fine, but they have limited selection in liquor and beer brands because of the reason listed above. If buy drinks without a beverage package you also have to pay sales tax on the drinks. This all stops once in international waters, which is once the ship has gotten 12 miles off of the coast. This takes a few hours after departure from the port, I don't remember exactly how long last time because I was on vacation and had turned off anything that had a clock on it.

One other item to note with Texas liquor laws, if you buy bottles of liquor in other countries or duty free shops to bring home you will pay a tax on them, even if you are within your duty free limits to bring into the country. A quick search found a website statine it was $3.75 per liter.

Took a quick look at the Summer Infant LIV and it looks like it doesn't have the ability to connect to a wireless network, it just creates its own network which you connect your phone to and has an advertised range of 250 feet. Generally, these range ratings are under almost ideal conditions.

As chengkp said, metal just wreaks havoc on wireless signals, so anything trying to create its own wireless network would have to be close to whatever is trying to connect to it. Which would basically put you in the same scenario as before with your other camera. Plus this camera would be in the same frequency range as wireless network on the ship which may cause interference depending on which wireless channels each network was utilizing.

As for other camera options that could possibly connect to the ship's wifi, that may or may not work. It would depend on how the phone gets the video feed from the camera. If it is trying to connect directly to the camera, that will most likely be blocked by the wifi network. Most public facing wireless networks are not set up like a home network. Typically, on a home network all devices on the network can see and connect to each other, but for security most public facing wireless networks have an isolation feature that blocks devices on the networks from being able to see and connect to each other. If the camera pushed the video feed to somewhere on the internet and the phone was also going to that place on the internet to get the video feed, that might work, but would be dependant on the bandwidth of the internet connection.

Would appreciate any input on the hot tubs in Solarium - mainly at night. Did maintenance close them down at night? By night, I am referring to early evening- not late late night. We had an issue on navigator twice last year- staff kept closing one of the two hot tubs by 8. The family area had the hot tubs open but it was no way relaxing.- Children in and out , splashing. I understand maintained is required but the staff could have done this a little later in the evening .

Don't remember exact times when they were closed, but did see it happen at night. There are two hot tubs in the solarium and from what I remember they would only close one at a time.

 

The first night you will be told what are the gluten free options. From then on, they will ask you to pre-order for the next day. But even if you don't, you will be told at dinner what you can request to be made gluten free.

 

My wife is allergic to gluten and this was the exact same experience we had on Freedom and Liberty.

And the gluten free bread they bring you at dinner is amazing, I think some was even better than the regular bread options.

we inquired upon boarding for first night specialty discounts. None. But, first & second nights at MDR were excellent. The carved beef filet last night was better than I have ever had in 17 years of cruising. It was better than we experienced at a $$$ Dallas restaurant last month.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JR Neal in Schooner. We have not caught his performance. We have gone to the Hoof & Claw both nights to catch Derek Lewis. Very entertaining and has folks laughing and having a great time. We stayed until closing both nights which is about 3 hours. The longer the night goes the naughtier it tends to get. Not for guest under 18 or those easily offended.

 

 

 

Derek was actually playing with the poolside band today. Not sure if their guitar player was sick or what but it was a great treat to see him outside his normal venue.

Was on Liberty a couple weeks ago.

We saw JR Neal when we had stopped in Schooner for a drink, he was pretty good but nothing that made me purposely go back to see him again.

Derek Lewis was great. Very funny and he does a great job involving the audience on the show. We also saw him playing with poolside band one day, I just assumed he was bored and wanted something to do.

I have never had to use tender tickets before now. I have a private excursion booked, do I need to worry about not getting off the ship in an appropriate amount of time to make my excursion meeting?

When we were on Liberty and tendered at Belize and had an excursion booked with a local company. On the sea day before we got to the first port they had a process to give out tender tickets. For people not on excursions you went to deck 5 in front of the MDR and if you had a private excursion booked you went to deck 4 in front of the MDR.

They had a certain time to go there, 8-10AM or 9-11AM, can't remember exactly. When going there you have to bring the booking confirmation for your private excursion and they would give you enough tender tickets for the people on the excursion. I got to the location to get the tickets about 10 minutes early, was 4th or 5th in line, got tickets for tender #1.

On the day we were in Belize, people started lining up in the stairway and hallways as usual but they wouldn't allow anybody below deck 2. When the tender boat was ready the called for tender tickets 1 through 4, and those people were allowed down to deck 1 to board the tender boat.

Our waiter explained the tender ticket process to us the night before and I also believe it was listed in the cruise compass.

One more vote for Sabor. Had a free meal from the travel agent so we tried it out, went back a second time later in the week because we liked it so much.

For about the same price as the Belkin, you can get the Zilu 5 port USB charger, which has more ports and does not have a surge protector. Be advised that other Zilu USB chargers DO have surge protection, it is only the 5 port unit that doesn't. The Zilu product is also a 40w charger, while the Belkin is 5w, so your devices will charge faster.

I picked up the Zilu 5 port USB charger based off your info in another post a couple weeks ago. Found it for $20 on Amazon. Just got back from a week a 7 night cruise and it worked perfectly. Thanks for all the helpful info you provide on here.

I travel a lot for work and foresee this charger getting quite a bit of use as hotels usually don't have enough power outlets.

Wondering if the water slides and splash areas on the Liberty are salt water. Thanks

 

 

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Just got off Liberty this morning. All pools and slides are fresh water.

Last time we used ones with a clip on them and had to punch a hole in the card. I took a hole punch in my bag and it worked, but they will also do it for you.

For any purchases and for your door you have to swipe the card. There are some times when it is scanned, but I think that was mostly when getting and returning towels at the pool.

So may be booking a cruise in May can you use the 200 onboard credit towards a drink package for one of the persons in the room? Also if we don't get the non liquer package are there places to get soda and tea free at any time of the day

If you get a non liquor drink package you have the Coke glass that is refillable at the Coke Freestyle machines at any time. The soda machines where in Windjammer and the promenade.

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For our upcoming Radiance Hawaii cruise we have made reservations for the Mystery Dinner Theater. Anyone gone to this that can tell me what it is like? Sounds like it could be fun, especially after a few glasses of wine. :D

We did the Mystery Dinner Theater on Freedom last year and had a blast. Will probably do it again on Liberty in April.

In Georgetown we did the Catamaran Sail & Snorkel booked through the ship and really enjoyed it, stop at two different locations to snorkel, one being a sunken ship.

In Cozumel we did the Cozumel Bar Hop last time and had a blast, we are going to do it again in April. There several posts about it on here and a lot of reviews on tripadvisor.

We will be on Freedom in April and this will be our first time with MTD...is it in the main dining room?

Do you need to follow the same dress code for each evening?....formal, etc?

We have made our reservations already but just wanted alittle more info.

Thanks

Was on FOS a few months ago.

MTD was on deck 5 in the main dining room.

Same dress code and menu as everybody else.

We did make reservations most nights just to be safe that we didn't get delayed and end up being late to whatever evening event we were going to do. You can call or stop by the MDR during the day to make a reservation.

Which hotel offers free transfer to the port?

This site lists a few. http://www.galveston.com/parkandcruise/

We are staying at the Holiday Inn Resort.

Our plan for our cruise in April is to stay at a hotel on the beach in Galveston. The hotel does free transfer to the port and they are on the beach, so start the vacation fun a day earlier.

For the seapass, bring your own lanyard. They have a punch to make a hole in the seapass for you so you can clip it on the lanyard. We did this on our last cruise and it worked great.

My wife is allergic to gluten. On our first night in the MDR we told the waiter about it. He pointed out what food she could order on the menu that would be fine for her or they could quickly modify. After that, at the end of each meal each night he would bring out the menu for the next night and she could order whatever she wanted on the menu and they would prepare it the next day gluten free. They also have gluten free bread each night at dinner and my wife said it was the best gluten free bread she has ever had.

For your age I assume it is recorded on your seapass.

We always pack too much stuff, especially when it comes to clothes.

We have my time dining for the first time on our upcoming cruise. We try to eat a low salt diet, by necessity for D and by choice for L. Does anyone have experience with how a special diet request works with MTD?

We did MTD on our last trip on FOS and my wife has a pretty sensitive gluten allergy. On our first night in the MDR we told the waiter about her allergy. He spoke to one of the chefs and then gave us several options they could do for that nights dinner. Then at the end of dinner each night she received a copy of the menu for the next night and could pre-order her food and they would make sure to have it prepared for her as a gluten free item. The waiter handled it like it is just a normal procedure they have in place to handle people's dietary needs.

We were on Enchantment earlier this year and a group of guys were in a room a few doors down from ours. They were all pretty drunk and obnoxious by muster call. The next morning we noticed a security guard sitting outside their door. Our stateroom attendant told us one of them started a fight the night before and was confined to his stateroom for the rest of the trip. He said the Captain was being nice to this guy by not kicking him off the ship in Nassau and just making him stay in his room for the rest of the cruise.

He also told us that if they kick you off the ship they report you to the local authorities at the port and if charges are filed it is by the local government and their laws. And when they kick you off the ship they also inform the FBI of you shenanigans.

Chubby-bunny! 😄😄😄

One of the funniest things I have ever seen. I wish I could find the video of that somewhere.

We were in Labadee last week and had one of the beach beds and we really liked it. It was nice to have a place to get out of the sun and the bed was pretty comfortable to lay down on. The beds also come with a couple of floating mats and a cooler with iced down bottles of water.

The beds have dedicated staff of 4 or 5 people to take care of them which included drink service. The staff spent quite a bit of time policing the area, mostly to keep people off the beds who hadn't paid for them, but they also would not allow people to put the blue pop-up tents anywhere in front of the beds so they weren't blocking your view of the water.

The beds are on Adrenaline Beach, which is quite rocky, especially in the water, but is not an issue if you have water shoes. We enjoyed being on that beach as we were by the zip line and could see and hear everybody going on the ride. There was quite a bit of foot traffic in that area, so the further down the beach you can get the better.

We were just on Freedom last week and did the Catamaran Sail and Snorkel. Not the exact same tour, but close. You go to two different spots to snorkel, one is a reef and the other is a sunken ship. We had a blast, the sunken ship site was really cool. There were other people there scuba diving, but the water is shallow enough you can see the boat while snorkeling and can swim down 10-15 feet and be at the top of the boat. Got some great pics and videos with the GoPro.

We are supposed to dock at Port Canaveral at 6am on the Freedom. Just saw a flight that leaves MCO at 11 am. What are your experiences getting off at Port Canaveral and making it to the Orlando airport for an 11 am flight (I know the drive is about an hour) if we get arrange for a shuttle to be waiting for us when we disembark?

 

I have posted this in the homeports thread as well, but thought previous Freedom cruisers could off their opinion on this as well.

We arrived on FOS this morning and had a 12:00 flight out of MCO. We did self carry with our luggage and used Cocoa Beach Shuttle for transport. We were at MCO at 9 AM.

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