Freedom-Caribbean 1/6/18-1/14/18 photo review

I love reading reviews before I sail and I always promise myself that I will return the favor by doing a review when I return and for some reason it is always hard to motivate myself to do the review! So here I am!

I will start with a general review and then see if I can get the photos to work.

Cruising: Hubby & myself, 57 & 55, out of Galveston, visiting Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Montego Bay

Ship: The Freedom is a bit worn in spots; the curtains in our cabin were frayed at the bottom to the point where I got my feet caught in them! These ships take a lot of abuse so I try not to be to hard on the review. Also our last cruise was on the Vista so there were things we missed, I think we got spoiled by the Vista. We missed the outdoor areas on the bars and venues. We missed the larger Red Frog Pub with 3 different brews and many self serve taps. We missed the large aft pool area. Oh well, the Freedom is a much smaller ship!

Crew: All very nice, Carnival does a good job. I am sorry for the cut back in service in some areas, but I understand that they are trying to keep it affordable.

Food: Excellent overall. We have cruised NCL and Royal Caribbean also and we think Carnival has the best food.

Ports: Great. We had some rain and some rough seas, but Carnival can't control that!

We have a youtube posted of the trip. I am not sure if I am allowed to post a link? Does anyone know? You can find our channel at Sunny Junket.

Here is a photo to get started. Can you see it?

Your picture is lovely. I am especially looking forward to your review since I recently booked our first Freedom cruise.

Yes, very nice lighting in the photo.:)

Good start. I am sailing in April so looking forward to your review.

Looking forward to your review. We sail on her in 19 days for our 2nd time.

My only Carnival cruise to date was aboard the Freedom. We had a great time when we sailed.

OK! Glad to know that I got the picture on there!

We like to make our trip last as long as possible so even though we were just driving from Dallas we took 2 nights to get to Galveston.

Our first stop was in Huntsville (Hey, there isn't that much on 45 between Dallas and Houston!) We had a great dinner and Happy hour at Carbonero Rotisserie Charbroiled Chicken & Steaks

We stayed at The Days Inn & Suites Huntsville and it was very comfortable.

The next morning we visited the Texas Prison Museum. It was quite interesting.

This fountain was frozen:

After leaving Huntsville we headed down to Galveston.

We had to stop at Buc-ees!

We checked into our hotel. The Harbor House

It was a lovely hotel

With a great view of the marina

Next we went to check out Galveston Island Brewery

The coolest thing was the next morning we could watch the Freedom arrive in port from our hotel room!!

She backs in, so be warned that if you are eating breakfast in the dining room while she is backing in--hold on to your cups! The vibrations were shaking the dishes off the tables!

Here are some more Galveston pics:

The Harbor House Hotel breakfast was just pastries and fruit. Hubby checked it out, I didn't look at it. We walked across the street to Starbucks instead. We got there at about 9ish, we were just ahead of the crowd. It started filling up with people and luggage and the line was out the door when we left. Next we went back to the hotel and got our stuff. Since we drove we parked our car at EZ Cruise Parking. It was $50 if you walk and carry your own luggage and since we pack light this was an easy decision. The attendant at EZ Cruise was very nice, our truck is big and extra long with a trailer hitch and he helped us find an appropriate spot for the truck.

Then we headed to the terminal. Our check in time was between 11:30& 12:00. We got there at about 11:00 and went straight in and sat in our group 6 spot. It wasn't long before they started calling the groups and it went fast and smooth. They now take your sail & sign picture while in that boarding line with hand held devices and most seem to just use your passport picture. Then you don't get your card until 1:30 when you are allowed to go to your room...it's waiting in your mail box.

We went to the Lido deck and got food! Guy's burger!

This is one of the tables at Guy's and it's my favorite because my home town is Whittier!!

Now a very cool thing happened. We were sitting, people watching on the back lido deck and the maitre d' came up and started talking to us. He then invited us to a private tasting in the kitchen that evening! We were so excited.

It ended up being us and one other couple and we tasted lots of stuff with the head chef telling about the new dishes!

Another cool thing is that we really hit it off with the other couple (above) and we ended up having dinner with them almost every night.

Of course before all that fun food tasting we had to do the muster thing and explore the ship!

Our room- 6209

Cigar tables:

Doing this same itinerary in July on the breeze - looking forward to the rest of your review!

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Our first full day was a sea day. The temp was cool and the sea was rough. I don't know what we did except relax. At some point we watched a movie in the room....47 Meters Down....it was dumb but a little scary! I was annoyed at myself for forgetting to bring our Quiddler game.

I didn't take many food pictures on this trip because they all look a like from one cruise to the next!

The next day we arrived in Cozumel:

In Cozumel we did the SPECTACULAR SHORE SNORKEL WITH MEXICAN LUNCH. We have been to Cozumel many times and we usually do some beach excursion. Carnival had a special offer where if you booked all three ports you got 20% off so that's what I did otherwise we might have just winged it on our own. I chose this excursion because it left later than the others!

We got off the boat and met up with our group. It was very busy, but organized. We got in taxis and went to the beach. It was a short drive. This was a rocky beach and though it was warm, it wasn't super hot. We opted not to snorkel and we just enjoyed the view. Then we had a fajita lunch and a tequila tasting!

The prices in the port area were high. The beer prices were regular US prices not like when you are away from the tourist area and the souvenir prices seemed high. I am not a big shopper but I heard a lady ask about a price on a cheap looking bag and the man said $45! The lady laughed and so did I!

Stop 2 Grand Cayman. Here we did STINGRAY SANDBAR, HELL &; TURTLE CENTER EXPERIENCE because sometimes you have to do it all!

We have done the stingray thing before many years ago and I think there were more rays then. I don't know if this is due to the weather or what. We had a cool, rainy ride out to the sand bar. You don't have to snorkel here it's really, as I heard it called, a stingray wading pool.

Our next stop was Hell, which is quite silly and not even nice, so appropriate to be avoided

Our last stop in Grand Cayman was the turtle farm. We also stopped at some rum cake place, where we bought some beer! I loved the turtle farm and holding the baby turtle made my day.

Tendering back to the ship:

more soon...........

Quick question... if you don’t get your Sail & Sign card until 1:30, how do you buy a cocktail before then? Please don’t tell me I have to wait until my room is ready before I can have a drink!

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Quick question... if you don’t get your Sail & Sign card until 1:30, how do you buy a cocktail before then? Please don’t tell me I have to wait until my room is ready before I can have a drink!

 

 

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Not to worry--they would never limit your ability to spend $$!! ;p I think we just gave our room number...I don't remember exactly, but drinks were readily available!

Good to hear!

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Our 3rd stop was Montego Bay. It rained heavily this day and I heard people say they were glad they didn't plan an excursion here, but we had one of our best excursions EVER!!

We also had a funny thing happen when getting off the ship. The ship was due in to Montego Bay at 8:00am. We were told to meet our Carnival excursion off the ship at 8:30. We did the BAMBOO RAFTING ON THE GREAT RIVER. So a little after 8 we headed down to the gangway, there were A LOT of people down there waiting to get off so we paused to see where we should go and we were met with very grouchy, hostile people who informed us that they had been waiting since 6:45am and we needed to go to the end of the line! (I don't know why they had been waiting so long and they must have been hangry!!) So we wound our way around and down hallways to the end of the line--- it was a long line! Those of us at the end of the line got a chuckle about the open hostility we encountered at the front of the line. A few minutes later guess what happened? They opened a 2nd gangway right behind us and we ended up being about the 5th people off the boat!

So off we went on our awesome excursion!

Our host/captain was Noel

We got a limestone foot mask

And a fresh coconut with straws that he cut from the bamboo

More of our raft adventure:

Then when we got back to the boat it was pouring!!!

We had 2 more sea days after this. The first one was warm and wonderful. We drank and watched the antics around the pool.

Kiss on the lips--my favorite!

Our final sea day was cold and rough. We spent a long time at the aft pool that has a cover over it and I read for hours. We watched the bean bag toss contest at the Red Frog and just took it easy.

Over the week we went to a couple of shows, they were fun. Hubby doesn't really like them. We enjoy the long dinner time and we had fun with our new friends.

Disembarking--we did the carry your own stuff off. We went to the dining room for breakfast at about 7 and then back to our room to get our bags and be out by 8:30. We were off the ship by 10. It all went as smoothly as possible. Our friends got to stay on for a back to back....that is one of our cruise goals!

That is all I can think of right now, please feel free to ask any questions!

Thank you for reading and happy cruising!!

Nice review....we loved the Freedom the two times we went on last year

Thanks for the review and photos.

Thanks for your review. I enjoyed the pics. Looking forward to boarding the Freedom in less than two weeks. The raft trip looks relaxing, yes?