Give me Liberty AND give me a fantastic family vacation- trip report 4/1-4/4

 

I was pretty tired and had gotten sunburn in a few patches where I missed the sunscreen, so I went to bed with the kids while Mark went out to try the piano bar. We really enjoyed the piano bar on the Ecstasy, but Mark said that this one wasn’t as good. The singer’s voice was going and there wasn’t much of a crowd. Oh well,maybe next cruise!

We also really enjoy the piano bar but have had a few "misses." I'm sad to hear yours wasn't too good. I had to look it up and am delighted to see your singer got off after your cruise and we will have someone else! Can't wait to check her out.

Loving your review!

Enjoying your review and photos, your family is so cute!

Enjoying the review. We sail on Liberty for the first time in January. So it's nice to see what's in store.

We did the same thing in Nassau with our girls in October. They loved it! I have a child that tends to have "meltdowns" so I'm familiar with the "looks and whispers". I was terrified when we took our first cruise, but thankfully, most people just looked the other way.

 

Weird question, but where did you get your sunglasses? They're adorable!

 

ETA: Just saw you said that you turned 40. You look much younger! Would never have guessed...

Thanks for reading along! I got my sunglasses at TJmaxx, but they are Vera Bradley, so you might have luck at one of their outlet stores. Thank you so much for your kind words, trust me, I FEEL ever bit of 40 ;)

I had that blue crab ravioli on my Valor sailing and I didn't like it at all. It looked good but it didn't have much flavor to me. Did you like it?

It was OK, I thought that the sauce was good, but the ravioli itself definitely could have used more flavor!

We also really enjoy the piano bar but have had a few "misses." I'm sad to hear yours wasn't too good. I had to look it up and am delighted to see your singer got off after your cruise and we will have someone else! Can't wait to check her out.

 

Loving your review!

Apparently the piano player made a point to tell everyone that this was his last sailing, so I guess he was pretty much over it. I hope you have a better experience

Enjoying your review and photos, your family is so cute!

Thank you so much!

Enjoying the review. We sail on Liberty for the first time in January. So it's nice to see what's in store.

Thank you for reading along!

Day 3- Princess Cays

The boys were up bright and early this morning excited for another day at the beach! I had never been to Princess Cays before, so I was also pretty excited to visit a new island of the Bahamas. We headed down to breakfast at the buffet, which was wasn’t too crowded yet, we did a good job of missing the rush. While we were eating we started to hear some of the tenders being called so I encouraged the kids to finish up so we could go ahead and get off the ship.

One of the things I was considering was purchasing Faster to the Fun, I thought that getting on early would be helpful and I wasn’t sure how tendering was going to go, so getting priority seemed like it might be helpful. Well, on both accounts I found that Faster to the Fun wasn’t necessary, we got on the ship lickety-split right after our 11:30 boarding time, and then we weren’t even ready to go for the first priority tender. We also didn’t have any problems that necessitated visiting Guest Services, so that wouldn’t have been useful either. In the end I’m really glad we didn’t purchase Faster to the Fun, I just don’t see the value for our family, and I won’t consider it in the future, but YMMV.

Once we were finished with breakfast, Mark suggested we walkover to get our tender sticker, just in case there was a long wait. The tender sticker location was just past the casino, which gave my kids the opportunity to ogle the “arcade where you can win money”. My kids had never seen a casino before and it just blew their minds. They were particularly obsessed with the cash crane game, probably since they have seen so many of those toy cranes before. The first time we walked by it, Everett stopped dead in his tracks, stared at it for a second, and asked “Is that real money?” , you could see the wheels turning in his head- “you can win REAL money?”. I tried explaining to him that no one wins,just like no one gets stuffed animals from the crane game, but I think we might have a future gambler on our hands. He spent the rest of the cruise telling me that it “was only 10 more years until he could go in the casino”. Great, just great.

Anyway, we went to go get our sticker, but apparently you can’t get a sticker until you are all ready to go, so back to our room we went to get our beach bags. Once we had gathered all our stuff, they were making announcements that there was a tender special and that anyone could go get on the tender without needing a sticker. That was super convenient, and we headed down to disembark. There was a line, but it went smoothly and quickly and soon we were seated on a tender headed to Princess Cays.

The first order of business was finding some beach chairs and hopefully some shade. We weren’t having too much luck with the shade part so we decided to rent a clamshell for$30. It was a great decision, I had a little burn from yesterday and Mark forgot to put sunscreen on his neck the day before, so he was really red. It was warm inside the clamshell, but it didn’t bother me too much, and Mark just got up and jumped in the ocean if he got too hot. Next time I think we’ll bring the battery powered fans we had for the kids strollers when they were younger. They wouldn’t take up too much space in the beach bag and the air movement would make all the difference.

The kids wanted nothing to do with relaxing and headedstraight for the sand and water!

Now, I had heard over and over again about how rocky the beach was at princess cays and that water shoes were a necessity. I diligently packed them, thinking that the beach would be mostly rocks and I was really pleasantly surprised when we arrived. There is some crushed up shell/coral around the water line, but nothing too terrible, and we didn’t even end up wearing our water shoes. The beach was beautiful and sandy, it felt like paradise!

Day 3- Princess Cays- cont

Once the boys were busy and Mark was relaxing, I decided to take a walk around to check out all of Princess Cay.

I made some important discoveries, like, don’t rent a cabana because they aren’t even on the beach!

The cabanas looked nice, but they were up on a ledge, and there was no way to access the water or the sandy beach. I would have been really disappointed if I had rented one, and that’s probably why most of them were empty!

View from the cabanas, pretty but no sand!

Day 3- Princess Cays- con't

I was also able to get some nice pictures of the ship

I found the snorkel area, which looked really nice, it is something to look forward too when the boys get a little older.

I walked back to where the tender docked and I made another discovery, if when you get off the tender and when facing the ocean, turn left,there are more beach areas over there that are much less crowded. We’ll certainly do that the next time we visit Princess Cays.

After my walk I headed back to do some relaxing, watched theboys, spent some time in the water, had a drink and lazed away until lunchtime.

A little after noon we rounded the kids up and made them leave the sand to each lunch. Neither of them were really happy about it, but the promise of cookies eventually lured them away. I don’t have any pictures from lunch, because I had my hands full with the kids and plates, but it was typical picnic fare. The kids and I had hot dogs, Mark had a burger and we each had some potato salad and cole slaw and cookies. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was serviceable, and it is nice to have a beach day with lunch included.

One thing to note (something I had missed prior to our cruise) is that bottomless bubbles doesn’t work on Princess Cays. I tried to get the kids a soda for lunch, and it was a no go. I’m sure this is in the fine print somewhere, but my husband signed up for the program on the Carnival website, and he either didn’t read it thoroughly or he forgot. The same goes for the Cheers program (we didn’t have it, but its also good to know).

After lunch the kids played some more and then we took a little walk.

I had noticed this morning that there were some cement pilings in the water next to the stingray enclosure and that you could stand in the water and see some fish there. The kids aren’t big enough or coordinated enough to really snorkel yet (well, maybe Everett could), but they could go stand quietly in the water and see the fish.

I don’t really know the names of any tropical fish, but we saw some striped ones and some silver ones and a blue one and one with spots. Everett and Foster really liked seeing the fish, and I’m thinking we might do some practicing in the pool this summer with a mask and snorkel and maybe they’ll be ready for some snorkeling on our December cruise.

The last tender back to the ship was at 4 pm, but around two the kids were getting tired so we decided to call it a day. It ended up being a good choice because the skies opened up shortly after we had gotten under the cover of the tender line. The line was long and it took us about an hour to get back, so I was glad we ended up leaving when we did. The boys were really good about the wait and well behaved on the tender back. For as tired and sandy as they were, there was no whining or meltdowns and I was really proud of them.

Once back on the ship we got cleaned up and ready for dinner and I took the boys to the kids club dinner and then met up with Mark in the dining room.

On this night I had the pumpkin soup, which was pretty good,and then I tried the escargot, which I wasn’t a big fan of.

I have had escargot a few times, but only at the Epcot food and wine festival, where the snails are in little individual buttered rolls. I found these escargot to be a little too rich, it was like a garlic butter gut bomb, so I only ate two. I’m going to pass on these in the future.

I also did the flat iron steak with the pepper corn sauce and the creamed spinach as a side. I ordered the steak medium, and it did come out medium, so I was pleased. The cut was OK, not too fatty and I liked the sauce and the creamed spinach.

For dessert that night I tried both the buttered popcorn pot de crème and the chocolate melting cake. I wasn’t sure if I would like the buttered popcorn dessert, so I decided to hedge my bets. I found the popcorn dessert to be OK, it was basically flan with a few popcorn kernels on top. I took a few bites, but I wouldn’t order it again. The melting cake was as good as always.

Thanks for the tip about the less crowded side of the beach i definitely took notes for that for July. We were given a clam shell when we visited Roatan and you are so right they are extremely hot in the inside no wind what so ever.

After dinner we went to catch the tail end of the string trios set, stopping on the way to take some photos around the ship.

We caught the last few songs, which were excellent as always, and then decided to try something different and head up to the casino. Mark and I aren’t big gamblers,in fact, casinos make me a little nervous because I don’t really know what I am doing and I find all the “serious” gamblers intimidating. All the same I figured I could at least give slot machines a shot.

I found a machine called “Whale Song” which looked good tome, Foster has been obsessed with “sea creatures” lately, so I thought it would bring me luck. I took my $10, but it in and gave it a whirl. I still don’t think I know what I am doing, but it was fun and I was able to play for a while with my $10. At once point I had doubled my money (a whopping $20!) but I ended up losing it all.

I decided I would try one more machine, and took my other$10 to Heidi’s beer house (or some such name). Our neighbors and best friends are German, so I thought maybe I’d have some luck there, but that machine pretty much ate my money and spit me out, so after that it was time to say my goodbyes to the casino.

We went to pick up the kids who had a lot of fun at camp Ocean and took them up to get ice cream. I took Everett up to the soft serve machine first, and left Foster to sit at the table. In the 20 seconds it took us to get Everett’s cone, I came back to this.

Foster is done!

Foster was toast after two consecutive beach days! Everett ate his ice cream, we carried Foster back to the room and all went to sleep!

Next up – our last day- Fun day at Sea

Thanks for the tip about the less crowded side of the beach i definitely took notes for that for July. We were given a clam shell when we visited Roatan and you are so right they are extremely hot in the inside no wind what so ever.

It would be better if the sides were mesh! We had some luck tilting the clamshell forward a little, that let in some breeze from the back, but we are definitely bringing the fans next time!

I’m taking my mom and sister on Liberty this May and we are renting a cabana on Princess Cays. My mom is celebrating her 80th bday so I wanted a space where she could relax with air conditioning if need be. Thanks for posting the pics of the water in front of the cabanas. Gives me a better idea of what to expect. Great review!

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Thank you so much for this review, it helps knowing what to expect especially since I’ve never visited Princess Cay. I’ll be on the May 13th sailing on Liberty - same itnerary, with my mom, daughter, best friend and her daughter. So excited!

Did you happen to save your Fun Times?

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Following..thank you for the play by play! We are going in December. Beautiful family!