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Awesome Time aboard the newly revised Freedom of the Seas!

Hackpba

By Hackpba,
in Royal Caribbean International

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Hackpba

Hackpba

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This was our second time sailing on a Freedom class ship. Last year we sailed on the Liberty of the Seas and had an awesome time including winning at Bingo with the price being a FREE CRUISE!! So this review is of the "Free" cruise we just took on the Freedom of the Seas!

 

We sailed out on April 3, 2011. Flying into the Orlando Airport is always an easy step and usually get some great low rates. This time we flew on Southwest Airlines and took advantage of their bags fly free as you know we always overpack for the cruises. My wife and I were traveling with her brother and his wife. We decided to stay in Orlando for a couple of days before the cruise and rent an SUV to drive around and the drive the 50 mile trip from Orlando to Port Canaveral. We like to stay at the Hampton Inn near Lake Buena Vista and were not disappointed. It is near several sites and of course includes free breakfast. We ate at Kobe Japanese Restaurant and loved it! We chose to rent from Budget since they have a site about a mile from the Port. On Sunday we drive to the Port and dropped the girls and all the luggage off, then dropped the car off. Budget offers a free shuttle and we were back at the Port in no time!

 

We arrived around 10am and was on the ship at 11:15am. The check in was a lot easier than when when we sailed out of Miami. Sail away was a lot of fun as you go down a long area where there were several folks out waving back at you. Again in Miami you just leave by South Beach but no one was watching. We even had someone snap a picture of the ship leaving and post it on our meet n mingle thread! Speaking of the meet n mingle we had an awesome group of folks on it. We ended up having 117 register for the party and arranged to have a cabin crawl (that showed a hump balcony, aft balcony, promenade cabin, junior suite and an owners suite!) we also did a slot pull and had 29 folks put in $10 and take three spins we cashed out for $7.31 each, bummer!

 

We were blessed with warm days and sunny sky's each day. It was spring break time for the kids on the east coast but you really could not tell as the ship is so large they were scattered all over the ship and the ones I saw were well behaved.

 

We were also fortunate to have Graham Seymour as our cruise director! He was better than advertised and kept us all laughing all week long. We even has his own stand up comedy show that is not to be missed. He tapes a morning show reviewing the days activities that is very informative and funny at the same time. Our captain, Rob Hempstead was very entertaining as well. It was nice to have a captain who was Rhode Island that spoke clear English for a change and a since of humor to boot.

 

The new enhancements on the ship were very nice. We eat a cupcake from the cupcake cupboard and loved the red velvet one. The new interactive screens on each floor and outside the dining room were a nice touch and made it easy to find things on the ship. The big screen over the main pool was a site to see! I was happy to find out that they did not run movies and TV shows all day long and had it off while we were in port. On our cruise we were able to watch the NCAA championship game on Monday night while we were at sea, how cool was that! I was surprised to see they were still working on some touch ups while we were cruising and had some of the stairs closed while they were taking down and putting up new wall paper.

 

I will continue my posting later as it is getting late. If someone will tell me how to post pictures I would be happy to share some.

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redzinf

redzinf

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Some recent Freedom reviews are highly negative about food in the MDR and WJ. How did you find it?

Rick and Deirdra

 

Also, what do you recommend doing or going to right after you board? I keep reading about the WJ for lunch, but what about Cafe Promenade instead?

 

Thanks for your review. It's good to read current stuff after Freedom's drydock, as we leave in a little over a week :)

 

Redzinf

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SherriZ366

SherriZ366

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How was the food on your cruise? Another poster who went the first week out of dry dock (I think) said it was terrible in the WJ and then another poster said it was bad in the Main Dining Room. We sailed on FOS in Feb. and the food in the MDR was good banquet food with some standouts.

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SherriZ366

SherriZ366

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How was the food on your cruise? Another poster who went the first week out of dry dock (I think) said it was terrible in the WJ and then another poster said it was bad in the Main Dining Room. We sailed on FOS in Feb. and the food in the MDR was good banquet food with some standouts.
Actually think the posters who did not like the food was on 4/3 cruise.
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