Jump to content
Cruise Critic Community

Carnival Freedom 3/10-3/18-a different perspective

Jules~Marie

By Jules~Marie,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

Recommended Posts

Jules~Marie

Jules~Marie

Posted
Posted

Hi all!

 

I haven't written a review on CC yet, so please be kind. :)

 

I know there's a few reviews floating around from this cruise, but I thought I'd write about the experiences that my group of 6 had. I think it's really interesting to read the different reviews and see what others thought of the same cruise.

 

The travelers-

To start, I'm Jules-26, my husband is Ed-26, we traveled with my brothers Joe-22, and Jake-26, and my sister Kristyl-28 and brother in law Jim-29. We've all cruised before with the exception of Jake, so we were really looking forward to showing him around.

 

The Rooms-

Ed and I were in room 6304. Mid-ship balcony near the elevators. I loved this location. We didn't use the balcony as much as I would have liked, but it was nice to be able to wake up to the sunshine every morning. My sister and BIL were in room 6214 and my brothers were in 6224. Those rooms were quite interesting. Room 6224 was TINY. Extremely small. Which was perfect for them since they barely spent any time there. They had a bunk bed to share, which was entertaining.

 

One major draw back that they all spoke of was the vibrations coming into and leaving port every day. I guess the thrusters or something must have really created some havoc in their rooms. So much so that glasses would fall off their shelves/dressers. This was very unfortunate because we normally arrived in port early in the morning. Jake was on the top bunk and said that it would vibrate so much he was afraid it was going to break. They did make a complaint to guest services. I really think they should put a disclaimer before booking those rooms that the vibrations will be very apparent and will most likely wake you up. They were all woken up very early on port days (with the exception of Curacao). Other than that the rooms were fine.

 

The stewards-

We had a very poor room steward. He was definitely not up to the Carnival standard that we're used to. Even my sister & brothers room steward acknowledged that ours was not personable. He never would bring us ice, even when we specifically asked for it, it appeared that the only thing he would do in our room was make the bed and then do the turn down service. When we arrived I took a picture of the dust on the dresser, it was that bad. On the other hand, my sister & brothers steward was great. They really liked him.

 

I have a lot of pictures that I'll post along with detailed review of the port days. We did the Seavis tour in DR, and that was very interesting!

 

This cruise had it's ups and downs. We avoided getting arrested (narrowly), the ship didn't tip over (although at times it felt like it would), and we just barely made it to our Seavis excursion. But through all of this we really had a great time and were able to laugh everything off.

 

I also have all of the Fun Times if anyone is interested. I will post Day 1 in a little while. (That's where we almost get arrested....lol)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
MickCruiser

MickCruiser

Posted
Posted

 

I also have all of the Fun Times if anyone is interested. I will post Day 1 in a little while. (That's where we almost get arrested....lol)

 

Arrested on Day 1....that's the sail-away day. You had problems getting on the boat in FLL??? :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
mimi'sgirl

mimi'sgirl

Posted
Posted

Yay! Thank you we are sailing this itinerary in Nov. and would love to see the Fun Times. I really like hearing the different perspectives from people in the same party. We have only cruised by ourselves. Also looking forward to what Jake thought as a first timer. You do have me a little nervous about the "thinking the boat was going to tip over" comment though so can't wait to hear more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Jules~Marie

Jules~Marie

Posted
  • Author
Posted

March 9th-

We live about 4 1/2 hours away from Fort Lauderdale. We decided to get a hotel for the night before the cruise left that way we wouldn't be rushed the day of. Originally, we were all going to take off work early and get to the hotel around 6pm. Work wasn't too forgiving for a couple of us, so we didn't leave our house until 9pm. This brought us to Plantation (where the hotel was) at 1:30am. We didn't have any traffic or problems getting in.

 

I used my Marriott rewards points to book us 2 rooms at the Residence Inn in Plantation. I got us a 1 bedroom suite and a queen room. The hotel was nice enough. The suite had 2 bedrooms and a fold out bed. The other room just had a queen bed. This worked out perfectly for the 6 of us. When we arrived, I received cookies for being a rewards member and I got to do a scratch off where I won 10% off my next Marriott stay and an extra 200 bonus points.

 

March 10-

Our hotel offered a hot breakfast for free, but it wasn't very good. The room was about 10 minutes from the port. On the way to the port we stopped at the nearest Best Buy so my brother could purchase a set of speakers to hook his IPhone up to during the cruise (this turned out badly at the end of the cruise...).

 

We booked Park N Go prior to the cruise. This was great!!! It was $69.78 total for 8 days. We had 2 cars that we parked there. We arrived at 10:30, they were busy but hustling to get everyone to the port. We had a TON of luggage between all of us. We parked and a van came up and the driver loaded all of our luggage onto the van and off we were to the port. This took a few minutes to get everything situated. We tipped him when we got to the port, and then tipped the porters that took our luggage from him.

 

We arrived at the port at 11am. We waited in line for all of 20 minutes before going through the scanners. My husband and I brought along a rolling suitcase with 12 waters and 12 blue gatorades. I knew going in that this would be inspected. My brother held our carry on that had 2 bottles of wine. They didn't even ask to look at that.

 

Warning to anyone trying to smuggle through the carry on! They shook every single one of my waters and Gatorades. 2 of the gatorades didn't "bubble" on the bottom for some reason. The guy checking became very suspicious and had a colleague check them out. I gave him permission to open it, which he did, and proceeded to sniff and waft the air for a good minute! It was hilarious. I told him to drink it if he wanted, but he just said they were good and sent me on my way. One interesting thing is they wouldn't let anyone stay with me when they checked my drinks. I'm very co-dependent, so I was nervous being left alone with my group moving forward. But no worries, they were all waiting on the other side for me.

 

After that, we went to the line to set up our on board accounts. When I say line, I really mean we walked up to the counters. It was awesome! No wait! When we were all through setting up the accounts, we were ushered into the embarkation photo area and then sent up the gangway! Woohoo! I've never been able to just walk through everything like that, it was great!

 

Unfortunately, this is where a few people in my group ran into a little...trouble. The cruise line had a policeman with a dog waiting at the front of gangway. We all know what the dog is for. Now I'm not going to pretend that everyone in the world is perfect and everyone "just says no", but I will guarantee that not one person in my group was carrying any illegal substances. My brother, husband and myself walked up the gangway with no problems. My other brother was making his way up when the dog caught a "whiff" of something. The policeman took my brother, sister and brother in law to some room to check them out while I went with my brother and husband up to the ship. I was so afraid that something had happened, but after about 2 minutes, up came the 3 of them strolling towards the ship. YAY! No worries, they just said the dog liked MY bag that my brother was carrying (that held the wine). Who knows what that dog smelled but I was mortified!!! I felt like a criminal, but all ended well and we headed up to Lido to get some lunch.

 

The downstairs area in Lido was packed, but I took the advice of everyone on CC and lead my group upstairs to Fish and Chips. Everyone was so surprised to see how empty this area was. My brother plugged in his stereo and we all listened to some music while we ate and waited for the rooms to become available.

 

More to come later; rooms, muster, and steakhouse! But first, some pictures of the hotel and the first day:

A sampling of all of the luggage (just my luggage and my husbands!)

SDC11474.jpg

Hotel room-

SDC11478.jpg

 

SDC11484.jpg

In the Park N Go van heading to the Port-

SDC11491.jpg

 

 

A glimpse of the ship!

CELLPICS_Eddie2.jpg

 

A view of the beautiful pier-

IMG_3021.jpg

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Jules~Marie

Jules~Marie

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Are my pictures too big? I thought I sized them all the same, but they look huge to me. If so, let me know and I'll re-size them all again. :)

 

Continuing with day 1.

After lunch we headed to the dining room to request a group table. I really didn't know what kind of ordeal this would be! The ling was HUGE! The boys definitely weren't happy about this, but I didn't want them going up to the rooms without us. I had purchased a Carnival cooler with beer/hat/mug for each room and also I had my sisters room decorated for her bday, so I didn't want them all seeing that without me! We waited in line for a good 30 minutes. It was extremely hot and the person ahead of us had very bad gas. He was actually 2 people ahead of us. The people directly in front of us were all suffering breathing in his essence. It was BAD. We finally were able to see the Maitre'd and request our table. He said he wasn't able to give us an answer right away, but if our tables were changed we would know about it the next day. Gasping for fresh air, my sister and I went running to our family and went up to see our rooms. My brothers received their cooler, my sister didn't (I bought the boys cooler through Bon Voyage, my sisters I got through the Carnival MasterCard points). She was pleasantly surprised to see her room decorated though.

 

We all decided to hang out for a while until Muster. The Muster drill went well, no problems. After that we went in search of the "secret deck". It was actually very simple. It was only a couple of doors down from my sisters room. We all hung out there until we sailed away. Sail away was great! The coast guard really had a blast circling our ship and honking their horn and waving. They were showing off, it was so funny. Tax dollars hard at work LOL. The people of Fort Lauderdale made it a lot of fun to sail away. They had fog horns and were cheering and waving the whole time. There were so many ships that left port that day, and they couldn't get enough of it!

 

After sail away, we went to see if we got our luggage (which we did). We all got dressed and headed for the steakhouse. We made our reservations for 8:30pm. I had checked with the girl from the steakhouse when we boarded to make sure all of our reservations had been accepted. The only one that went through was mine. So I had her add 4 people to my reservation. We each wanted our own so that we would each get a bottle of wine, but she said we'd get 2 bottles since there were so many of us. That worked for us!

 

The steakhouse was delicious. Almost all of us got the 5 rub steak (I'm sorry, I'm really bad at remembering what the foods were actually called). I did take some blurry food photos. I'll post them anyway. Our waitresses were very knowledgeable and friendly. We had a great time. I was a little embarrassed here and there, my brothers aren't used to such um.."high class" dining, but the waitress was very good at just showing them what to do with all of their forks and napkins and so on. It was pretty funny watching them adjust to the atmosphere.

 

The chef started us off with a "mini" tomato soup for some, and an adorable "mini" burger for the others. It was so cute, and SO delicious! I got a tomato salad, then the steak, and then the cheesecake for dessert (to share). The cheesecake wasn't as good this year as it was last year. It was tasteless. But everything else was delicious. The wine sommelier came by with our free bottle. We got one white and one red. His name was Marcus and we all really liked him. He informed us of the wine tasting the next day, so 4 of us decided to try it out. More on that later.

 

After eating such a big meal, we were pretty tired. Jake and Joe went to see the comedians while the rest of us went to bed.

 

Pictures-

IMG_3058.jpg

 

CELLPICS_Eddie7.jpg

 

The room-

SDC11509.jpg

 

SDC11512.jpg

 

SDC11514.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Jules~Marie

Jules~Marie

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Pictures from the steakhouse...can you believe I actually forgot to take a picture of the steak?! LOL sorry! Also, sorry again for the blurriness. I just found out that I'm supposed to hold the button down for the lens to adjust before taking the picture! haha oops!

 

 

Mini tomato soup-

SDC11547.jpg

 

Tomato salad-

SDC11552.jpg

 

Mini burger-

SDC11548.jpg

 

French Onion Soup (this was kind of tasteless too)-

SDC11549.jpg

 

Escargot (VERY good)-

SDC11550.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites
HeidiHo

HeidiHo

Posted
Posted

Unfortunately, this is where a few people in my group ran into a little...trouble. The cruise line had a policeman with a dog waiting at the front of gangway. We all know what the dog is for. Now I'm not going to pretend that everyone in the world is perfect and everyone "just says no", but I will guarantee that not one person in my group was carrying any illegal substances. My brother, husband and myself walked up the gangway with no problems. My other brother was making his way up when the dog caught a "whiff" of something. The policeman took my brother, sister and brother in law to some room to check them out while I went with my brother and husband up to the ship. I was so afraid that something had happened, but after about 2 minutes, up came the 3 of them strolling towards the ship. YAY! No worries, they just said the dog liked MY bag that my brother was carrying (that held the wine). Who knows what that dog smelled but I was mortified!!! I felt like a criminal, but all ended well and we headed up to Lido to get some lunch.

 

 

[/b]

 

At least they took them to a private area to search their belongings. When we sailed the Freedom last month apparently the dog alerted the officer to something in a woman's belongings and they just pulled her off to the side and searched everything right then and there where everyone could see.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
greely dan

greely dan

Posted
Posted

The Rooms-

Ed and I were in room 6304. Mid-ship balcony near the elevators. I loved this location. We didn't use the balcony as much as I would have liked, but it was nice to be able to wake up to the sunshine every morning. My sister and BIL were in room 6214 and my brothers were in 6224. Those rooms were quite interesting. Room 6224 was TINY. Extremely small. Which was perfect for them since they barely spent any time there. They had a bunk bed to share, which was entertaining.

 

The stewards-

We had a very poor room steward. He was definitely not up to the Carnival standard that we're used to. Even my sister & brothers room steward acknowledged that ours was not personable. He never would bring us ice, even when we specifically asked for it, it appeared that the only thing he would do in our room was make the bed and then do the turn down service. When we arrived I took a picture of the dust on the dresser, it was that bad. On the other hand, my sister & brothers steward was great. They really liked him.

 

 

Hi ,

We were in 6312, just down the hall...didn't realise we were neighbours.

I concur about the room steward, didn't meet him the whole trip, got only 3 towel animals the whole week.

Scott

Link to comment
Share on other sites
DebbieActon

DebbieActon

Posted
Posted

We were in 9265. JoJo was our cabin stewart. Super guy and a super job. We received 7 towel animals! We were cruising with 2 teens, maybe that makes a difference? My daughter saved them in the closet and on the last night she lay them all out on the bed with a thank you note.

 

It is funny how little things can make such a difference.

 

Enjoying the review and seeing the same cruise from another person's perspective.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing
  • Forum Jump
    • Categories
      • Welcome to Cruise Critic
      • Hurricane Zone 2024
      • Cruise Insurance Q&A w/ Steve Dasseos of Tripinsurancestore.com June 2024
      • New Cruisers
      • Cruise Lines “A – O”
      • Cruise Lines “P – Z”
      • River Cruising
      • ROLL CALLS
      • Cruise Critic News & Features
      • Digital Photography & Cruise Technology
      • Special Interest Cruising
      • Cruise Discussion Topics
      • UK Cruising
      • Australia & New Zealand Cruisers
      • Canadian Cruisers
      • North American Homeports
      • Ports of Call
      • Cruise Conversations
×
×
  • Create New...