Freedom OTS Trip Review - 2/16/14 (Western) - Playing “Clue” in the Caribbean!

[EmpressofPurple]

For those of you with teens don’t look for a daily version; this is the only one for the week. It lists general ideas but no details:

 

Teen Compass

 

 

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Hmm... did you notice that it says "for more information please check your teen daily compass"" ?!?:eek:

[fletch1027]

Hmm... did you notice that it says "for more information please check your teen daily compass"" ?!?:eek:

 

 

Yeah, that is pretty funny.

 

I forgot to mention that besides the touch screens by the elevators, my daughter said that there is a whiteboard in the "Living Room" where they write down the days activities...

[mickev99]

Wow, it's turning into a Roll Call sub forum. :D

 

Haha! Fletch1027, I hope you don't mind that I shared the link to your review on my June 22 roll call board. It looks like a few are following along. We are all anxious for our own cruise!!

 

Thanks for posting the teen activities. I'll share it with my niece. Did you daughter have trouble meeting people? My niece is very shy and is actually considering backing out because she is afraid of not making friends, which I don't think is even possible.

[S.A.M.J.R.]

Haha! Fletch1027, I hope you don't mind that I shared the link to your review on my June 22 roll call board. It looks like a few are following along. We are all anxious for our own cruise!!

 

Thanks for posting the teen activities. I'll share it with my niece. Did you daughter have trouble meeting people? My niece is very shy and is actually considering backing out because she is afraid of not making friends, which I don't think is even possible.

I'll have a 16yo DD on the cruise also. She has NO problems making friends that I've found. :D Maybe we should have them trade emails now. :p

[fletch1027]

I'll have a 16yo DD on the cruise also. She has NO problems making friends that I've found. :D Maybe we should have them trade emails now. :p

 

I will allude to it more as the review progresses, but she definitely did not have any problems making friends. By the 2nd day, there was a posse of 5-6 of them all roaming the ship & doing the various activities.

 

She should go, she will have a blast!

 

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[Cupcrazy]

Looking forward to more of this review! Thanks for posting

[fletch1027]

Some photos from DD’s first (of several) assaults on the flowrider during the week:

 

 

 

 

And of course a wipeout! :-)

 

 

 

After flowriding, it was time to head to our cabin to ditch our carry-on’s. We were on Deck 7 (#7449), in an interior cabin. This was a great cabin for a few reasons. It was interior, but only had one common wall with another cabin. It was also dead center between port / starboard which in theory will minimize movement. There was also another reason that relates to the title of my review that I will explain in the next post.

 

Here is a photo in case anyone wants to see what a cabin with a pulldown looks like:

 

 

 

Walid was our awesome cabin attendant for the week. He did a great job. He said he was the only crew person on the ship from Egypt, so that was interesting. We decided to just have him leave the bunk bed pulled down the whole time so he didn’t have to raise & lower it every day.

 

We were in tight quarters, but made it work. The only time it was an issue was the two times we were all trying to get ready for formal night at the same time. The other times we weren’t in the room enough to feel too cramped. That being said, three people would be the MAX I could tolerate. If we had two kids with us, we would have had to do a second cabin.

 

Although we checked in before noon, we didn't get our luggage until after dinner. My mild OCD had me picturing our luggage on some forgotten cart back at port, but alas it made it. The funny thing was that after dinner, we still didn't see it outside our door and more panic set in. We then opened our door to see that Walid had brought it in for us! Did I mention that he's awesome? :-)

 

Next, it was time for everyone’s favorite, the muster drill. We got through that, then we headed up to the helipad for the sail away.

 

I would have had more pictures, but we met up with another family that had a daughter the same age as ours that we met on the CC roll call board. That way she got a head start on meeting someone she could buddy around with. I did see this guy below that was showing us the way out of port:

 

 

 

Captain then came on the speaker sounding angry to tell us that we were going to be leaving 20-30 minutes late due to a couple people that were late arriving to the port. I think as soon as their feet touched Deck 4, Captain hit the thrusters. :-)

 

Due to us leaving late, the Magic got the jump on us. Is it just me or does that what I am assuming is crew area, look less like the Dream and more like the brig on the Black Pearl?

 

 

 

We had MTD on this cruise, so today we had dinner at 5:30. That worked out well, because we then were able to make the 7:00 welcome aboard show. Comedian was pretty funny. Mike Hunnerump was the CD for our cruise.

 

Teen Alert: If you are travelling with teens, make sure they DO NOT miss the “Teens 411” get together at 9:00pm in the Fuel dance room. That is the place they will meet the Teen Staff, get an intro to all of the events for the week and most importantly they will also get a chance to make some new friends that will cause them to want to spend as little time with their parents as possible. :-)

 

We wandered about for a while, relaxed in deck chairs, and then called it a day…

 

 

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[mickev99]

I'll have a 16yo DD on the cruise also. She has NO problems making friends that I've found. :D Maybe we should have them trade emails now. :p

 

Yeah, really! I think the biggest part of her fear is that she is spoiled because on her first and only cruise back in December, her best friend got to go with her, so she had an automatic buddy when they got on board. And her friend is very outgoing. I'm sure she will be just fine, but convincing her is another thing. She has until April to make a decision so we don't lose the deposit.

[TheGaDawgFan]

I do agree about Disney spending too much money on Magic Bands and not enough on rides.

 

Great start to your review and great pictures.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

[fletch1027]

Yeah, really! I think the biggest part of her fear is that she is spoiled because on her first and only cruise back in December, her best friend got to go with her, so she had an automatic buddy when they got on board. And her friend is very outgoing. I'm sure she will be just fine, but convincing her is another thing. She has until April to make a decision so we don't lose the deposit.

 

I think if she opens communication with someone else before leaving, she will have a much higher comfort level about going.

 

Our DD ended up meeting people from Canada, Sweeden, west coast, New York, etc that she wouldn't have had the chance to with different modes of vacationing...

 

 

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

[fletch1027]

It’s “so nice” the way the Western Caribbean sailings work out on Freedom. There is a sea day first to get you in the swing of things before sailing and a sea day on the last day as you wind down and start the depressing job of packing.

 

So for our sea day, we slept in a little, then headed to the WJ for breakfast. After breakfast, DD wanted to do the rock wall. After reminding her that she needed socks, we headed up there. She’s a pretty good athlete, so she didn’t have too much trouble Spider-Man’ing up the wall and ringing the bell. I positioned on the other side of the basketball court and got some pictures of her scooting up and ringing the bell at the top:

 

 

 

 

On the way back I stopped at the Library on Deck 7 and took a look around. I hadn’t spent much time there before, but it is a great place to relax and people watch. There were people reading, kids doing homework (yuck), a big puzzle in process, naps among other things. Looking at the picture below, you will notice a door in the back left corner labeled “Emergency Exit”. I made a mental note as I headed back to my cabin…

 

Freedom’s Library

 

If you look at a deck layout for Deck 7 below, in the aft area, the interior cabins are triple wide. We were in cabin # 7449. In order to get to our cabin, we go past the library, take a right, go down the hall, take another right, take a third right and our cabin is at the end of the hall on the left. Curiously, I noticed a door at the end of our hall also marked “Emergency Exit”. I tracked down our room steward Walid with a question. I asked him if that door at the end of our hall led into the library?? He said “yes”. I then asked if we were allowed to use it. He said “of course!”. This was an awesome discovery! Not only did our room have only one common wall to share with other cabins and zero foot traffic past our door, we were now only mere steps away from the aft stairs & elevators! I love this cabin!

 

The combination of the library and the “secret passage” / shortcut to our cabin reminded me of the game Clue and what made me title the trip review like I did. I don’t think I went the “long” way the rest of the cruise!! :-)

 

Deck 7

 

 

Tech Tip: While I am on the topic of cabins, it reminds me to mention that most of them (ours included) have only two power outlets. Between the three of us, we have several things to keep charged. One way I alleviated this was by purchasing this charging station (on the shelf by the mirror). The Amazon link is below. It was $20, and can charge up to five things at once off of one plug. The really cool thing is that at least two of the USB ports, can charge at the faster rate (2.1 amps) for things like tablets and some smartphones. As you can see by the photo, we had several things going at once at any given time.

 

Amazon charger link

 

 

iPhone 5, HTC One, Blackberry, and Nexus 7 happily charging away

 

 

More of Day 2 to come...

 

:D

[noleguy84]

I'm enjoying your review so far! We will be in cabin 7367 in a couple of months; I take it that your cabin was nice and quiet? I also saw that there was a library nearby which I'm hoping makes that an easy choice for noise level.

 

Also, how was it getting to and from your cabin to the various parts of the ship that you most visited? I'm not ashamed to say that I plan to take the elevator to and from the WJ/deck 11 quite often. :)

[vavasmom]

Your "moonset" Animal Kingdom Lodge photo is better than the Disney promo photos.

[fletch1027]

I'm enjoying your review so far! We will be in cabin 7367 in a couple of months; I take it that your cabin was nice and quiet? I also saw that there was a library nearby which I'm hoping makes that an easy choice for noise level.

 

Also, how was it getting to and from your cabin to the various parts of the ship that you most visited? I'm not ashamed to say that I plan to take the elevator to and from the WJ/deck 11 quite often. :)

 

 

We did not hear a peep from outside the room the whole 7 days. Probably more so from only having a cabin touching on one side (and a 2 person cabin at that) of ours. If you look at that piece of deck plan I posted, you can see that a lot of interior cabins have three shared walls with other cabins.

 

I think in regards to the library, decks 6, 7, and 8 have common areas in that space. The library is on 7, internet cafe on 8, and the NextCruise office is on 6. They are all pretty quiet for public areas. The library picture I posted doesn't show it, but the library has a hole in the roof that looks into the internet cafe.

 

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[fletch1027]

After my library secret passage discovery, DD went off with her new friends, and we changed and headed up to Deck 12 to stake out some chair real estate. By early morning, all of the chairs near the pool as well as all of the ones that are aligned like stadium seating between the pool bars are all taken. However, it is possible to find chairs up on Deck 12 overlooking either the pool or ocean. I am borrowing this image from my last trip review, but the scene was the same for me that afternoon. :-)

 

 

 

That constituted our afternoon until the three of us met in the cabin to get ready for our 4:30 freedom-ice.com show. Regarding the ice show, there are 4 performances during the week. It was the same times last week as it was last March, so I assume it is pretty consistent. Anyway, on day 2, there is a 2:30 and a 4:30 show. We chose the 4:30 so it wouldn’t disrupt our afternoon. Also with the 4:30 we went right from there to our 5:30 MTD reservation. I did book the 4:30 reservation online the week before. The place was full, but I’m not sure if it was all pre-reserved or if any walk ups got in.

 

Here are some photos from the show. It was the same as last time with the exception of the “headliner” that performs about halfway through. Last March there was a Russian girl that did ice skating with hoops as props and this time there was a magician & assistant that did some stuff like clothing quick changes and the like.

 

 

 

 

We sat towards the back because we knew we would need to leave 5-10 minutes early to get to our MTD reservation, so we did that. At this point, I would like to take some time to bring up a big negative MTD experience that happened on this cruise:

 

Last March we had MTD on Freedom as well. Both last year and last week we had reservations spanning the dinner hours. (as early as 5:30 - as late as 8:00). I think the MTD staff makes an effort (and I llike this a lot) to keep people in the same general area, because cruisers develop a relationship with the wait staff. Usually by Day 3, they know what you will be drinking, what kind of bread you like, etc. Last year, this process went off without a hitch. Day 1 through Day 7 we had zero issues. This cruise… not so much. It was nothing but problems every night at the MTD check-in. I think it started with the 1st night and that started a chain reaction that screwed up the other nights after that.

 

On the 1st night, we were seated right at 5:30 and introduced to our wait staff. They were good professionals, but not a lot of interaction or personality. About 10 minutes after we were seated, another person from the MTD desk escorted a group of four up near our table. By the looks of their pointing and chatting, it seemed like there was a snafu and our table was double-booked. They seated them somewhere else and we didn’t see them again.

 

Anyway, not on to tonight’s seating. We arrived at 5:30 and they told us something to the effect of “last night we seated you guys at the wrong table. We have fixed it now, so we will take you to your correct table”. Phrases like that seem odd in the concept of MTD, but they must pre-slot folks even though they may have different times each night. We were seated at our “new” table which was only a few tables away from last night, but on the other side of a divider wall. We were then introduced to one of the highlights of the cruise: Rodson and Hemsley. They are both from India and they were awesome! By the time we were through with dinner, the head waiter (Jody) came by and apologized for the mix-up last night, and we said no worries, we are perfectly happy where we are. As I will explain during the review, keeping Rodson & Hemsley was an ongoing battle that lasted the rest of the week. One positive experience from Day 2’s dinner was a request I made. I love Key Lime pie, and I read a few weeks ago on CC where someone had asked for it off menu. I know they have Key Lime, but not until Day 7, and I didn’t want to wait that long. I asked Rodson if I could order it even though it was off menu. He said no, but I could talk to the Head Waiter who handled special requests. Rodson pro-actively told Jody what I was asking for, because she came by about 10 minutes later and asked me if I wanted it tomorrow night. I said yes! And she said she would put in an order for it. If you are wondering how the Head Waiter earns their part of the daily gratuity, that is how... :-)

 

The Key Lime adventure will be another thing that I will update more as the days go by.

 

After dinner, DD went off to the nightly teen activities, and Jen wanted to go poolside to watch Valentines Day, which was about a year old rom-com that she had not seen yet. We headed up to do that, and on the way I was able to track down Puss-n-Boots (my favorite DreamWorks character) for a photo, which was something that I didn’t get around to doing last year:

 

 

 

For good measure, DD and I got a photo the night before with King Julian:

 

 

After the movie, we headed down to the cabin, and found the first of many towel animals on the bed. Being a frequenter of Disney the last 20 years, I loved the animals they would leave, so I’m glad it is a tradition on RCI as well. I may have mentioned it before, but Walid was an awesome attendant!

 

Swans have been known to bite, but not this one…

 

 

Tomorrow… Labadee awaits…

 

 

 

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[S.A.M.J.R.]

For good measure, DD and I got a photo the night before with King Julian:

 

 

Sorry, being nosy... I noticed the CNN.com windbreaker. Do you work for them or just purchased/received it? ;)

Edited February 28, 2014 by S.A.M.J.R.

[S.A.M.J.R.]

duplicate post

Edited February 28, 2014 by S.A.M.J.R.

[fletch1027]

Sorry, being nosy... I noticed the CNN.com windbreaker. Do you work for them or just purchased/received it? ;)

 

I work for Turner Broadcasting, specifically on the "entertainment network" side (TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, etc).

 

The windbreaker was a giveaway... :)

 

 

 

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[S.A.M.J.R.]

I work for Turner Broadcasting, specifically on the "entertainment network" side (TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, etc).

 

The windbreaker was a giveaway... :)

 

 

 

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Yup. I would have PM'd you the question, but PMs aren't allowed. :rolleyes: I'm a maintenance engineer at the local NBC affiliate and freelance for various sporting events.

[fletch1027]

Yup. I would have PM'd you the question, but PMs aren't allowed. :rolleyes: I'm a maintenance engineer at the local NBC affiliate and freelance for various sporting events.

 

That's cool. I am in the broadcast engineering group, but I do mostly IT project management (servers, SAN, storage, etc)...

[S.A.M.J.R.]

That's cool. I am in the broadcast engineering group, but I do mostly IT project management (servers, SAN, storage, etc)...

Heck, that's half of broadcast now. :D

 

Sorry to bring the thread off topic. :p

[alaata]

Nice review so far..

 

3/16 freedom of the seas.. let the count down begin

[smeck]

That's cool. I am in the broadcast engineering group, but I do mostly IT project management (servers, SAN, storage, etc)...

 

funny I work at ESPN as a senior technical Director.

[fletch1027]

Your "moonset" Animal Kingdom Lodge photo is better than the Disney promo photos.

 

Thanks! Most of it can be attributed to "right place right time" :-)

 

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

[fletch1027]

It’s funny when people asked me what ports we were visiting on this cruise. I would rattle them off: Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Jamaica, and Haiti. There would then be a pause, and they would always say, “You’re going to Haiti??” I would then have to explain that Labadee was the equivalent of an all-inclusive resort and we wouldn’t be roaming the streets of Haiti. After a while of being on CC and chatting about stuff, I take it for granted that not everyone knows the deal about Labadee. :-)

 

Anyway, at least once per cruise I try to make it out to the front of the ship to take some photos of the sun coming up. Last time I got a cool picture of the sun as a ball barely up over the horizon. This time, I was a little later, but still got one not too soon after it was up:

 

Sunrise on the Caribbean

 

 

Instead of saying it was because I didn’t get up early enough, I will blame it on having to find a new vantage point because for some reason the helipad area was closed off. Not sure why, it wasn’t very windy. While I was out there, I managed to take a pic of Labadee still about 60-90 minutes away:

 

Approaching Labadee

 

 

We got ready for the beach, then headed up to the Windjammer for breakfast, then headed for Labadee and a beach day. We are creatures of habit, and last cruise, we found a great place to stake claim.

 

For those unfamiliar with Labadee, there are four main beach areas, and here is a quick overview of each. When you get off the dock and are walking towards the main area, you eventually have the choice of either bearing to the right or going straight and then to the left to get to the beach areas:

 

Bearing to the right (in order of appearance): Barefoot Beach, Nellie’s Beach, Columbus Cove Beach

 

Straight and to the left: Adrenaline Beach (beach the zip liners go past)

 

Both times we have gone to the right. Barefoot Beach hasn’t been an option, it’s for suite guests only (and maybe high enough C&A level – I’m not sure). Next comes Nellie’s Beach where a lot of people stop, probably because it’s the first one a lot come to. Just a bit farther (past the waterslide) is Columbus Cove Beach. We like this because it offers great views of the ship and the bay, but is it also the last one to get crowded. We got here about 9:30 and had basically pick of the place. There is a great spot on top of a sea wall that looks over the water and also it is a very short move between either full sun or shade from the nearby trees. Our spot was shady until about 12:30, which was fine by me. Here are some photos of our location:

 

 

Our chairs from the water

 

Labadee is the beginning of the many “tipping opportunities” during the cruise. I’m referring to tipping outside of the cruise gratuities that are either pre-paid or added to the onboard account each day.

 

I did a lot of research before both cruises to see what was expected / the norm in regards to tipping folks throughout the Caribbean. I will share what I chose to tip. I could be wrong, but I think that I am somewhere in the middle.

 

That being said, we staked out our area. There are beach attendants that live on the island, but contracted by RCI to work in Labadee. They go and get the chairs, set them up, and wipe them down for you. We tipped them $2 per chair that he set up for us.

 

TIP #1: Consider getting chairs at Columbus Cove if you have kids that will either be doing the Water Slide or Aqua Park activities. Both of these things are right next to Columbus Cove and you will be able to keep an eye on them from your chairs.

 

TIP #2: Any “combo” type excursions for Labadee need to be bought ahead of time on the ship. I would suggest either pre-trip or on Sunday after boarding. Our DD wanted to do both the Coaster & Aquapark session. There is a combo for it, but I found out the hard way that you can’t buy it on the island, so I wasted a few bucks and had to buy them separately.

 

After getting our chairs lined up, Jen started reading and I took DD to reserve an hour for the 12:00 Aquapark and then we walked over to do the Dragon Tail Coaster. We didn’t do it last time, but it is a fun ride.

 

TIP #3: They have two-seat coaster cars, and the second person can ride free, so DD and I rode for the price of 1 ticket!

 

Here are some photos I snapped with my HTC phone of the way up (it goes pretty high – the top of the coaster is pretty close to the zipline takeoff point) as well as the view of the ship from about halfway down. The slow ride up is almost as scenic as the ride down. There are brakes so it can be as fast or as slow as you want.

 

Coaster 1

 

Coaster 2

 

We got to the coaster around 10:15 and there was no wait and got back to Columbus Cove around 11:00.

 

 

To be continued…