Carnival Liberty Seven Night Western Caribbean - March 22-29, 2014

[reerun25]

Great pics and enjoying your review!

[CruiseFlicks]

And just like that, it is time to get ready for dinner. Here is a shot of the towel animal left in the room ...

 

... and a couple in the corridor where the stewards have been practicing :-)

 

We were assigned table 379 in the Silver Olympian Restaurant on the Lobby Deck (Deck Three). As our room was in the aft of the ship, it was just a couple of flights of stairs up. But, as we later learned, it was difficult to get to the lobby this way. One had to go all the way to Deck Five, walk across the cigarette smoke infested area surrounding the casino then walk down to get to the lobby for Guest Services/Shore Excursions.

 

 

We had a chick-pea based entree for dinner, which was the only vegetarian option of the night, but we were set for the rest of the cruise because we requested an Indian vegetarian option if available (and it was, of course) - we were pampered royally for the remainder of our time on the ship.

 

I, a melting chocolate lava cake virgin, opted for the tiramisu (an OK choice but obviously not the best). DD went for her favorite Apple Pie. DS went for the lava cake and suddenly, I was a lava cake virgin no more! Don't remember and can't tell by the photo what DW had.

[CruiseFlicks]

Looking forward to your review. I can't get the FunTimes to work on iPad but will try later with laptop.

 

We did Liberty western out of Miami last sept., loved it. I agree, those strawberry pops are yummy!

We loved it so much we're booked for Liberty western this May out of Port Canaveral so we can drive.

 

Please let us know about the menu. I know they've been slightly tweaking the new menus and it would be great for an update. Very interested in desserts, Creme brûlée?

Also, did you order anything off menu?

 

Thanks

I will upload the Fun Times chronologically in my posts. That way everyone should be able to view them.

 

What is the difference between Western Caribbean and Exotic Western Caribbean.

 

I am sorry I cannot really help with the menu too much because we went off menu after that first day. I did not even pay any attention to the non-vegetarian options anyway so I won't be of much help either.

 

I don't think we had Creme brulee even once - that said, I probably would not have had it because we had got it during our Disney Cruise and I did not really like it all that much.

 

Did you mean to ask if we ordered anything outside of the menu when you said "off menu"? Either way, my answer is that we got the Indian vegetarian dishes daily, plus a couple of days we got the vegetarian entree from the menu as well. But other than that, we did not get anything outside the menu. Well, DD got chocolate milk almost everyday, but we did not even ask for the kid's menu, which folks here have discussed in other threads.

[TravelLots]

Really nice review so far! Since I will be on the Liberty this summer, I'm really excited to hear more about your trip.

[Mary49]

Thanks for posting the pics and the review. I know I ask everybody this, did you happen to see "Music Boardwalk"? I hope you caught their act.

They are a Pilipino Band. Very good.

[wantocruisemore]

I will upload the Fun Times chronologically in my posts. That way everyone should be able to view them.

 

What is the difference between Western Caribbean and Exotic Western Caribbean.

 

I am sorry I cannot really help with the menu too much because we went off menu after that first day. I did not even pay any attention to the non-vegetarian options anyway so I won't be of much help either.

 

I don't think we had Creme brulee even once - that said, I probably would not have had it because we had got it during our Disney Cruise and I did not really like it all that much.

 

Did you mean to ask if we ordered anything outside of the menu when you said "off menu"? Either way, my answer is that we got the Indian vegetarian dishes daily, plus a couple of days we got the vegetarian entree from the menu as well. But other than that, we did not get anything outside the menu. Well, DD got chocolate milk almost everyday, but we did not even ask for the kid's menu, which folks here have discussed in other threads.

 

Thank you so much. One of my DD's is vegetarian and she loved the Indian dishes on RCCL. She will be excited she can special order Indian food because she was concerned about the veg. Options on the new menu, especially since she's allergic to mushrooms.

 

Oh, and we actually did Exotic western last sept. Ports were Cozumel, Belize, Roatan and Cayman Islands. For our one scheduled in May we have same stops except Costa Maya has been added instead of caymans.

Edited April 6, 2014 by wantocruisemore

[Kfoot]

Im happy to know Carnival was able to accommodate you with an Indian vegetarian menu.

[Momma1980]

I am enjoying your review. Thanks for posting:)

[CruiseFlicks]

After dinner, I don't remember doing anything of note that first night. On the morning of the second day, I got up pretty early to watch the sunrise. It was the only day I could get a decent photo of the sunrise. I walked/jogged/ran about a couple of miles on the jogging track on most of the mornings. Here are a few photos of the sunrise, the jogging track and other folks enjoying the sunrise:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CruiseFlicks]

Here are the Fun Times for the day 2 of our cruise - the first Sea Day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ata1976]

Do you happen to have the kids club schedules? I'm interested in the activities on the first day - like orientation and the family dance party. Just wondering what time they are in case we try to boon the steakhouse.

 

Thanks!

 

 

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

[CruiseFlicks]

Do you happen to have the kids club schedules? I'm interested in the activities on the first day - like orientation and the family dance party. Just wondering what time they are in case we try to boon the steakhouse.

 

Thanks!

 

 

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

I was unaware of a family dance party, but then I did not really check out those schedules - it was between DW, DS and DD. Let me see if I can find those schedules - I might or might not be able to find them (I am the packrat of the family). :-( If I do, I will scan and post.

 

I re-posted the Fun Times for the first day - the youth program orientation took place at 5:15 pm on Day One (in our case, this was before the ship sailed out).

Edited April 7, 2014 by CruiseFlicks

[CruiseFlicks]

I thought that I could go back and edit my original post, but am unable to do so. So, here are the Fun Times once more, this time from Photobucket.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[erewhon]

Thanks for continuing your review.

Super photos.

[CruiseFlicks]

Fun Times

 

 

 

 

 

[CruiseFlicks]

Cozumel Info

 

 

 

 

[CruiseFlicks]

Cozumel day dawned with a few clouds in the sky. Because of them, I managed to get a couple of good shots at the sunrise.

A close-up ...

We ate at the Lido buffet area. As I wrote previously, I got a couple of burritos and helped myself to the salsa, lettuce, etc. I also discovered the yummy cheesy bread at the same Blue Iguana Cantina area.

 

As we were eating, we looked out and found out that passengers were also disembarking from the ship onto Mexican soil. But we had plenty of time, given that we were supposed to meet our excursion part (more on that in the next post) at the end of the pier only at about 10:30 am ("SHIP'S TIME," as we had drummed into us multiple times throughout the cruise!!).

 

Didn't really understand what this structure was all about - any idea what those yellow bridge-like things are called and what their function is?

 

After taking our time, we came down and stepped off the ship; upon alighting, we came across this mermaid as part of the 'gangway pictures'. She's the Carnival incarnation of Ariel. ;-)

 

We then observed how the ship had been secured to the pier/dock.

[AmberTeka]

i really enjoyed reading your review. Thank you for posting the Fun times. your pictures are great.

 

Actually, I have been highly irritated at Carnival Management..( The beards..not crew and staffs on ships. they are extraordinary nice and hard working folks)

 

You have about sold me on booking aboard the Liberty.

 

Did it have a sports bar? For My Husband, who only is obsessed during football season, but it would be nice to know.

 

My daughter...a vegan who is also a marathon runner and slim as anything ( she reminds me of this when I say she needs protein and more iron) ate the Indian alternative entree three times. One of the wait staff was concerned that she did not know how spicy it would be, and he asked her if she was sure. when she ate every bite, and shared with her husband, he came over and joked with her. that was such a nice gesture. They go to Indian restaurants, Thai and Arabic ones too. the younger generations are much more cosmopolitan than our generation was...and I mean past 60, which I am. My idea of spicy is home made chilli.

 

This is probably way before your time, but when we were young "the Prophet" was the spiritual big thing. Not in not being a Christian any longer, but studying the writings..poems of that book. I think he was Hindu. Maybe Buddist.We took some verses from it and made them into our wedding vows.

My favorite still......."Not a single leaf falls from the tree without the knowledge of the entire tree." That is so true.

Thanks again for the review.

Edited April 12, 2014 by AmberTeka

[CruiseFlicks]

i really enjoyed reading your review. Thank you for posting the Fun times. your pictures are great.

 

Actually, I have been highly irritated at Carnival Management..( The beards..not crew and staffs on ships. they are extraordinary nice and hard working folks)

 

You have about sold me on booking aboard the Liberty.

 

Did it have a sports bar? For My Husband, who only is obsessed during football season, but it would be nice to know.

 

My daughter...a vegan who is also a marathon runner and slim as anything ( she reminds me of this when I say she needs protein and more iron) ate the Indian alternative entree three times. One of the wait staff was concerned that she did not know how spicy it would be, and he asked her if she was sure. when she ate every bite, and shared with her husband, he came over and joked with her. that was such a nice gesture. They go to Indian restaurants, Thai and Arabic ones too. the younger generations are much more cosmopolitan than our generation was...and I mean past 60, which I am. My idea of spicy is home made chilli.

 

This is probably way before your time, but when we were young "the Prophet" was the spiritual big thing. Not in not being a Christian any longer, but studying the writings..poems of that book. I think he was Hindu. Maybe Buddist.We took some verses from it and made them into our wedding vows.

My favorite still......."Not a single leaf falls from the tree without the knowledge of the entire tree." That is so true.

Thanks again for the review.

 

Thank you for your kind words, but I really hope I haven't sold you on the Liberty. I say that because a review is obviously pretty subjective. And though I was all gung ho when I got off the ship, reading other posts here and understanding their perspectives makes me aware that I could still be a minority (though maybe not on the "Carnival" section of the Cruisecritic boards :-) So, I would really hope that you do your homework and talk to other folks as well. To give you a few quick examples ...

 

- occupied chairs on the Lido deck: We couldn't have cared less as we are not into sunbathing. So, if that is a big issue, you would need to check on what others say about it (whether chairs were available or not)

 

- evening shows: Though we did watch a couple, we are not big fans, so I have no clue of where they rate compared to the competition.

 

- stand-up comedy: Ditto.

 

- We didn't enter the casino ... except to sidestep the throngs waiting for their evening photos ;-) ... so cannot give tips there either.

 

- Sports Bar: Yes, this I can talk about. If the same crew is still on board, I am sure you will be happy (and you will likely be happy even with the replacements). Dimitor at the Sports Bar was nice enough to set me up with the cricket match I wanted to watch on both the Sea Days. Besides, they leave the TVs on overnight and the door open, so if you get there early in the day (they man the area only in the afternoons, unless it is a Sea Day) you can watch (no sound) whatever is on. The one snafu is that you cannot depend on the specific channel that you want being on. Even though the staff had set the channel I asked for, on two of the days, the pre-programming kicked in and switched it out at night (that makes sense, as the pre-programming is probably set so that the more popular games will air in the mornings when staff is absent).

 

- I was unsure whether it was worth anybody's while for me to post Indian food photos, but now it looks like I have two votes. And as two > zero, I will include those photos as part of the narrative. [it really is a different era from when you were a kid or when even I was a kid - now folks post photos of anything and everything they fancy, don't they? ;-) ] Nice to know your daughter is a marathon runner and a vegan to boot. I wonder how she gets her vitamin B-12 - I am under doctor's orders to take those chewies. BTW, I walked/jogged my first 8k last weekend. That is about as far as I would want to subject myself to ;-)

 

- I am sorry I don't think I've heard about The Prophet. I will google and find out. Like you said, it is probably a Buddhism-related book.

[CruiseFlicks]

Like I mentioned earlier, this was our second cruise. For our first cruise,we had booked the stateroom nearly 10 months earlier than the cruise date. Besides, it was a three-night cruise with a day in Nassau and one in Castaway Cay. As a result, we had had ample time to plan whether to purchase any excursions or not.

 

This time around, though we purchased the tickets about a month or so before the cruise date, it was - for us - a last-minute decision. As a result, we did not really have a lot of time to plan out the cruise, leave alone the shore excursion. Suffice it to say that we did not even get the kids pre-registered for their respective camps.

 

Anyway, we had to figure out pretty quickly what we wanted to do so that the tickets didn't run out. As there was plenty of disagreement to go around on the choice of what to do, I hit upon an idea. We had been given a list of all shore excursions - subject to availability and guest minimums (if not enough cruisers expressed interest, an excursion could potentially be cancelled - though I have no idea how often that happens). I decided that I would - on the first night after the rest of the family had slept - read through the descriptions and X out those I definitely had no interest in (or it was too pricey in my opinion). In the morning, DW and kids could look through the one not Xed out and select what they wanted to do ... while I watched cricket at the Sports Bar. Cricket was being played - the World Cup - in Bangladesh during our cruise. The timings were ideal for me - the games were in the evening, i.e., very early in EDT/Ship's Time.

 

As a result of this arrangement, we decided the following:

 

- Cozumel: local tour and "Mayan village" (about $30 per person; three hours)

- Belize: a visit to Xunantunich (about $90 per person; included lunch; seven hours)

- Roatan: the aerial chairlift to the beach ($12 per adult and $7 per kid)

- Cayman Islands: nothing appealed to us

 

Here is some background. DS is pretty good at swimming. I am OK. DD can swim but I would put myself above her in skill level. DW is not a water person (for that matter, none of us is, but I am saying this in relative terms ;-). Besides, we (DS and I) did not have a good time with our previous snorkelling experience so we were not candidates for subjecting ourselves to more of that. Also, living so close to SeaWorld in the Central Florida area means that we are inured to the attractions of dolphins and sting rays and the like (if not turned off by the one that killed Steve Irwin). So, it was easy for us to unanimously cross out the shore excursions that involved any of these.

 

In addition, I wanted to keep the budget as low as we could while still enjoying as much as we could. So, we did not want to choose the most expensive item on the list at each place.

 

We also did not want to get really tired out after taking excursion after excursion in the sun for four days in a row. We were reminded of this on the fourth day, but more on that later.

 

Last but definitely not the least - in fact this was probably one of the biggest factors - we wanted to make sure that if we were, in fact, going on a longer excursion at one of the tender ports (Belize and Grand Cayman), we had to go with Carnival, as we did not want to get left behind for any reason! In any event, we opted for Xunantunich instead of the ruins in Mexico because a) we wanted to do one or the other, b) the Mexican one was (if I remember right) more expensive and c) the Xunantunich one took us a long way into Belize (it was only later that I realized that not only did it take us across the width of Belize, but that it also almost took us into Guatemala!).

[CruiseFlicks]

The Carnival Liberty was the first ship to dock at Cozumel on 24th. As we got off the ship, the Carnival Elation was coming in. I saw the perfect opportunity, handed the camera to DS, motioned him into proper position and told him to take a picture in such a way that the boat was 'cupped' in the V of my palm. I stood in a stance that I thought was ideal. However, being the one behind the camera, DS moved me around to (what he thought to be) a better position. I realized too late - when downloading the photos on dry land (here in FL) - that there was some miscommunication between father and son on the term 'boat' ;-)

 

The boat I wanted to show up in my palm ...

 

 

... the photo DS took (if you look closely, you will see that there indeed is a boat in it as well)!!

[CruiseFlicks]

Because the Carnival Elation was on its way to dock next to us and we had a good 45 minutes to an hour before we were supposed to meet our tour party, I decided to hang around near the ship and take a few photos of the Elation docking. In the meantime, DW, DS and DD decided to follow the rest of the crowd into "real" Mexican territory and come back in a few minutes.

 

A short preamble is in order here. We were not planning to do much in Cozumel once we returned from our tour; however, we were unsure what the food arrangements would be for the group, if nay, after the tour. So, DW had packed some cookies that we had brought with us onto the ship ... and I had 'smuggled' a couple of burritos and cheese sandwiches from the Iguana Cantina. All these items were in a relatively heavy bag. So, I was literally left holding the bag as the rest of the family ventured into uncharted waters ... umm ... land.

 

To cut a long story short, Elation docked, and my advance party returned ... with a story. Apparently, it was illegal to carry food into Mexico (now we were learning!) - a few of the other passengers had had their precious cargo separated from them and shown the dustbin verily like it happens at airport security counters :-(.

 

Given all this, we had a (Hobson's) choice - whether to return to the room and unload all our precious cargo (thereby risking missing the tour party) or carry everything in with us and be prepared for the worst. In the event, we didn't really have a choice - we went in well prepared (not!). Thankfully for us, the security folks were not as vigilant - or they had assumed that everyone had walked on by ... or they confused us for natives (we were not too many shades off anyway) ;-)

 

So, we didn't have to throw anything away. Unlike other passengers who we saw boarding the ship with crates (OK, only a 24-pack) of water, we had carried no water in with us. And unlike our previous cruise, this time around, we had been so unprepared that we had not even brought an empty water bottle with us. Be that as it may, by the time we reached the end of the pier, both DD and I were thirsty and were getting hit pretty hard by the sun.

 

Thankfully for us, the first shop we came upon had water ... and not only that, the going rate was at a discount to what we were offered in the Liberty prior to alighting from there. So, we got our water ... and waited for some more time for our guides to show as the crowds started building up.

 

Here are some photos:

 

Carnival Elation approaches the dock

 

Sisters of the same mother berth together (pardon the pun)

 

A popular rest area

 

Replica of a Mayan ruin?

 

I liked how this photo came out. The restrooms are behind me in this photo - the original restrooms were apparently closed for renovation; this photo came out pretty good I thought

 

One for the tourists

[CruiseFlicks]

Our Cozumel tour began with a 30 minute ride along a nice road in an air-conditioned bus until we came to a beach. This point had been advertised as a location with multi-colored sea and sure enough, it reminded me of the Pacific Coast Highway in California. Our guide Barbara informed us that the sea here supposedly displays seven colors that ranged from green to blue with turquoise, jade, etc interspersed ... in other words, colors that a stereotypical male probably cannot distinguish from one another ;-)

 

We enjoyed walking around, getting our feet wet - literally - and taking photos. A local dude brought his pet iguana with him and permitted kids to borrow the animal for photos. Of course, he was rewarded for his friendliness :-)

 

After Barbara had informed us tourists about its benefits on the drive there, DD refreshed herself with tender coconut water for what I then thought was a royal sum of $3 (I am familiar with paying in the pennies for those in the India of my childhood - with inflation, all bets are obviously off) ... more to come on this. She even got the inner flesh of the coconut carved out to eat, which she shared with DW and DS.

 

After a drive for about 30 more minutes along the coastline, we reached ther second stop of the excursion - a 'Mayan village'

 

Some photos now:

We were joking that we would get the rickety schoolbus; instead we got the posh looking A/C bus ...

 

... and soon we were underway

 

I can identify green and blue. :-)

 

And this looks like Pebble Beach almost

 

More colors

 

Another photographer in action

[092306]

Wow, those photos are fantastic! The water looks amazing, thanks for posting these and an informative review!

[NOSaints1]

How is the layout of the ship? How was the service, CC recommend this ship, just wondering if it's still good. I looked on my cruise international app and it doesn't show 2.0 upgrades.

 

 

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