Freedom of the Seas - Photo Review - 3/30 to 4/6 - Western Caribbean

[Debitoo]

I like your style! I'm subscribed!;)

[DrD]

Thanks for the review. I was on this cruise also and am working on my review, I'll be able to give the commoner's perspective ;)

 

Should be up in a few days.

[mickev99]

Thanks for the review. I was on this cruise also and am working on my review, I'll be able to give the commoner's perspective ;)

 

Should be up in a few days.

 

Dr D....I'm a commoner, so looking forward to reading yours as well! Although it nice to read this review and dream.....

[villager70]

Thanks for the great review. Bob

[bigque]

OMG how I miss being on that ship! :cool:

[BillOh]

I liked seeing the checkin facilities and area around Port Canaveral, I've been on Freedom many years ago, but haven't sailed out of this port yet. I'n all likelyhood I'll be one point short of Diamond when I board Freedom, so I will definitely be a commoner and most likely not in a suite either. :)

[molsonschooner]

FOS is probably my favourite ship and I love your writing style. Looking forward to more of the same.

[WinksCruises]

Thanks for all your readership! Please know all the Suite / Commoners references are made tongue in cheek and are really meant to poke fun at those who think having Diamond or Suite amenities confers some sort of elevated status or on-ship entitlements beyond what's spelled out in black & white. We've sailed all level of accommodations... do we like Suite level perks? Heck yeah! But we love all cruisers no matter in which stateroom they lay their head at night on the ship. (except of course for the ones who can't control their little monsters!)

 

Unfortunately, a pressing social obligation with some well bred people (but not gold card carriers or even one-time cruisers, ugh) prevents me from continuing the review today. But I'll pick up again tomorrow - Tuesday.

 

For now, here's some rather boring video... but it's of an event I failed to mention as we prepared to cast off from Labadee; there was a medical emergency with one of the passengers and it was decided they would need to be hospitalized. A helicopter was requested from a Dominican Republic hospital and the video here is of it coming in for a landing. It actually landed on the Labadee pier, rather than the ship's landing pad on the bow. Apparently it is much safer and easier to to a pier landing, but for most of us watching it seemed like a pretty tricky maneuver.

 

Watch video on YouTube by clicking below...

 

I'll post more on life at sea, tomorrow.

[mickev99]

I know you're kidding and please continue with it, it's very entertaining!!! Thanks so much for posting the compasses, I love knowing what's happening!!

 

 

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[beshears]

I am enjoying your review of the FOTS, and the great pictures. We will be on this ship for the "first time," the end of this month. :) I like reading reviews, and seeing the pictures, as that gives me an idea (even though we have an inner room:(, we will still be on this SAME ship:)) of what we have to look forward to.

[mbrownferrier]

Thank you for such a fun beginning to your review!!! I am enjoying the review and pictures hoping it will help me make it to our thanksgiving cruise on FOS!!

 

 

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[Dave85]

Loving your review, looking forward to the rest!

 

I'm very surprised about that poolside cabana thing though... is that new? Anybody know if it is exclusive to FOS? Haven't seen or heard of that before on RCI.

Edited April 14, 2014 by Dave85

[Choozin Croozin]

Great review. Looking forward to more! Thx

[bravostar]

Thank you so much. I am especially interested in the Daily Compass.

Looking forward to my Freedom cruise.

[bravostar]

Love your sense of humor

[Clarea]

I sent an email to the concierge when I heard this. They came back and said it was just a test and they will not be doing it on for future cruises.

Glad to hear that, thanks.

[Dave85]

I sent an email to the concierge when I heard this. They came back and said it was just a test and they will not be doing it on for future cruises.

 

 

Glad to hear that too. Definitely not a trend I want to see RCI start.

 

 

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[AmandaKaye79]

Enjoying. We sail in 6 weeks.

[WinksCruises]

 

Many here may beg to differ, but let's be honest: there is nothing like a day at sea. Free of the stress that comes with shore activities, filled with cool breezes of refreshing ocean air and the gentle rocking of the ship. It's heaven. Best of all, it's peppered with countless opportunities to flaunt your elevated C&A status around the vessel - much to the chagrin of fellow passengers, who are just as desperate for the food and space you're effortlessly availing yourself to, thanks to privilege.

 

Not only do I enjoy sea days thoroughly, I actively seek out cruise itineraries that feature a number of them. Admittedly, this particular voyage was an epic fail on that front, what with only two sea days, but my dream run out of Galveston with Roatan as a destination (a cruise notorious for delays and cancelled ports stops) got shot down from the get-go, so I settled for the sure two.

 

During these sea days, while my wife engages in a never ending battle with the other sun-worshipping enemy combatants up on the pool deck - obsessed with securing optimum chair position and then performing a strange territorial ritual that typically (and inexplicably) involves the use of blue towels and hardcover books to abandon that hard fought optimum chair position - I explore the ship, check out the library, peruse the sidewalk sales and cheat a slice of Hawaiian pizza or chocolate pastry that's being offered on the much more civilized Royal Promenade. It's a great time to read, exercise, stumble upon previously unknown venues and basically just chillax.

 

FREEDOM DINING

 

Overall, the dining experience was a pretty good one and comes down to some basic equations. Main Dining Room has it over Windjammer. Ben & Jerry's has it over self-serve Sprinkles. And Princess Pizza has it over RC's Sorrento's pies hands down.

 

Having had mixed results with specialty dining venues in the past, regardless of the cruise line, we didn't bother to make reservations at either Chops or Sabatini's on this cruise. Sorry. We heard other cruisers rave about both service and food there... but we've heard similar reports on other cruises as well, only to be (sometimes) disappointed by the experience. Not worth the extra price when the Main Dining Room seemed to be doing the trick.

 

We opted for My Time Dining, which was a bit of a fiasco this time around. No matter how much we tried to throw around our Diamond / Suite Stateroom clout, the maitre d at the Main Dining Room just didn't get it. Seating us around and near our favorite server, but never at his station, despite the appearance of available tables there. By the end of the cruise it became a running joke as to where we would be seated that night and no one seemed more embarrassed by this than our waiter and assistant... both of whom did superlative jobs. Even the intervention of the head waiter and our concierge didn't rectify the seating matter... but we just went with the flow.

 

Cold soups and desserts were big hits. Entrees were, for the most part, on the money. The service was exceptional. (I'll be posting all the dinner menus over the course of this review).

 

 

We both agreed that lunch in the Main Dining Room, when it was available (on the two sea days only and for merely 90 minutes even then!) was worth trying to make. You could order off a lunch menu and also avail yourself to an adequately supplied salad bar where chefs prepared the fixings at your request. Service is a little less formal than what you've come to expect from the Main Dining Room, but it definitely beats the continual zoo you find up at the Windjammer when everyone's on board.

 

MY CRUISE PHOTOS PACKAGE

 

We've done this on several cruises now. It's not a perfect process. But in the end, it saves you a lot of money on photos.

 

Nothing pleases us more than having hundreds of pictorial reminders of our time on a Royal C voyage travelling as elite guests. And nothing indicates this more than the massive number of photos you can fine of me wearing my Diamond pin! To sate this urge in us to have a never ending stream of visual images, the on-board photo studio offers an unlimited photo package. You can get ALL your ship photographer's shots as prints or as digital images or both.

 

For sure, the cost of entry is expensive: several hundred dollars depending on which package you sign up for. But if have your photo taken at every opportunity provided (starting at embarkation and then virtually planning your entire cruise day around taking them!) you can significantly cut down on the per-shot cost. We, for instance, figured we got our images for about $2.50 each... compared to the typical $20 charged for a single picture. But of course we took well over a hundred shots... and yes, there were more than a few clunkers in that assortment... but we have also regale in some twisted solace that we somehow put one over on "the man".

 

Drawbacks? Aside from availing yourself to the most photo opportunities possible, you also have to keep track of what was taken (their card-swipe and facial recognition technologies are far from adequate) and you've got to get them to add any shots that they didn't assign to you. Plus remember to pick up the final DVD and prints on the last evening of the cruise, when the photo gallery is usually a mad house of commoners agonizing over which one shot they want to take home from the 50 they took - which were all great.

 

But in the end, my wife and agree it was worth the effort to get such an assortment of usable photos.

 

ICE SHOW

 

 

Watching the ice skating performances is always a treat. And on this particular cruise, we got to see the grand premiere of a new "staging" with a new set of skaters.

 

In fact, we originally had reservations for show that was scheduled for the first sea day, but were informed by our concierge that the show had to be postponed until the last day of the voyage because the new team of skaters had not yet perfected the routine!

 

So, on the last day of the cruise, we were ushered to our Suite Guest reserved section, to take in the "sold out" show. It was an exciting and not entirely flawless show... but that added to the thrill, as we watched the new team of ice dancers put on a pretty challenging show.

 

Highly recommended.

 

 

I'll be posting the remaining Cruise Compasses shortly, but rest assured there is always plenty to do on Freedom. That said, we couldn't help but notice the ceaseless creeping crawling of an endless parade of up-sell activities filling in the time slots on Compass. It seems to be a sad reality that the cruise ships are turning to the airline business model of charging for every additional whim or desire.

 

The zumba class you can see my wife taking in the photo up above was still free, but increasingly, every activity is coming with an associated surcharge, that even our Diamond and Suite Cabin statuses can't keep at bay!

 

Coming up next time Jamaica and Grand Cayman...

 

[1northstar]

Loving your review;)

[WinksCruises]

 

Just a note about the menus: for the most part they stuck to the order, but I believe they interchanged day 3 and 4 for one another.

[WinksCruises]

There's a lot of good and bad about stopping in Jamaica. If you listen to the ramblings of a recent rash of cruise reviewers on this site, you'd think the "bad" involves the unwarranted reputation of this island for being the most dangerous destination in all the Caribbean. But no. It's not that. The really BAD thing about visiting Jamaica is the fact that every shore excursion involves a visit to the insufferable Dunn's River Falls. Even if your main goal of the day is to do something completely unrelated. That's what's really wrong with making a port stop here!

 

On a beautiful morning where the bright blue skies were filled with a dramatic assortment of clouds, the Freedom eased into the waters surrounding Jamaica's port of Falmouth, one of the newer and lesser developed towns on the country's north shore. Then, much to the surprise of all of us assembled on the bow to witness the docking, she smoothly proceeded to perform a 360 degree turn, on a dime, as they say. My hope that countless passengers were miraculously going to be spared the humiliation (and health hazard) of having to clasp a stranger's clammy hand in order to scramble over the slimy rock incline that constitutes the entirety of the Dunn's River Falls experience were quickly squashed, as it became readily apparent the ship was merely setting up to back into the berth. Like the desperate passengers on Cameron's painfully inaccurate Titanic, we all raced to the aft viewing sections - just like Jack Dawson and Rose Dewitt, incorrectly rationalizing that this instinctual act of self preservation was somehow going to prolong or prevent the inevitable horror to come (which in this case would be a shore excursion involving a stop at the dreaded aforementioned DRF).

 

[PathfinderEss]

Enjoying your review, looking foward to the rest of it.

[ttnc4me]

Fantastic review. A friend recommended this ship to me today & I'm enjoying every detail!

[WinksCruises]

 

So here's the 411 on Jamaica. You shouldn't be afraid to get off the ship. Sadly, we actually spoke with a number of fellow passengers (mostly Diamond level or above, since that's the type of class we prefer to socialize with... but, yes, admittedly a few Emeralds whom we got stuck talking to as well) who expressed concerns about disembarking here in Falmouth - and then overheard the comments of other passersby who were downright braggartly in their confident proclamations that they had the good sense and foreknowledge not to leave the safe-haven the ship's bulwark provided "on this one".

 

This reputation of Jamaica is so ridiculous for so many reasons. But let's start with a simple reality. The cruise company, in all its wisdom, has built a perfectly safe, gated-community from which to rob you blind - so you needn't worry about all the messiness involved with being held-up at gunpoint by a pot smoking Rastafarian.

 

Literally, when you disembark the ship, you enter into a fairyland shopping square (artificially constructed to look local and authentic) where you are free to stroll along a secure storefront of quaint shops - many of whose brands you're now very much familiar with if you bothered to get off the ship at any of the previous ports of call. Surprise, surprise, even Diamonds International has dared to open a shop in "thug ridden" Jamaica. And is that a Del Sol over there? My God, it's like we never left St. Thomas! Cozumel! Paradise Island or Bermuda!

 

And for you first time cruisers, who may not yet be familiar with these iconic safe-houses of port side shopping, there's the comforting welcome of the fiberglass pirate and parrot statues standing at the ready for your family photo opp in front of the Jimmy Buffet Margartiville restaurant just down past these shops - and surely you've heard of that!

 

 

Meanwhile, Diamond Level Boy and Photobomb Girl decided it was time to get off the ship in order to bolster up the quota on their unlimited "My Cruise Photos" package before the guy dressed-up in the sailor suit got the notion to pack up the Port Falmouth life preserver prop and call it a morning. Next, we stopped to take our own picture in front of the prominent Don't Bring Any Illegal Drugs Back Onto The Ship reminder sign - that only seems to make an appearance on the pier in Jamaica - before entering the faux shopping plaza, and boldly risking our lives braving the most deadliest port in all of the Caribbean. Ever.

 

Because there is literally NOTHING to do in Jamaica but take a shore excursion that somehow involves a visit to Dunn's River Falls (okay, there is a Bob Marley estate tour - whose main lure is that it's situated so far from the port it can't involve a DRF stop - but getting high after a few back-breaking hours on the hard seat of a rickety tour bus that's struggling up the mountains on its several hour trip to the estate, isn't really our scene, mon) we decided to do what we usually do when we come to Jamaica. Drink Red Stripes in a local off-compound cantina while filling out postcards to friends and then trying to get to the local post office and back... alive.

 

More on that later...