Spring Break with Lady Liberty (March 18 - 26, 2016) Review

[stormy_weatherman]

I've been on Conquest twice, so I pretty much remember the layout. We'll be on LIberty in July. Is the aft pool adults only on this ship?

 

Yes! In the same place as on the Conquest. Plus the Liberty has the adults only Serenity area, which the Conquest does not feature. Most all of the public areas of the two ships will be very, very similar, both having received the 2.0 upgrades.

[ScrapbookJ]

Love the photos, thanks!

[stormy_weatherman]

Still working on the next chapter. Sorry for the delay. I'm glad many are enjoying. Good stuff coming up soon, hang in there!

[stormy_weatherman]

That night as we left Jamaica I stood on our balcony and watched the huge waves/white caps out across the sea. I was mesmerized and found the angry sea to be so cool. I woke up the next morning early, excited to see Grand Cayman for the first time. Upon opening the door onto the balcony I knew something was awry. For one, we were supposed to drop anchor off Grand Cayman and begin tenders around 7 AM and it was really close to 7. Second, we were cruising at a fairly good speed, not like the typical speed when approaching an island/port. Three, I was pretty sure I could see Georgetown to our northeast, meaning we had sailed past the port. But of all these, the biggest clue that something was terribly wrong was the six foot seas. If I had thought the sea was angry the night before, it was outraged now. I went for a “walk around the ship” as I often do, which means I walk the Promenade, up to Lido and all around, up to Panorama open deck and all around, and on up the ship to the top, then do the same back down. It’s a good way to see what’s going on while working off some of the millions of calories consumed on a cruise. When I got to the open Panorama deck I noticed the workers setting out deck chairs. If you’ve never been on a Carnival cruise before, they do not set out near as many deck chairs on port days because so many people are off the ship and they are not on such high demand as on sea days when they set out more. Something was definitely not right, and by this time I headed back to our room to await the dreaded announcement. Sure enough, the Captain soon came on and announced that it was unsafe to tender due to the six-foot seas we were sailing on, plus Georgetown had completely closed the port. “But we will get to Costa Maya three hours earlier” is hardly compensation for missing an entire port, but what else could he say? We later got a letter in our room detailing the refund of our port fees and taxes for the missed port, and also letting us know that they tried to port at the alternate spot in GC, but Disney and a couple other ships had beat us there. So onward we sailed into our bonus sea day.

 

 

 

Seas in photo are angrier than they appear. Taken shortly after discovering no Grand Cayman. :(

 

 

 

 

Cory Rogers and the rest of the entertainment staff did a fantastic job at adding extra events on a moment’s notice. He announced a morning show would be held at 10 AM, so we planned to go to that. Since our port day was now a sea day we figured breakfast hours would surely be extended (it closes at 9 AM on port days). Wrong. We got there about 10 after the hour and several other folks did too, but we were all turned away. So we grabbed something quick on Lido, we are not big fans of eating on the Lido buffet, and headed to the morning show where the “hot off the press” new FunTimes were being distributed with the added, new activities for the newly arranged sea day. Instead of extending breakfast we noticed they would be having a Sea Day Lunch in the main dining room (aft), which I was quite excited about, as I had always wanted to try. So we did. There are no appetizer/starter options at this lunch, and only a handful of entrée choices. In hindsight, I would have been happier just eating at Lido, Guy’s, Blue Iguana, Mongolian Wok, or Fish & Chips. After lunch we decided to get as much relaxation as possible out of our extra sea day, so we headed to the room for some balcony reading. During the afternoon John Cassidy, the awesome balloon maker and show extraordinaire from the night before planned a special “how to make balloon animals” show in the atrium lobby. We went along with what felt like every child on the ship. It was obvious that John had made quite the impression on the guests the prior evening at his two shows. After John’s impromptu balloon making show, “Lord Bingo”, or Simon, hosted a Whose Garbage Can trivia, the only trivia we participated in of the whole cruise. You really feel smart until you’re up against your fellow cruise members at trivia!

 

I had purchased the $5 social media internet plan a couple of days during the cruise, this bonus sea day included. Let’s be honest, it’s really slow, but it does the trick I guess. Anyway, during trivia my alarm app alerted me that our alarm system was going off at home. I had no other details and, in a panic, I rushed across the atrium to Guest Services and asked if I could use their phone to call our alarm company to see what was going on. The lady was very gracious and allowed me to use her satellite phone to call and confirm a false alarm.

 

That night in the dining room, as a result of the superb service we experienced the previous night, we requested to be seated in the same section. We were somewhat disappointed at the service this night, though. To be fair, we did arrive kind of late (around or just after 8:30- the latest you can be seated is 9:15ish), but it seemed as though the dining staff was just rushing through the courses to get us out of there as quickly as possible. We received our entrees before we were done with our appetizers, which I do not believe I’ve ever had happen before. I had the Beef Wellington this night, which was excellent. We had dumped our comedians in Jamaica, so there were no comedy shows to entertain us for a few nights. Instead we had the Love and Marriage show (think Newlywed Game) to attend this night. We always attend this event on our cruises, but this was the first time we have experienced it held as the primetime evening show. The only complaint I have about shows in the main theater is that they never start on time because of Bingo! Boy, there’s always a bingo game (or ten) to be played on a Carnival cruise, and they typically start thirty minutes before the main show, which is NEVER enough time to actually finish the game on time. Regardless, we enjoyed the Love and Marriage show as usual and headed off to bed as it was late and we were nearing mainland Mexico!

 

 

 

 

Grand chandelier in the atrium lobby.

 

 

 

 

The beautiful lobby of the Carnival Liberty

 

 

 

 

Coming up...

 

"Is this beach free?"

A lesson in money conversion

Fish Spas

[Gypsieann]

I'm from Memphis also and have been enjoying your review. I'm sailing on the Liberty in October and just sailed the Magic last month. The boat is beautiful! Thanks for sharing the pics. Looking forward to your next chapter!

 

 

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[stormy_weatherman]

I'm from Memphis also and have been enjoying your review. I'm sailing on the Liberty in October and just sailed the Magic last month. The boat is beautiful! Thanks for sharing the pics. Looking forward to your next chapter!

 

 

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That's awesome! We are actually debating sailing the Magic next summer from PC. Glad to hear you enjoyed.

[tawaik]

Great review!!

 

Sailed the Liberty April 2015 and had a great time. Beautiful ship and would sail her again.

[jamdoll417]

I'm from Memphis also and have been enjoying your review. I'm sailing on the Liberty in October and just sailed the Magic last month. The boat is beautiful! Thanks for sharing the pics. Looking forward to your next chapter!

 

 

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I'm sailing the liberty in October too! Which date?

 

 

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[BIGA961]

We had the exact same experience with breakfast on the Grand Cayman day, except that we arrived exactly at 9:00, and they wouldn't seat us! Kind of odd I thought...

[stormy_weatherman]

We arrived early into Costa Maya the next morning. I sat on the balcony while I waited for my wife to wake and watched our approach to the pier. This has to be one of my favorite reasons to get a balcony stateroom; being able to enjoy those early morning port arrivals in peace. Once we tied up to the pier we got ready for our day and then went out on the open deck to enjoy some of the ship while the majority of its passengers where ashore in Costa Maya. The port area was beautiful from the ship, with transparent blue waters. It was a great morning. We were docked next to Royal Caribbean’s Vision of the Seas, a ship that was quite a bit smaller than the Liberty. Interestingly, we will be ported alongside this same ship this summer in Athens when we arrive there on the Vista. There was also a smaller SilverSea ship in port with us that day as well. Once we exited the ship we walked the long (the longest we have experienced yet) pier to the main port area of Costa Maya. I immediately noticed the Carnival Corporation flag flying over this Carnival-established area, and had the epiphany that Carnival did in fact “settle” this port. Did you realize that when you go to Costa Maya you are going to one of the very few mainland Caribbean ports? Most all of the others are island ports. I thought that was cool.

 

 

 

Costa Maya from the Liberty.

 

 

Workers were greasing the lines of the lifeboat directly under our cabin this morning.

 

 

 

 

We walked through the port area, which I really enjoyed. There are many shops, cultural displays, bars, and a large pool with a swim-up bar on one side. One of the dolphin swim excursions was also located right off the path where all the shops where located, which was cool to just take a few steps and be able to see some dolphins. We also saw the nearby water park from the ship, which looked really cool. We quickly found our way to the taxi station and purchased two tickets to Mahahual, a small fishing village just south of the port area. A one-way trip here is $3 per person. I had heard many suggestions for this authentic village, and we surely were not disappointed in what we found. It’s essentially a strip of local businesses; hotels, shops, and restaurants all along a very nice beach. When we arrived to the beach we were immediately haggled to purchase a place to sit for the day. We made an arrangement with a waiter of one of the hotel restaurants (the hotel claimed to own the beach we were on) that we would sit on their beach, he would be our server, and we would cover sitting on their beach all day with our food and drink purchases plus tip. Not a bad deal, I think we ended up spending $25 total, plus my wife got a 30-minute massage for just $20. All of this was a great bargain compared to purchasing excursions or onboard spa visits. We thoroughly enjoyed our beach day at Mahahual, eating authentic food and enjoying being in the company of the locals. The water is not very deep here, with sea breaks located several hundred feet off the beach keeping the waters calm and wave-free. I cannot say enough good things, just go there should you visit Costa Maya! It was cloudy and began to rain around 2-3 that afternoon so we took a cab back to the main port area for some souvenir shopping. By this time we were quite tired (because sitting on the beach all day is tiring) so we began to head back to Lady Liberty. On the way we noticed an ongoing cultural demonstration, so we stopped to watch for a few moments before walking the long pier and straight to Guy’s for yet another delicious burger.

 

 

Mahahual. Notice we were not far from the ships (in the background).

 

 

 

We enjoyed the authenticity of Mahahual.

 

 

Cultural demonstration in the port area. Mayans believed this would alleviate drought conditions. Seemed to be working the day we were there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After our burgers we opted to enjoy aft adults only pool for a while since there were few people onboard at the time. This was the only time we would use the pool the whole cruise, which is not rare for us, and we never used the hot tubs. We then went back to our room for some reading, which I think just became naptime. Crusing can be so exhausting! I really did not feel well after our day at the beach and my wife got burned (Target brand sunscreen is not a good option apparently) so we opted to skip main dining room dinner for the night. I’m sure the late afternoon Guy’s burger contributed to this decision as well. We had been looking for a chance to try the new room service menu with both the free and upcharge items. I called down to room service to order some of the Firecracker Shrimp ($6), a tuna salad sandwich with potato salad, and a bag of assorted cookies. Not twenty minutes later we were on our balcony staring into the night as we ate our room service dinner. Another mark for the beauty of cruising; you do what you want when you want and how you want. Honestly, we did not feel that the shrimp was all that great, especially not for the $6 upcharge! Next time we will also have to specify that we only want chocolate chip cookies, as those are so delicious while the rest of the assortment not so much. We made ourselves get ready to go to one of the shows, I believe this night it was a juggler/variety show, and the show was overly unimpressive.

 

I missed mentioning Serenity Nights earlier, which was held the night of the bonus sea day. This is a new event Carnival is holding on ships with the Serenity deck one night during the cruise. It began around 11 PM. We arrived early to stake a lounger and then we waited and waited and waited for people to arrive. No one. Finally we were ready for bed so we began descending back to the open Lido deck. We went from Serenity Deck 14 to Serenity Deck 12 and found the ‘party’. Whoops, we were in the wrong place on Serenity. There were SO many people, likely because it was spring break, and it was not nearly serene enough for us, so we just continued on back to the serenity of 7355.

 

 

Coming up...

 

Our favorite place to dine in Mexico

The fish that bite your feet

Last day blues

Edited April 12, 2016 by stormy_weatherman

[stormy_weatherman]

Anyone know why my pictures in the last post are not working? I did everything the same as I did for the rest of the review.

[cruisinsly]

Great review and awesome pictures. Cant wait for the rest.

[CraftyJGinSC]

great review, really enjoying it!