Freedom Eastern Trip Report - 2/18/17 – Eight Days THIS Week w/ lots of photos!

[TimeToGetNauti]

Great review so far. I will be sailing Freedom next April. My first cruise on her was in 2008. Also, I just got off Allure and they also had that recording asking people to leave after they finished eating. It was polite but a little odd.

[Kesali]

I love your spreadsheet idea and am going to copy the idea for our cruise next year. Thanks for posting a picture of it.

 

We also have a couple of Olympus TG cameras in our house. We gave our son the TG-820 for his birthday one year and it worked so well we gave our daughter the TG-850 a year later. I was really surprised that with the newer 850 model Olympus took away the metal lens cover the 820 has. Having the lens automatically covered with the metal cover every time the camera turns off is nice. No worrying about scratches or losing the lens cover.

 

Could you tell me what GPS tracker app you are using? That's pretty cool having it track your vacation. I'd love to try it out.

 

And thank you so much for posting photos of the Teen Compass! I never knew there is a Compass just for teens!! I'm making a note to look grab one on our first day for the boys.

[fletch1027]

Day 2 – Sea Day Uno (cont)

 

The Men’s International Belly Flop Competition” was now underway. When they introduced the competitors, there were 2 that stood out. A huge guy that was the favorite and a young guy that looked like he weighed 120 pounds. He actually got a bit of a chuckle from the crowd when he made his approach to the box. However, it seems like there is a lot more to belly flop success than just the “belly” part, because this kid totally crushed it and the crowd loved it (surprisingly he ended up coming in 2nd). Here is his attempt:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This next guy was middle of the road. He had a pretty bad start, but straightened out before hitting the water:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to be continued…

 

 

[fletch1027]

Day 2 – Sea Day Uno (cont)

 

Here’s the next man up – he also ended up with an average to low score and you can see why based on his not great form and not enough water displacement - 2 very scientific factors! :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we have your champion with his attempt. It was very functionally sound, but I still liked the small guy better for what he had to overcome to create the big splash!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to be continued…

 

[MikeMA]

Day 1 – Let’s go cruising! (cont)

 

This was the first time we have cruised with friends and had the opportunity to combine reservations for MTD, coordinate excursions, and stuff like that. We were cruising with three great friends of ours that flew in from Moscow, Idaho and met us on board.

 

In regards to MTD and combining reservations into one table for five, I was able to do it all on line and the process was very smooth and there were no screw-ups or anything like that when we were on board. Reading that last line back again, I’m not sure what that says for RCI’s reputation when something gets labeled a surprising fantastic success because “nothing was screwed up”. :-) We were also able to keep the same table and wait staff for 7 of the 8 nights, with the only hiccup being the night that we ate very late, which was also a good thing.

 

After dinner, we headed to the Schooner Bar for movie theme trivia. My wife & I love trivia, and I would classify ourselves as “moderately crazy”. We love winning, hate losing, however we don’t pull a nutty when we don’t win – meaning I have never talked back or argued with the staff over answers and stuff like that. I’m on vacation to be stress free after all! :-)

 

That being said, our group of five won that trivia. After trivia, we were hanging around relaxing at the Schooner Bar when I noticed way too many lights out the window on the horizon and in an odd direction for the way we should be heading. We went out to the bow area to check it out and sure enough the lights were Miami and we were heading towards them. Conveniently enough, I had my GPS app running and here’s what it looked like around 9pm:

 

 

 

The Miami skyline looming closer:

 

 

 

A few minutes after this, Captain Toni came on the PA to say that due to a medical emergency (our first cruise with a medical emergency), we were indeed heading towards Miami to sync up with a Coast Guard ship to pick up the affected person.

 

Sure enough, here it comes into view (apologies for the crappy cell phone picture quality):

 

 

 

 

 

Coast Guard pulling up alongside the ship

 

 

 

After that, Captain Toni came on again and mentioned that this would not affect our arrival time into Labadee on Monday morning. We then headed to the welcome aboard show, which was good and what you would expect for a typical welcome aboard.

 

On the way back I checked my app again and noticed that we were indeed turned and heading full steam towards Labadee once again:

 

 

 

Tomorrow – in search of adventure on our first of three sea days on this cruise…

 

 

 

Could you tell me which gps app you use. Looks good.

 

 

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[fletch1027]

Thank you so much!!!

 

No problem - hope it helps! I know how hard it is to keep teens occupied... :D

[fletch1027]

Hey, hey, hey,

 

Look who's back on town and writing another top notch Freedom trip report!

 

So it sounds like you are impressed by the A7? If you can borrow it from work every time you cruise, no need to buy any camera for your vacations. I'm way too cheap to spring the for the top range equipment. Still trying to talk myself into upgrading my SLR lens to a Sigma for the upcoming trip.

 

Was looking to see if the bottle of diet Coke was going to photo bomb your photographic equipment this time.

 

Hello my friend - glad you found it! Yes, the A7 is an awesome camera - definitely out of my price range though! :( I only wish I had more time before cruising to learn how to use the features better! Although the photos turned out great, most of them were taken using the "auto" setting, so I know there's a lot more potential!

 

Also - I took the photo of all of the "photo stuff" onboard, so the only thing that could have photo-bombed it this time was my coke mug... :cool:

[fletch1027]

Day 2 – Sea Day Uno (cont)

 

This next guy put on a clinic on how not to do a proper belly flop. Maybe his nerves affected him and caused him to pull out of his form early or he didn’t get a good leap, but whatever he did wrong definitely affected his entry!

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the big guy that was by default the crowd and odds on favorite to win. He had everything going for him except for his technique (like the bent legs) – which cost him the win in this critically important international competition!

 

 

 

 

 

 

to be continued…

 

[fletch1027]

great report so far, I'm excited to follow along!

 

Thanks - great to have you along!

[fletch1027]

Day 2 – Sea Day Uno (cont)

 

Once the very “scientific” voting system deems someone the winner, he gets his prize, then they have all of the guys do a group flop. Sequence of photos below that was taken right before I think I felt the ship list a bit. :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right after the competition, I looked to the port side and saw this Celeystal ship passing us heading west. I believe this is one of the smaller cruise lines that have ships like this one that will be doing some cruises to Cuba. Was interesting to see it pass by so closely.

 

 

 

 

Us guys then headed down to Schooner and bombed out at Afternoon Trivia. I seem to prefer the “themed” trivia over the generic (morning, afternoon, evening) flavors of trivia. When I say prefer, it is because of the math equation that states: "prefer = do better at" :-)

 

We wandered around for a bit before meeting up with everyone to prepare for dinner (1st formal night in MDR). After getting ready, Jen and I had some time to kill so we stopped by the Schooner Bar again and participated in Sports Trivia. I love sports and as far as trivia goes, sports is right in there with things like movies, TV, and everything 80’s. We surprisingly won – below is our scoresheet to show how varied the sports topics were. We missed 2 questions (#7 and #10). Comment back if you think you know the correct answers. I know them now…

 

 

 

 

to be continued…

 

 

Edited March 20, 2017 by fletch1027

[grandmarnnurse]

Following

 

 

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[fletch1027]

Day 2 – Sea Day Uno (cont)

 

We have all re-convened at the MDR MTD desk for dinner. I mentioned this earlier, but we are one of the MTD tables that are down on Deck 4 instead of Deck 5. The first two nights we were escorted down there by one of the hosts with the little receipt containing the table number. For the rest of the cruise, the lady at the MTD desk would ask us, “Do you guys know where you are going?”. Once we said yes, then we walked ourselves down the spiral staircase to our table on Deck 4. I can see both sides of this. On the one hand, it is less of the “formal MTD experience” to not be led to your table. On the other hand, it likely causes a log jam to have a host be gone the extra time it takes to get down to Deck 4 and back. For us, we were fine making our own way to the table. If not for having to let them know we were there, we could have just gone in the Deck 4 MDR entrance. No big deal either way since we were all staying on Deck 8 anyway.

 

A lot has been made of favorite dishes disappearing from the MDR menu. Not sure if it was cyclical and planned, based on cruiser feedback, more people going to the specialty restaurants, the global duck shortage being alleviated, or any other conspiracy theories that could be afoot, but the MDR menu selections on this cruise had many (if not all) of the old familiar things back on it.

 

For example, tonight the duck and fillet were back again. Also, if I haven’t mentioned it already, the shrimp cocktail was on the apps menu every night.

 

 

 

Quack quack – no one ordered it, but our waiter for the week (Franklin) brought us one to try. I’m not a huge duck fan. To me it tastes like a little greasier version of dark turkey meat. This one was ok though…

 

 

 

Here’s two of our group of five. One husband couldn’t make it or it would have been six. I included this mainly to show the view outside our Deck 4 window. Besides the big crane, it was a great ocean view! :-)

 

 

 

I read about this on these very CC boards. Someone mentioned that if none of the dessert options on a given night look appealing, to try the “mini brownie madness” from the kids dessert menu. I tried this and it was great. I ended up ordering it one other night as well! :-)

 

 

 

to be continued…

 

 

[Gabruska]

Thank you for the review can't wait to hear more....also have a question for you....we sailed Indy and loved it, we are booked on Harmony wanted to try the largest ship, but found this 8th nights with some great ports we have not been to and price is almost 1k less on Freedom( one extra night!!!!). So dealing with dilema do I switch and save 🙄....when you sailed Allure and now went back to the smaller ship what was your feeling ....did you miss the big ship? We haven't been on any of the large ships yet so only know what we are missing on reviews and photos. Could you give me your point of view to compare your experience between the two classes? Thank you !

 

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[Ocean Boy]

Thank you for the review can't wait to hear more....also have a question for you....we sailed Indy and loved it, we are booked on Harmony wanted to try the largest ship, but found this 8th nights with some great ports we have not been to and price is almost 1k less on Freedom( one extra night!!!!). So dealing with dilema do I switch and save ��....when you sailed Allure and now went back to the smaller ship what was your feeling ....did you miss the big ship? We haven't been on any of the large ships yet so only know what we are missing on reviews and photos. Could you give me your point of view to compare your experience between the two classes? Thank you !

 

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We go back and forth between Voyager/ Freedom/ and Oasis class ships easily and enjoy all three classes. I think that I find myself a bit more relaxed when on the V/F ships. On the O class here always seems to be something going on and with my inability to sit still very long it doesn't help the situation. The big thing with the O class for me is the Aqua Theater. I absolutely love the water shows. But I know when we are on the V/F ships it simply won't be there and that is fine. The shows also are very much weather dependent so you can find yourself on an O class ships and the Aqua shows cancelled which can be a bit disappointing. I also enjoy the ability to be a bit more spontaneous on the V/F ships with not having to do so much planning for the entertainment venues pre-cruise. The other side of the coin is that for someone like me who likes to be on the move and walk a lot the O class provides a lot of real estate to be able to roam around on. There again, I miss having access to the helipad on the O class. I like spending some time there at night on the V/F ships.

 

We book the O class when we find a good price but I love the 8 night itinerary that Freedom is doing. We have done it several times on Navigator, Independence, and Freedom. For this itinerary and $1000.00 less I would not second guess a decision to pick Freedom. Harmony will be around a long time. You will get an opportunity to sail the ship in the future and maybe for less money. However, if you are going to be standing on Freedom and looking over at Harmony and wishing that you were on it then book it. I think the key is to enjoy the venues that are available to you on the ship that you happen to be on and not think about what would have been available to you if you were on another ship. We just got off of Freedom two weeks ago and had a great cruise even with not so great weather.

[Gabruska]

Thank you so much for this input Ocean Boy it really helps. Perfectly said!

[waterlegs]

Really enjoying your review and your great photos. Menu sounds great to me. Hope it is as good when Freedom comes to Europe. Can I ask what are the productions like in Arcadia? Are they musical in nature or comedy or variety? Also are the pools big enough to actually swim in? Always seems to be activities on in them in peoples photos.

[flirtyfloridacouple]

Will be on the freedom next month for their TA and can't wait. Your review is helping out in a major way, would definitely like to keep seeing the menus, daily activities and shows. Great job! Also, how is the nightlife right now?

 

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[fletch1027]

Great review so far. I will be sailing Freedom next April. My first cruise on her was in 2008. Also, I just got off Allure and they also had that recording asking people to leave after they finished eating. It was polite but a little odd.

 

Yes, it is an odd message. When I heard it the first time I thought it was live, then when I heard the next one that was exactly the same, I realized it was a recording... :)

[fletch1027]

Could you tell me which gps app you use. Looks good.

 

 

 

 

 

I love your spreadsheet idea and am going to copy the idea for our cruise next year. Thanks for posting a picture of it.

 

We also have a couple of Olympus TG cameras in our house. We gave our son the TG-820 for his birthday one year and it worked so well we gave our daughter the TG-850 a year later. I was really surprised that with the newer 850 model Olympus took away the metal lens cover the 820 has. Having the lens automatically covered with the metal cover every time the camera turns off is nice. No worrying about scratches or losing the lens cover.

 

Could you tell me what GPS tracker app you are using? That's pretty cool having it track your vacation. I'd love to try it out.

 

And thank you so much for posting photos of the Teen Compass! I never knew there is a Compass just for teens!! I'm making a note to look grab one on our first day for the boys.

 

No problem - glad I could help out in a small way with the spreadsheet & the teen compass. :)

 

I love my TG-4 camera, but it was odd that it didn't come with a lens cap. When I bought the filter adapter kit at least that came with a lens cap

 

Regarding the GPS app, search for "Location Tracker Lite" in the iTunes store (not sure if it is available on Android)...

[fletch1027]

Day 2 – Sea Day Uno (cont)

 

For the most part, trivia is done down in the Schooner Bar. On some occasions, due to scheduling or expected crowds, there are bigger events done one deck up – in the Star Lounge. This was the first time on all of our Freedom cruises that we have played "Ultimate Movie & TV Theme Trivia" up here. It was pretty fun. We were all seated as teams, but everyone did their own score sheet. The people that qualify for the “finals” (top 8 I believe) go up and play head to head until there is a winner. Jen did well and came in 3rd. It was fun to do this with a larger group and a little different format than the traditional trivia.

 

 

 

 

That night while walking around, I noticed this and thought it was an interesting piece of history. Yes, there was a time before Oasis class roamed the high seas that the Freedom was the worlds largest cruise ship. Technically, Freedom only held the record for a year (Liberty is the same size but 1 more gross ton), but the Freedom class held the record until Oasis launched in 2009.

 

Does anyone know where this Guinness Book record plaque is located?

 

 

 

Getting back to the room, we found a new friend – the towel ray. For some reason on these trip reviews I always include photos of the towel animals…

 

 

 

I haven’t spoken much about the nightly entertainment offerings in the theater because in my opinion they are good, but not worth seeing more than once and unfortunately on Freedom, they haven’t changed in the four years between our first Freedom cruise and this one. Tonight’s was a show called Marquee, where the singers perform songs from several Broadway plays over the past few decades. Like I said, it is good, but I wouldn’t want to see it more than once.

 

Off to bed and tomorrow we arrive at our first of four ports – Labadee!

 

[bUU]

Regarding the GPS app, search for "Location Tracker Lite" in the iTunes store (not sure if it is available on Android)...

Apparently not. There are loads of other choices in the Google Play Store though. This one looks similar, but I haven't tried it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.crazyapps.mobilelocationtracker&hl=en

[MikeMA]

No problem - glad I could help out in a small way with the spreadsheet & the teen compass. :)

 

I love my TG-4 camera, but it was odd that it didn't come with a lens cap. When I bought the filter adapter kit at least that came with a lens cap

 

Regarding the GPS app, search for "Location Tracker Lite" in the iTunes store (not sure if it is available on Android)...

 

 

Found the App. Thank you

 

 

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[fletch1027]

Day 3 – “Zipping” through Labadee

 

Here’s the Day 3 compass, but for us the day will be mostly spent between breakfast and mid-afternoon off the ship in Labadee. All aboard is 3:30 and we usually like getting back onboard 60-90 minutes before that to avoid the “rush”…

 

 

 

Another 1st and a 3rd in trivia today. There is a collection of cheap "trophies" (pens and keychains) collecting on our cabin desk. I love cartoons! The 80's music trivia was very hard - a lot of very obscure 80's songs we didn't recognize. Oh well... :-)

Here’s the gps app showing us steaming into Labadee. I didn’t start tracking until I woke up, so it doesn’t show a whole route from Florida, but you can see where in Haiti Labadee is at least (if you didn’t already know) :-)

 

 

 

When cruising on Freedom, at least one time per cruise I try to get up early enough to catch sunrise from the bow. I have mentioned spending time on the bow a few times already on this cruise because it’s one of my favorite places on Freedom. The traditional way to get there is from a very narrow staircase on the outside of Deck 4, however there is another lesser known (and much easier) way to get to the bow! It is accessible from the Star Lounge and here’s how. Walk all the way into the Star Lounge and as soon as you are in, make an immediate right turn and you will see a door straight ahead. Go through that door and there is an outside door past that and you are on the bow level and a small 5-6 steps up to the helipad area! Here is a photo of the door in Star Lounge (notice the tinted glass of the DJ booth on the right)

 

 

 

Once up there, here are some photos I got. As you can see, I was close but was a few minutes late for the suns appearance on the horizon. :-(

 

 

 

 

Here’s a crew person raising the flag as we get closer to port

 

 

to be continued…

[Ocean Boy]

Day 2 – Sea Day Uno (cont)

Does anyone know where this Guinness Book record plaque is located?

 

 

 

OK, I give up.

[fletch1027]

Following

 

 

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Thanks! Great to have you along!