Liberty of the Seas Review July 29, 2018

[dude_hdt]

Just off Liberty a few hours ago so here's my contribution to people looking for information on this ship.

 

This is my 12th cruise overall and 3rd with RC. The heavy majority has been out of Galveston (only 30 minutes from home to port) but the last time out of this port was 5 years ago and things are different.

 

Arrival:

From past experiences, we aim to arrive at entrance door at 10:30am and don't stop walking until after cruise card is in hand, then short wait until call for boarding. I've read that crowd start earlier nowadays so aimed to arrive at 10:15am only to run into traffic so took until 10:35 to have luggage off and at building entry door. Decent line for X-ray machine, only 2 in operation but don't know if more would be opened later. Only separation for RC membership level was for first time and gold in same line. Platinum and above in a much shorter line. I had 2 bottles of wine and employee waved me thru easily. Next was short line to check-in. Camera system was not operational so everyone would have to get pic taken when stepping on the ship. Then upstairs to the waiting area. Again separation was Platinum & above in one area, Gold and first timers in a much bigger area. The call for general boarding was out as we got off the escalator. Apparently, the call for Platinum & up had already happened. Not too organized once general boarding was announced as big crowd formed. There is a spot near the front of the line that we saw new Platinum & up were allowed to merge. When we got to 1 family from that spot, a port employee noticed the word "Gold" on our card and waved up forward...not much of a gain but oh well. Gold didn't match with the sign but I'm not complaining. Very slow to get picture taken as we got on the ship. Entered on Deck 4 and up to Windjammer. 11:50am by this time. Had we been Platinum (2 more cruises after this one), that Windjammer arrival time would likely be 11:15 or so.

 

Overall ship:

My family were definitely spoiled by Oasis from 2 years ago. We do like the bigger ship and how things are more spread out. That said, we never had trouble finding seat in Windjammer for breakfast and lunch the whole 7 days. Only once did we not get a table for 4 that was by the window. Never heard loud speaker asking diners to leave so other can have seats like we did on Oasis though which was nice. Ship was nice and clean without us witnessing broken down or dirty areas. Solarium was smaller so was crowded in the afternoon so we mainly used it after breakfast when it is basically empty. Main pool area were completely packed every day unless you're there to claim a seat before 9:30am. Having the very front of the ship where the helipad is, open to passengers is nice...probably first ship we've been on to have this. Yes, we did the "Titanic" movie pose ... a few times. We used the loop on deck 4 as our exercise walking deck every morning before breakfast and it was mostly empty. Too bad they didn't mark distances for us to gage our level of exercise but we usually did 2-4 laps each morning.

[dude_hdt]

Food:

Windjammer had a good variety. Lots of Indian type food every meal. Lots of different soups also. Dinner offerings was quite bountiful with many, not all, of the menu items from MDR. We dined in MDR every night. The MDR menu was good some night and other nights seems boring. Quantity of food in MDR was small which I do like as it allows me to try more dishes and let's face it, it's not like I'm ever hungry on a cruise anyways. We visited Windjammer afterwards most nights to see what other dishes were available that looked appetizing and would have to say, some nights, the Windjammer offerings looked better than MDR. New thing in MDR as I've read recently was taking order for appetizer, entree, and dessert at the same time. Don't know if this difference made dinner faster or not but we were definitely done well within 1.5 hours most night. Some nights were fast when we told the waiter to skip dessert cause we wanted to get to the show and were done in 45 minutes. We did the early traditional dining that started at 5:30pm and most nights were able to be done and get to the early main show. This was great and allowed us more time for other evening activities around the ship.

 

Staffs at both places were great, very friendly and attentive. Big miss with Windjammer was the burger. That meat was by far some of the worst I've ever had. That mass produced meat had no texture and no flavor...RC really needs to reconsider the contract with that meat provider. I had a burger on the excursion in Belize and noted to my wife how much better that burger was.

 

Entertainment on board:

Don't know why first night's show was only once. Caused us to race thru MDR early traditional dining time to get to the show. Saturday Night Fever was good, didn't wow us but entertaining. In the Air was great...a light version of Cirque de Solieu (sp?). Elvis impersonator was very good as well as the pair of comedian/juggler. We spent a lot of time every evening in Schooner Bar due to pianist Bill Forrest. He was good at working the crowd and getting people involved with clapping and singing along. In between song, he provided some history behind the songs and singer which made it more interesting. Lots of movies twice every night pool side. On sea days, afternoons had 3D movies in the Platinum Theater. My kids and I participated in many trivia contests...not good enough to win any but did learn new stuffs. I do like sudoku and unlike the May Cruise Compass that I read where they had this several times during the cruise, it was only offered once on a dock day. Luckily it was a dock day that we didn't have excursion so I was able to play. Overall, too many activities for me to attend them all. Might need to do back-to-back to capture more of the activities.

 

Excursion:

Roatan: We've done the beach club here before and didn't see anything else interesting so decided to walk the town some and just enjoy an empty ship. This is a small port so not too much shops in the dock area. Leaving the shop area (before leaving the security gates) you'll see lots of kiosh aggressively selling excursions. We walked outside the gates to take pic next to "I Love Roatan" sign. We were hounded even more by people offering taxis and excursions outside. Some deals seemed pretty good...$60 for personal driver for the day...$10/person for personal taxi all day and cheaper entry into some of the beach clubs. We might take them up on it next time. My kids were a little rattled by the heavy sales pushes but no big deal to me.

 

Belize: We did a reef excursion thru RC, knowing tender may make you miss your personally set up events. Big miss by RC was that we were told to meet in Platinum Theater at 10:30am but we didn't get on the boat until 11:30. That boat took us from ship directly to snorkel on a tiny island. The snorkel was great as it was guided so you see all of the good stuffs and narrated. No food or drink (besides water) was provided. We didn't get back to Liberty until 3:30 so too late to get on land for some shopping. Liberty employee also was not correct in telling us that there was an earlier snorkeling trip by same vendor that we should have taken if we wanted time on land. When we arrived at the small island, there was another group already there and was departing on the boat that took us. That group was with Carnival ship though so...no, there was no option for us to do an earlier trip. My wife wan't happy about missing out on picking the free charm bracelet from that port.

 

Cozumel:

Always a happy place for us all...great beaches and lots of shops. Only bad...our normal place, Mr Sanchos, has grown from a tiny sleep stops...maybe 10 families at best for the day to a sold out all-inclusive only for the day we were there (7 ships in port). We wanted to do "pay as you go" or as the local say "a la carte" was not available to us. Back up plan was a place some people mentioned...Paradise Beach which is less than a mile from Sanchos. $3 entry fee, $18 if you want to play with the water toys, and $10 minimum per person. We arrived early enough to have our pick of lounge/umbrella. My kids did the water toys. We had a few drinks and a couple of plates of food and was still half the cost of Sanchos. We're not big drinkers so all-inclusive doesn't interest us and coming off a cruise, no need for mega food. We loved Paradise with good snorkeling and toys so will be our standard stop in the future.

 

Disembarkation:

We filled out the form on day 4 to do the assisted method but once we saw our number and how late that would be, we changed our mind and did self route. Self route assigned letters A-G and called by that order. We didn't tell the room attendance that we changed our mind so I thought the letter on our sea card for muster station was our letter to leave..."B". So we left with group B but I noticed others had a piece of paper with the letter on it so ....oops. This method was very fast. We moved the whole time until Customs where we had only 2 families ahead of us so I would say 15 minutes total from room to exiting port. Very fast.

[bigairboarder44]

Glad you had a good time, we can't wait to get on in March!!

[SHIP TRAVELER]

Thank you for the review. We leave for the Liberty on Sunday the 12th so you review just fed our excitement.

Glad to hear that disembarkation went well as we have encountered some long lines in Galveston on prior trips. Our grand daughter starts school Monday so we want to get home as soon as possible.

[funtexascruiser]

Thank you for your review. We are on LOS on October 7 and needless to say on serious cruise countdown. Hoping for a quick embarkation to get the party started!

[bighairtexan]

Thanks for the review.

FUNTEXASCRUISER we're also on the October 7th (I'm in Frisco!) . See you aboard.

[gigi65]

We are taking this same route in Oct. Glad to hear there is a new piano player in the schooner. We love that bar !!

[ToddnMichelle]

thanks for the review. heading out on her (from Dallas) for this same run in April.

[jcc1025]

Thank you for the review. We leave for the Liberty on Sunday the 12th so you review just fed our excitement.

Glad to hear that disembarkation went well as we have encountered some long lines in Galveston on prior trips. Our grand daughter starts school Monday so we want to get home as soon as possible.

Also liked the review and it added to our excitement. We are on the Sep. 19th sailing so will pass at the dock. We really like this ship and class and enjoyed all the comments. We have always had a easy time at embarkation and demarcation in Galveston and actually in all the RCCL ports we have sailed from. Compared to what it was like back in the day this is one of the most amazing improvement in taking a cruise in our experience. Have fun next week.

[Ladysilver]

Thanks for your review! :)

[funtexascruiser]

Thanks for the review.

FUNTEXASCRUISER we're also on the October 7th (I'm in Frisco!) . See you aboard.

 

Hi Bighairtexan...we are neighbors! 7 weeks from tomorrow we board the ship! See you then!