Jump to content
Cruise Critic Community

Liberty East 03/04/06 Cruise- we want to hear from YOU!

gatorclaw

By gatorclaw,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

Recommended Posts

beachbrat

beachbrat

Posted
Posted

Just back!!

 

Decor - typical Carnival...gawdy

 

Food - Had filet mignon everynight.....great! My husband tried some of the other beef dishes and they were tough! Lobster was okay. Pasta bar was good. Diet cakes were good. Mushroom soup was AWESOME.

 

We had a table for two and this really seemed to speed up dinner. We spent no more than 45 minutes in there.

 

Had great service overall. We did run into a couple of "sourpusses" but not many. Enjoyed the cruise director, Butch Begovich.

 

We were in stateroom 1029, deck 10 forward. We felt ALOT of motion. This was the first time I actually got seasick. I threw on a Scopolamine patch and was okay after a while. This ship rocks....

Got the usual towel animals until we decided to hang our swan by the neck outside our cabin. We got no more towel animals after that... :-)

 

Loved hanging out on topless deck. We had the typical guys going over there to check things out. I got some beads from a very nice lady.

 

While I am not a parrothead, I loved being on a cruise with the parrotheads.

 

Ports - San Juan we did the Juan Carlos Flamenco Show and it was awesome. My husband was pulled up on stage to "shake his groove thang"

 

St Thomas - took a ferry on our own over to St John (trunk bay)..very beautiful.

 

Antigua - on our own, took a cab over to Pineapple beach resort (we paid 50 bucks pp and included breakfast, lunch, all drinks including alcohol, use of facilities, and beach chairs. very beautiful

 

Tortola - we took Speedy's (not so speedy) over to the Virgin Gorda and visited the Baths. This is a must see. They are very beautiful but it was crowded. We did this excursion on our own and paid less than 1/2 of what Carnival was asking. There are some awesome views from the restaurant at the top of the baths.

 

Nassau - took a cab over to Atlantis and hung out at the public beach. It was very crowded as this is spring break. There were 5 or 6 ships in port that day!

 

Any questions?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
beachbrat

beachbrat

Posted
Posted

Pasta "bar" was on Lido near buffets, different kinds of sauces, etc.

 

I asked my waiter for filet mignon. It is available only upon request. It's not on the menu nor will they tell you about it. I learned about it on these boards.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
DebNJoe

DebNJoe

Posted
Posted

Thanks for your review. We leave in 19 days! I have a couple of questions...

 

We have the same plans for Antigua, do you recall how much the cab cost you?

 

Where did you dock in St. Thomas? Heard it was going to be Crown Bay and wonder if there was any problem getting a cab to Red Hook.

 

Do you know who the Piano Man was? I see you mention the CD was Butch, guess John Heald is gone, although he is good, we have seen his act enough times already it will be good to have someone new.

 

Thanks for the tip about the Filet Mignon - that's good to know!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
seabum

seabum

Posted
Posted

The Piano guy is Duane.

 

Very nice guy - just a little past his prime.

 

We always had a blast in the Piano Bar - but typically just took over the place with our own singers / players.

 

BTW - I was your neighbor up on 10. (Mark & June)

 

LOVED the hanging chicken. Sorry if our laughter woke you that first night you had it out there. We damn near died - especially as one of our groups chickens had been "chicken napped" earlier that day.

 

I guess everyone is different as we hardly felt the ships motion at all. (but I've been on the water my entire life - so I guess I'm used to it)

 

The filet in the DR was the best meal I had on board all week. Ordered it several times. but like the other poster said - they will not mention it at all.

 

BTW - did you happen to catch our little junkaroo parade?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
beachbrat

beachbrat

Posted
Posted
Thanks for your review. We leave in 19 days! I have a couple of questions...

 

Taxi to Pineapple Beach was 30 one way. If you can, find a few people to split this with you. TIP -- TAKE EXACT CHANGE. We found that a lot of the taxis didn't carry change. Also, negotiate the price up front.

 

In St. Thomas, taxi to Red Hook cost $11 per person one way. Coming back we decided to take the ferry back to Crown Bay instead of Red Hook.

 

Going to Virgin Gorda, sit inside ferry unless you don't mind getting wet.

 

Can't help with piano man.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
ooulio

ooulio

Posted
Posted

We went on this ship on Feb 4. I didn't think the decor was that bad. Some of the rooms were nice. We were in the Silver Dining Room. Had great service. Approximately an hour in the dining room. Our food was great. We were more towards the front . We were on the Lido Deck. I used a Transderm Scop patch. It worked pretty good. Pasta was very good. They made you what you wanted with about 4 different sauces. The deli had great reuben sandwiches. We even went to the restaurant and had breakfast one morning. Waffles with fresh fruit. Omelettes were very good at the stations. Had no complaints with the food. Lobster was good. We had a great cruise. Make sure if you take a tour in St Thomas, they leave you back at the right dock. They left us at the wrong dock. We had to catch a taxi to the right one. In Puerto Rico, you walk through a building. They offer you drinks. They are good and free. When we came back from downtown, we walked back through it. They were with rum and all kinds. Some were pretty strong. Rum is very cheap there. Our cruise director was John Heald. He was funny.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
DebNJoe

DebNJoe

Posted
Posted
Thanks for your review. We leave in 19 days! I have a couple of questions...

 

Taxi to Pineapple Beach was 30 one way. If you can, find a few people to split this with you. TIP -- TAKE EXACT CHANGE. We found that a lot of the taxis didn't carry change. Also, negotiate the price up front.

 

In St. Thomas, taxi to Red Hook cost $11 per person one way. Coming back we decided to take the ferry back to Crown Bay instead of Red Hook.

 

Going to Virgin Gorda, sit inside ferry unless you don't mind getting wet.

 

Can't help with piano man.

 

Beachbrat,

Thanks for your responses.

So it's $30 total for the cab in Antigua - we are a group of 4 adults - so then not so bad;)

 

We probably won't have the option to come back to Crown Bay - as we are doing a daysail that will return to Red Hook - so what ever it is it is.:rolleyes:

 

In Virgin Gorda, we have a tour booked with Patouche to the Baths - so will be a little different. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Smooze

Smooze

Posted
Posted

Hello! Was on the Liberty 3/4/06 cruise in cabin 8240. Flight in was rather late and we were some of the last to board the ship so we waited very little in the lines of the terminal. The lady dealing with our paperwork didn't return one of our packets with our transfer tickets to us which we didn't realize until trying to board the transfer bus at the end of the cruise (will touch on this more at the end of review). So please make sure you have all your paperwork and cards with you before boarding the ship!!!!

 

Felt little motion except for one night which was pretty rocking, turned in early that night because of it. Otherwise it was pretty smooth sailing!! Angel was our cabin guy and was the cutest little thing! Short little guy super sweet and very very polite! There were four adults in our cabin (two of us in our 20's the other two in their 50's) and there was plenty of storage space for all our clothes, and suite cases could fit under the beds nicely. Your typical room. I had contact Ocean Players Club before sailing as I had signed up with them on our last cruise. When we arrived to our cabin it was decorated in Bon Voyage stuff along with a bottle of champagne and a keychain. Later that night we came back to the room to find OPC had a fairly large fruit basket and bottle of wine delivered to the room as well. We were a group of 26 with rooms all in a row so we had our balcany doors opened to create one loooooong balacony, we did wish we had brought a bungee to hold the doors in place at night when it got windy but a chair on each side also kept the door from swinging. Enough on the room.

 

Days at Sea and Parties - pretty much relaxed, hit the casion dropped in $5 and walked out with $45 which I used throughout the entire cruise winning a little and losing a little. I never go in with the intentions of winning so when you walk out with a little it makes you happy. Only lost a grand total of $15 in the casion for the cruise duration. My brother and his gf both won a little over $100 each on the tables. Our group normally gathers at the back of the ship right by the bar, there is a broken window back there that was all caution taped off. No idea when our how it happened never asked. They had the past guest party in the show room, we sat our whole group in one row and kept putting the empty glasses on the last table which would catch the waiting staffs attention which = more free drinks :D Captain's Party was a little harder to get drinks, we prolly should have went to one of the smaller rooms with a group of 26 we could have filled one of the rooms and had our own person waiter :rolleyes: Finally we had a group party which we were put with 2 other groups this time instead of just our own people like in the past... this was sort of a bummer cause it made it harder to get a drink you actually wanted instead of what they had on their trays when they came around. But we did tip a waiter who kept bringing amaretto sours back to us in mass quantities. TIPPING these waiters as these kind of parties does make a difference!!!!

 

San Juan - been there done that way to many times. Since we were there mostly at night we got off while we still had daylight and hit the hard rock and walked the streets a little and got back on board for the rest of the night.

 

St. Thomas - AWESOME as always!!! This was our shopping day. My parents have been going to St. Thomas every 2 years since 1989 and have a favorite jewelery store (Elegant Jewlers who also owns the Touch of Gold on St. Thomas now) and a favorite sales person named Pushpa. Awesome lady and she always gives us excellent deals! I highly recommend stopping into either of their stores! E-mail me for the addresses if you wish to know them before arriving! Our last cruise to St. Thomas we took a ferry over to St. John's for trunk bay, I definatelly recommend this as well if you are not a shopper! But if you do like to shop especially for jewelery this is the island to do it on this cruise!!!

 

Antigua - Went out on our own for $15 a person with Carl (I'm sorry I can't remember his last name or the company name right now). Very awesome guy and he knew his stuff. He took us out to Devil's Bridge which was very neat but supper slippery if you go down closer to the bridge iteself so please watch your step! After that we asked him to take us to a free public beach we told him a time to pick us back up and he was 1/2 hour early and we were glad. The sun was beating that day and several of us got burnt a little. The public beah he took us to was right beside Pineapple Beach Resort (think I got that name right). The public beach was $6 for a chair and $12 for an umbrella. There was a small bar that had awesome food just off the beach. Water was beautiful and snorkling was way out and not much to look at, few school of fish (I didn't personally go out, that's just what I was told by most people coming back in). Carl dropped us off in town near shopping like we had asked. Picked up some t-shirts and headed back to the ship.

 

Tortola - $15 again got us a tour that took us up up up to the top of the highest point and all the way around the island. Tour guy didn't speak english very well, was difficult to understand a good portion of the time. There really wasn't much to do on Tortola, which I expected most posts here said that Virgin Gorda was the thing to do here but we had all gotten to much sun in Antigua. There is a painted wall in Tortola that depicts the history of the island, lot of work put into this and it was pretty neat. Mostly the views were awesome on this tour. Stopped at a beach that had some small tents set up selling the basic knick knacks. Waves were fairly large at this beach and tide came up pretty fair but there were still people swimming.

 

Nassau - Mentioned this in another post I made already but will repeat. Found a taxi from INSIDE the gate as they told us to on the ship (were told to do this because taxis outside the gate could be just anyone offering a ride). We were told that if visiting Atlantis it was better to take the taxis instead of the water taxi which is $3 each way because the water taxi will drop you off with a fairly long walk to get to Atlantis (and I think they were correct from what I saw). Paid $4 each way to get over to Atlantis where we were dropped off right at the front gate. Walked around Atlantis which was full of shopping (big name stuff) and checked out the marina, very pretty area! Walked a block away to the public beach which was VERY busy and had a lot going on from parasailing to banana-boating. Didn't stay here to long and got a cab ($4 per person) back to town for a little shopping which is an easy walk to and from the pier. There is a Hard Rock, Senor Frogs and Piranha Joe's here. If you are a Tortuga Rum Cake eater they also have a small factory style shop here in Nassau.

 

Overall we had a great time! I noticed a lot of mention of the food on the Liberty before we left and I think I have to agree. The food was ok, we never went hungry and I don't cruise just for the food. I think that having cruised in the past we are quick to judge the quality of the food and compare it to other ships, this is only natural. I have definately had better food but the food on the Liberty was ok. There wasn't much variety on the buffet, in fact you will learn you can count on certain things being there every single night which is great if you actually like the stuff, not so great if you were hoping to try different things. I only ate in the dinning room 3 times, had steak, prime rib and another beef dish that had a fancy name :D Steak and prime rib were really good. The fancy name beef dish I ordered medium well and it was still very red on the inside, I ate very little of it and hit the buffet after leaving the dinning room. Dinning room entertainment was always fun, had several individual singers on a couple of nights. Our wait staff was ok, their memories were nothing like wait staffs on other ships we've had. Normally by the second day they know which type of bread you will want or if you want coffee or tea at the end of the meal etc. Konstantine the head was pretty funny, "hello, it's me, Konstantine" became a fun thing amongst our group.

 

Getting to the ship = piece of cake

Cruise itself = awesome as always

Getting off the ship = NIGHTMARE!!!!!!!!!!

 

For some reason our flight out was from Miami instead of Ft. Lauderdale and it wasn't until 5:45pm! So we decided to wait until we were forced off the ship which was 10:00am. Getting off the ship itself was a piece of cake, no problems in customs. We get outside the terminal to find a bunch of busses, we ask which one to Miami and are told to wait to the right. We wait and wait, eventually we ask again if we are in the right place, they have us (group of 26 mind you) move to the left where we find a bus that they are telling us will be the LAST BUS to Miami!!!!!! :eek: We have transfer tickets as a part of our package which two of our people didn't have, the one because the packet was never given back to her when we did embarkation and the other guy just flat out lost his. The purser's desk had told us before we got off the ship that it would be ok they would have their names on a list and allow them to get on the bus... sounded easy enough.... WRONG! We fought for 30 mins with an older fellow who was dealing with the bussing (he had a Holland name tag on, why he had anything to do with us Carnival people I had no idea) when finally a Carnival guy showed up with a list and wrote out 2 new transfer tickets for them. After we get that figured out we are now told there isn't enough room for all 26 of us and our luggage and reminded once again this is the LAST BUS to Miami!!! They wanted to send our luggage with something else and put us on the bus, NOT gonna happen! To make this long nightmare short the bus driver finally says he will make this happen because he had enough seats for everyone (in fact there was one empty seat on the bus) and he pulled out luggage and rearranged and managed to get everyone and all our luggage on the bus. You could tell he was feeling the pressure, I felt bad for him cause there was alot of yelling going on with the actually cruiseline people and he was just a poor little bus driver. Once all our luggage was on the older guy from Holland A. told us that he already turned in the paperwork for that bus and we were not on it and wasn't gonna let us on!!! More yelling and finally we were on and off on a 45min ride to Miami. Get there to find a very busy drop off point that was a looong walk away from the Delta terminal. We finally checked in and still had a 5 hour wait for our flight!!!! BORING! Get to Atlanta and put onto a small puddle jumper to Dayton. So small infact that the had 3 peope leave the plan due to weight restrictions. As we are sitting on the plane we know just by looking not all our luggage is going to be on this plane, as we took off we watched our luggage go in the opposite direction. We get to Dayton and sure enough everyone in the group was missing at least 1 bag. We filled out paperwork with delta to have it delivered to us today (Monday) and were told the next flight in from Atlanta was an hour away and we were welcome to wait and see if it was on this flight since it was a larger flight (145 people compared to our 50 people flight). Thankfully ALL of our luggage was on this flight. We arrived to our homes 2 hours later than we had planned and thankfully with all our luggage.

 

I apologize for the minor rant but it was incredibly frustrating!

 

Any question feel free to ask or send me an e-mail I'll help if I can!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Smooze

Smooze

Posted
Posted

I sent you the info (which you already know since you were so quick to reply :D ). For the rest of you interested I will post it up here now that I have it at hand.

 

Touch of Gold

25-A Main Street

St. Thomas, USVI 00802

Tel. (340) 776-3884

Toll Free (877) 550-3399

 

Elegant Jewelry Shop

33 Raadets Gade

St. Thomas, USVI 00802

Tel. (340) 776-7756

Toll Free 800-550-2299

Link to comment
Share on other sites
JudithEM

JudithEM

Posted
Posted

Just got back from Liberty cruise to Western Caribbean. Some observations:

 

Worst piano bar player - does not compare to other Carnival piano players. First cruise I did NOT lose my voice on. A complete disappointment (unless Ron is back on board - he is awesome).

 

Great cruise director and asst cruise director (John and Butch)

 

Supper club was very good, but be careful. Food was EXTREMELY rich -- easy to overdo it there.

 

Typical Carnival fare otherwise; service depends on your particular waiter.

 

Really liked the sports bar. Great large screen tvs (we were on during Daytona 500 and Olympics).

 

Very easy embarkation -- just do NOT get there at the earliest time you can board. We got there at 2:30 (ship left port at 4 pm) and we did not wait on a single line. Debarkation was very smooth too.

 

Very difficult to get lounge chairs on sea days. Even at 7:30 am they were all taken/reserved.

 

Best shows: motown night, bedtime story.

 

For anyone going on Western Caribbean cruise: take the Panama Canal excursion. It was fascinating; a very enjoyable day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
gatorclaw

gatorclaw

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Jeez. I really want to see this Duane guy now. I mean, he's been built up so much as THE WORST PIANO BAR PLAYER EVER, not just in this thread, but in multiple threads. I just gotta see him now. I feel bad for the guy though, because the most 'positive' thing I've heard about him is that he's "a little past his prime." I hope he doesn't read these boards! He'd be crushed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Smooze

Smooze

Posted
Posted
:D Guys -Thanks so much for your reveiws on the Liberty.

 

Smooze-Where is Hard Rock located in San Juan? Would love to have a tee shirt.:p

 

 

Hard Rock is walking distance from dock in Old San Juan it's on Recinto Sur Street. Wasn't to far from Senor Frogs if I remember correctly, we followed a fairly large group of people who hit both places and headed right back to the ship.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
suncoastgirl

suncoastgirl

Posted
Posted

Beachbrat, you said you were in cabin 1029. Was the motion in this cabin continously bad or just during certain days of the cruise? We sail on 4/1 in cabin 1006, the foremost cabin on this deck. Concerned about the motion although I don't plan to spend much time in the cabin. Will be out having too much fun. Thanks for the great review.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing
  • Forum Jump
    • Categories
      • Welcome to Cruise Critic
      • ANNOUNCEMENT: Set Sail on Sun Princess®
      • Hurricane Zone 2024
      • Cruise Insurance Q&A w/ Steve Dasseos of Tripinsurancestore.com June 2024
      • New Cruisers
      • Cruise Lines “A – O”
      • Cruise Lines “P – Z”
      • River Cruising
      • ROLL CALLS
      • Cruise Critic News & Features
      • Digital Photography & Cruise Technology
      • Special Interest Cruising
      • Cruise Discussion Topics
      • UK Cruising
      • Australia & New Zealand Cruisers
      • Canadian Cruisers
      • North American Homeports
      • Ports of Call
      • Cruise Conversations
×
×
  • Create New...