Delayed report of 3 Day Bahamas Cruise on Liberty

Thanks for the review!! On your excursion of the Top 10 of Nassau can you advise what the 10 stops were? How long did the trip last. We were thinking about doing this as this will be first stop in Nassau. I wanted to make sure that I had time to explore the straw market and some other shops close to the port as well.

Thanks,

Hey Robin,

The Top 10 Best of Nassau lasted a bit over 5 hours on the bus - they gather you up at about 10:45am (IIRC), you walk about 10 min to the bus, and then we returned to the Port area around 4:15pm or maybe it was 4:30pm. Waaay tooooo looooong. Well over the advertised 4 hr tour. The first half went quick enough, but we stayed far too long at the Fish Fry area, and we literally only stopped the bus (no getting out) at a couple of the so-called Top 10 spots.

We made actual stops at the Rum Cake factory, Atlantis for the water fountain (quick stop) and then the Casino (longer stop, bus left for a while), Fort Fincastle / Queen's Staircase, Watling's Rum Distilliery, Fish Fry, and the beach just east of the fish fry (far west end of Junkaroo beach area, I suppose). The stop-and-go spots were another Fort, the Parliament buildings I think, maybe another place to get the count to "10".

I'm glad we did it because we did see things we probably would't have though to go check out (e.g. Fort Fincastle), but it just took a little too long, and we didn't feel like we had time to wander the Straw Markets afterwards, so we just bought some trinkets at the stalls right inside the cruise terminal area.

Hi all,

 

My first post here. I had checked out this forum a fair bit before and after we booked our recent cruise out of Port Canaveral, and I figure I should pay it forward and provide our experiences. So I joined up today. Plus I have an ulterior motive I will mention later...

 

Cruise was 30 Nov through 3 Dec 2017, a first wedding anniversary celebration. This was my wife's first cruise, so we took a short-hop variety: 3 days/nights to Bahamas and back sounded pretty safe. I was on a 4-night Carnival cruise to the Bahamas back in 2007-ish, which I quite enjoyed, so this was a trial run to see how my wife would handle being at sea, with the thought of a longer cruise in the future.

 

We had a blast! We booked an aft-facing balcony on deck 7, which was really nice for views late at night or early in the mornings, especially for enjoying those first two cups of coffee (that I retrieved bleary-eye from the Lido buffet two decks up).

 

We bought the Cheers package, and maxxed it out one night, came close on another night, and certainly exercised it well otherwise. A good package, if you enjoy your alcohol (we certainly do!).

 

We did not explore nearly as much of the ship as we would have liked - far too much to do, very easy to just sit at one of the many great bars, chat with the bartenders, other guests, and each other of course, plus people-watch! We didn't even attend any of the shows, just wandered around warming bar stools. Watched a little of the Dive-In movie as we strolled around one night.

 

We did a shore excursion, Top 10 Best of Nassau - interesting, great photo ops at most places, but dragged on at the end while they hoped we would order food at the last stop, the fish fry restaurant.

 

We played mini-golf on the day at sea, very interesting in the winds up top! Hit the pool and hot tub for all of about 30 min earlier that same day, before deciding to do a little shopping (someone wanted a sun hat!).

 

The best bar for us was the Alchemy Bar - we pretty well exhausted the menu over the three nights, plus ordered some old favorites like James Bond martinis, etc, and challenged the "mixologists" to create something different. I don't remember names too well, just "Dr D" and his wife (from Serbia and Croatia, IIRC), and Titan as a third mixologist, again IIRC. Very entertaining to watch them mix drinks, for us and others!

 

The Blue Iguana and Red Frog bars were great poolside atmosphere, fun bartenders and good opportunity to people watch!

 

And the Cabinet bar was also a nice spot that we hit on the first night - we felt like Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence from the film Passengers, with Michael Sheen as our dedicated bartender - there was no-one else there!

 

The other bars on board (Piano Bar, Sports Bar) were also good - we just didn't hang out there as long. Only bar we didn't hit was the Casino bar (not even sure where it is) - my wife is an ex-smoker, so we avoid smoke as much as possible to minimize temptation/frustration.

 

Food was excellent, overall - the MDR (early seating, Silver) service and food were fantastic! Yeah, the eggs benedict at the Lido buffet weren't the best ever, but they were still good. The eggs benedict (with salmon) at the Day At Sea Brunch were delicious!

 

We tried Guy's Burgers once, very tasty. Did not hit the Pizza place, which surprised me - I love pizza! Just never had a chance. And we had a breakfast burrito from the Blue Iguana cantina on morning we docked back at Canaveral.

 

And lots more other usual stuff - exploring for the secret decks, relaxing on a lounge, enjoying the live music at the Flowers Lobby Bar, overlooking from a couple decks above.

 

We enjoyed it so much we have booked a longer cruise for our second anniversary, around the same time in late-2018 - 8 day Eastern Caribbean on Sunshine. We'll check out the various shore excursions for St Kitts, St Maarten, and Grand Turk, and probably just wander around the port at San Juan.

 

So here comes my aforementioned ulterior motive: I managed to find my VIFP number when booking us in for the Bahamas cruise - it was still active from my cruise in 2007(-ish). But I don't recall seeing any details of my previous cruise being available. Is there any way to retrieve that from Carnival? I'm just curious about exectly when I sailed, and on what ship.

I love reading reviews .... well most of them... Glad your trip was a great one. I just wanted to mention we did a Bernards Tour in St Maarten, just my husband and I, we had plenty of Rum Punch through out the day as we toured both sides of the Island, we checked out a farm area full of Iguana's, stopped at rocky beach area to see cool looking water creatures, went off to a nice beach area for a couple hours, toured some more went to a french bakery for an awesome snack, and of course we had to go to Moho Beach, (I think this is the name) It is where the jets come right over the beach area, I mean you can see the tops the passengers are wearing on the plane, close! We had time to do some shopping as well. We would take his tour again, we had a group of like 16 on the bus so it wasn't crazy, besides after a few of those rum punch cocktails your going to have a good time ;)

Oh, and thanks to kilmer17's thread about their recent trip on Liberty a couple of weeks before ours, I have the names of the great mixologists at Alchemy:

 

Drazen, Boianna and Titus

I love Titus. Is he at Alchemy now? He was in the Casino bar when I was on Liberty

I was going to mention....If you had a red SS card...it means you've cruised more than once and that would show they have record of your 2007 cruise. Now you have to work up to Gold!!! Great review...Thx

Hey Robin,

 

The Top 10 Best of Nassau lasted a bit over 5 hours on the bus - they gather you up at about 10:45am (IIRC), you walk about 10 min to the bus, and then we returned to the Port area around 4:15pm or maybe it was 4:30pm. Waaay tooooo looooong. Well over the advertised 4 hr tour. The first half went quick enough, but we stayed far too long at the Fish Fry area, and we literally only stopped the bus (no getting out) at a couple of the so-called Top 10 spots.

 

We made actual stops at the Rum Cake factory, Atlantis for the water fountain (quick stop) and then the Casino (longer stop, bus left for a while), Fort Fincastle / Queen's Staircase, Watling's Rum Distilliery, Fish Fry, and the beach just east of the fish fry (far west end of Junkaroo beach area, I suppose). The stop-and-go spots were another Fort, the Parliament buildings I think, maybe another place to get the count to "10".

 

I'm glad we did it because we did see things we probably would't have though to go check out (e.g. Fort Fincastle), but it just took a little too long, and we didn't feel like we had time to wander the Straw Markets afterwards, so we just bought some trinkets at the stalls right inside the cruise terminal area.

Thanks for the feedback.

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Thanks for your review! I'll be on the Liberty in January and on the Elation a few weeks after you!

You took some great pictures! I even could see our cabin - a premium aft balcony!

Thanks for your review! I'll be on the Liberty in January and on the Elation a few weeks after you!

You took some great pictures! I even could see our cabin - a premium aft balcony!

Hey, you are very welcome!

I took pics on our latest 4-day cruise (just last week) on Liberty, but I haven't really had time to post-process them. No time this weekend, either.

Looking forward to our aft balcony this December on Sunshine...