Delayed report of 3 Day Bahamas Cruise on Liberty

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.

Great review!! there's just one thing you need to do on your next cruise. Order your coffee from room service. That's one of my favorite parts of cruising!!

Glad you enjoyed your cruise!

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

And I found my past cruise history details! Apparently I was on the Elation, 4-day Cruise to Freeport and Nassau, that sailed on 11 January 2007!

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

We took our first Carnival Cruise in 1997 and I couldn't remember the date but they excepted it and my next cruise is a back to back Sept.8-21,2018, Carnival Sunshine out of Port Canaveral and we will be Platinum. Good luck and have fun.

Enjoyed your report/review, thanks!

Thanks for the report.

Thank you for your report.

Keith

Well, I was all set to link in a few photos that we took on the cruise, but I use Imgur (after the Photobucket meltdown), and it appears CC doesn't want to support links to that website.

So...I guess I will enjoy my photos in true privacy.

Certainly puts a damper on wanting to share in this community.

Do you happen to have the fun times that you can email me?

I think we have one FunTimes - buried somewhere in all our post-unpacking pile'o'stuff. If I come across it I will let you know. We didn't even grab one the first day.

Oh, and an amusing side note: I was skipping around YouTube yesterday, and found a video tour of the Liberty that someone did during their cruise in Dec 2017. "OK, cool", I think to myself, "that's probably right after our cruise, let me see if anything changed", like fixing that one staircase on the Lido deck, etc.

Nope, looks pretty much the same, same decorations for Christmas, same Lido deck buffet items, weather looks very similar, Blue Iguana and Redfrog bar areas look like a similar size and type of crowd, hey, we never checked out The Stage bar area, maybe we should do that next time we're on Liberty, same kinda crowd at Alchemy Bar - Holy Carp! That's my wife and me!

I guess these folks were on the exact same cruise as us!

Video is here, and pretty much matches our experiences (where we did the same stuff):

bqZYCzIVFS8

Nope, looks pretty much the same, same decorations for Christmas, same Lido deck buffet items, weather looks very similar, Blue Iguana and Redfrog bar areas look like a similar size and type of crowd, hey, we never checked out The Stage bar area, maybe we should do that next time we're on Liberty, same kinda crowd at Alchemy Bar - Holy Carp! That's my wife and me!

 

 

 

• Haha That's great!
  

Let's see if I can embed a photo. Here's Danni, great bartender at Blue Iguana:

ZbRrKmQ by ProgRockCruiser, on Flickr

Ok, that seems to be working. So I might upload all my photos for cruising to Flickr, since Imgur still doesn't work. (Just tried, for giggles.)

Oh, and did I mention we are booked to go back on Liberty in early March, a 4-day cruise, taking my Mom on her first pleasure cruise?

Yeah baby!

Do you happen to have the fun times that you can email me?

Having no idea how to email them directly to you, and knowing other folks might be interested, here is the Funtimes uploaded to my Flickr. Please let me know if you can see them:

Funtimes 2017-11-30 Front_1600 by Steve Hinksman, on Flickr

Funtimes 2017-11-30 Rear_1600 by Steve Hinksman, on Flickr

Funtimes 2017-12-01 Front_1600 by Steve Hinksman, on Flickr

Funtimes 2017-12-01 Rear_1600 by Steve Hinksman, on Flickr

Funtimes 2017-12-02 Front_1600 by Steve Hinksman, on Flickr

Funtimes 2017-12-02 Rear_1600 by Steve Hinksman, on Flickr

And if anyone wants to check out the whole album of photos, here it is:

https://www.flickr.com/gp/139616768@N05/Xpo4Cf

Please let me know if that also works - still trying to fully comprehend the various privacy settings in Flickr.

Thank you so much.

Your photos are great. Can't wait till September.

Thanks for posting your comments and pictures.

Glad you enjoyed your cruise.

Much appreciated...going on a 3-day on the Liberty next week!

Thanks for your report. Sailing on Liberty in November. It's our first cruise and we're so excited!!!

We have only been on 4 Carnival cruises so far but out of those the Liberty is our favorite ship. We also liked the Sunshine a lot even though you get some diverse opinions there. We wish the Liberty did longer cruises; we would like to spend a week on board.

Nice pictures - do you remember where you found the turtles? More importantly, did your wife enjoy the cruise and catch the cruising bug?

Happy belated anniversary!

Turtles were at the Atlantis Resort Casino area - if you go right instead of left to the Casino, walk back beyond the check-in desk (left hand side), there is a stairwell down to a "nature walk" are that is for Atlantis guests only - you can see the turtles from the landing/window area above.

And yeah, we both have the cruising bug - you can see in my sig I have three future cruises booked already...

Turtles were at the Atlantis Resort Casino area - if you go right instead of left to the Casino, walk back beyond the check-in desk (left hand side), there is a stairwell down to a "nature walk" are that is for Atlantis guests only - you can see the turtles from the landing/window area above.

 

And yeah, we both have the cruising bug - you can see in my sig I have three future cruises booked already...

Thanks for the quick reply. We are planning the Snuba excursion at Nassau so we won't be at Atlantis. Glad your wife enjoyed the trip, my husband and I love cruising and also did a short cruise as our first to make sure we could handle the water.

It looks like you leave on your next cruise right after we get back. Enjoy!