Live! Freedom of the Seas Nov 25-Dec 3 2017

It's that time of year again! Hubby (42) and I (41) have been cruising the week after US Thanksgiving since our first RCL cruise on the Oasis back in Nov 2014. This is our 4th cruise during this week - it has become a bit of a tradition! I work for a US based company and only interface with US clients so I always get Thanksgiving and Black Friday off. We used to go to Vegas every year but decided in 2014 to start cruising with RCL instead and have not stopped. We find the prices are a lot more palatable the week after vs week of Thanksgiving. Having the extra 2 days at the beginning is great as we can get our Xmas shopping done :)

We have a 15 year old son who will not be joining us. He is in Grade 10 so has to worry about missing exam exemptions if he misses too many classes. He is also on the varsity basketball team and has tournaments both this weekend and next which we will miss :( We may have to look at sailing a little earlier in November next year, but that will conflict with his football next year. Decisions decisions!

We are travelling from Quispamsis, New Brunswick Canada. This is a suburb of Saint John. You may have stopped there on a NE/Atlantic Canadian Cruise.

We are flying out tomorrow morning at 5:30AM and will get to FLL around noon. We are staying at the Best Western Plus Fort Lauderdale Airport South Inn & Suites Thursday and Friday and have a car rented at Alamo for both days. We are dropping it off at Alamo's Port Everglades location on Saturday morning, and then off we go!

I am a bargain hunter and love getting a great deal. I equally love rubbing it in other people's faces.

JUST KIDDNG!

I am relentless at checking prices - it is kind of an obsession. I check multiple times a day. It is both a blessing and a curse as it can take up some time because I currently have 5 reservations on the go but I can usually snag a better deal on each of my sailings. We tend to just book whatever is the least expensive cabin - I actually really like interiors because I love the darkness in the AM :) I would also prefer to take multiple sailings in the year than just one in a swanky cabin. I am too frugal for the suite life!

I am not one to be shy of letting people know what I paid for my cruises. I also like to hear what others pay so I know what is and is not a good deal.

Hello from Ontario! Looking forward to this! I am also a "frugal cruiser" and will book whatever it's cheapest and switch and the drop of a hat to a cheaper cruise. On Freedom in January although on the 6 night itinerary. Have a great cruise!!

Edit - we had the Ben & Jerry's room 2-years ago. Enjoy. It is a great bang for your buck, can't beat free drinks every night for the price of an interior.

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As I recently posted on another thread, we originally booked this sailing back in early May 2016. I think we booked it onboard. As I said, we normally book interiors, but this time I booked a Promenade stateroom because the infamous Ben & Jerry's Sweet was available (stateroom 6305). I could not pass it up for the small extra cost. We originally booked at $1752 CAD. A few days later they had a sale for promenades at the price of interiors so it dropped to the price we are at now. We are paying $1664 CAD total for 2 people. That includes taxes but not gratuities. It works out to be about $1270 USD. Bonus is that we are in the Ben & Jerry's Sweet so get some suite benefits as well :) So much for being to frugal for the suite life!

I had emailed the concierge a few weeks ago and they said we would be getting all of the suite benefits that one gets on board. I am not holding my breath but will cross my fingers!

I will make sure to report back on the "Sweet" with photos and confirmation of the benefits we really do receive.

more to come...

Looking forward to your live updates.

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Looking forward to your review! We are also on this sailing in a GS. Maybe we will see ya in the Concierge Lounge!

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I am on the sailing 12/17, loving your review.

Looking forward to following your vacation.

We have decided to avoid the MDR this trip and originally thought we would stick to the Windjammer. We did this on the Allure this Spring and really enjoyed the freedom of it. We have never dined in a speciality restaurant except for Johnny Rockets and the free lunch in Giovanni's we got on the Allure for staying in a Central Park Balcony (we had booked an interior guarantee and ended up assigned a CP Balcony - SCORE!).

This time, we have also decided to give speciality a shot. A few weeks ago, I booked the the BOGO 2 day dining package as I noticed it was $37.50 CAD and I figured this would be a good intro to Specialty. I emailed the concierge and asked her to make sure we got Chops and Giovanni's, which she confirmed. I am glad I booked it when we did because a few days later the price jumped to $50 CAD and has stayed there. That is more than a 33% increase - nuts!!

We have also booked Deluxe drink packages. One of us has the stand alone package and the other has the package with Voom. The Deluxe was $519 CAD and with Voom was $619 CAD. I think when I booked they were 20% off. They are a few dollars more if I were to buy them now, I assume that is because of the exchange. I was hoping for a Thanksgiving sale this week, but I imagine if it hits it will be after midnight tonight so my cruise planner will be closed and I won't be able to get the deal.

Oh well, hopefully if there is a Black Friday / Cyber Monday Cruise Planner sale, it will help my other cruises.

This will be our 10th cruise with RCL since November 2014 and our 15th overall. We have been averaging 3 cruises a year and are currently Platinum. We have this same cruise booked in March with our son. We will turn Diamond on that cruise. We have a tentative cruise booked on the Liberty in May for our anniversary so that will be our first Diamond sailing if we take it. If not, we have a couple different options booked for next November. I am looking forward to all those new perks!

We were on the same cruise last November but the itinerary has changed slightly because of the hurricanes. Below is our current itinerary. We were originally scheduled to go to Sint Maarten but this has been changed to St. John's, Antigua:

We do not have any shore excursions planned and will be playing it by ear at the ports. We might just walk around the shops in the port area then get back onboard. We might not get off at all at some of the ports. We are definitely planning to get off on Labadee to have a Labadoozie. Also, we were told by the Concierge that we will have access to Barefoot Beach. Hopefully that is true!

I am quite looking forward to your posts! We are in the Ben and Jerry's sweet on Freedom on the December 3 sailing! Never been in it, so really looking forward to seeing what perks you receive :)

I am quite looking forward to your posts! We are in the Ben and Jerry's sweet on Freedom on the December 3 sailing! Never been in it, so really looking forward to seeing what perks you receive :)

Here is a link to the thread I started with the information the Concierge provided me. I will try not to trash the joint before you get there :)

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2560915

I have to get up in 3.5 hours and I cannot sleep - I am too excited!

I can't wait to follow along as we will be on Freedom in December. We too decided to do the BOGO 2 day dining. We hope to have Chops and Giovanni's. We have been to Cops but not Giovanni's. Have a great cruise and hopefully awesome weather!

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So exciting!! We are from Stratford, PEI...suburbs of Charlottetown. And just returned from a 6 nighter on Freedom last weekend. We took the kids with us for the first time (adjoining balconies since we're a family of 5) and ironically, when we returned, we left the kids with my parents for a few days and went to St. John for work meetings for dh.

I understand the scheduling conflicts with your son...we also have 10th grader, but with 3/4 of his classes being "shop" classes this semester, we said the hell with it. Each of the boys missed a considerable amount of hockey since we were gone 9 days total.

(We may be returning to a hockey tourney in Hampton this winter & will likely stay at the Amsterdam in Quispam).

Have a fantastic getaway!! It's the second Canadian live review of Freedom that I'll have followed in a month [emoji847]

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So exciting!! We are from Stratford, PEI...suburbs of Charlottetown. And just returned from a 6 nighter on Freedom last weekend. We took the kids with us for the first time (adjoining balconies since we're a family of 5) and ironically, when we returned, we left the kids with my parents for a few days and went to St. John for work meetings for dh.

I understand the scheduling conflicts with your son...we also have 10th grader, but with 3/4 of his classes being "shop" classes this semester, we said the hell with it. Each of the boys missed a considerable amount of hockey since we were gone 9 days total.

(We may be returning to a hockey tourney in Hampton this winter & will likely stay at the Amsterdam in Quispam).

 

Have a fantastic getaway!! It's the second Canadian live review of Freedom that I'll have followed in a month [emoji847]

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I followed along with your review. You did a great job! Its so nice to see someone else from my neck of the woods! I have not been over to the Island in a few years but we used to vacation there every summer as a kid :) My son never got into hockey, which is a blessing because I am not a morning person and those early AM practices would have killed me.

My sister will be staying at our place while we are away and has the pleasure of chauffeuring him to his basketball games/practices. I think I will owe her some duty free booze lol.

So exciting!! We are from Stratford, PEI...suburbs of Charlottetown. And just returned from a 6 nighter on Freedom last weekend. We took the kids with us for the first time (adjoining balconies since we're a family of 5) and ironically, when we returned, we left the kids with my parents for a few days and went to St. John for work meetings for dh.

I understand the scheduling conflicts with your son...we also have 10th grader, but with 3/4 of his classes being "shop" classes this semester, we said the hell with it. Each of the boys missed a considerable amount of hockey since we were gone 9 days total.

(We may be returning to a hockey tourney in Hampton this winter & will likely stay at the Amsterdam in Quispam).

 

Have a fantastic getaway!! It's the second Canadian live review of Freedom that I'll have followed in a month [emoji847]

 

 

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I forgot to mention that we the same thing with drinks/Voom package. Hubby planned to stay up to date with work emails and the internet was much better than on previous sailings! While you can only use it on one device at a time, it was great to be able to log in and out on each device and let me have my turn. I don't feel like we got our money's worth out of the drinks package this time, but only because the kids were not interested in the kids club and we spent much of our time at sea moving from one activity to another. But, I was still able to enjoy "a few" of of my favourite "Blue Hawaiian" drinks throughout the week :)

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Thx for the awesome start... wouldn’t it be funny if another Canadian (me) did the Dec 3-9 Freedom review! We are counting down the days days...

Will follow your cruise.

Keith

Looking forward to this.:)

Hi C D M. We are on this cruise also. Leave early tomorrow morning. I don't think we will be following the review as we unplug for the week. But we do look forward to maybe getting the review 'in-person'. See you soon.

We are on this cruise with you as well! Leave for FL early tomorrow.

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Fellow Canadian here. Will be following along.

We're the opposite from you and just missed the great BOGO price. Glad you were able to grab it when you could.

Enjoy your cruise!

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Looking forward to your review! I learn so much from you guys!

Our flight in this morning left from Saint John at 5:30AM AST (4:30 EST). We had a stop over in Montreal and arrived at FLL at 12:30 EST. There was a moment of scary turbulence on the flight - the plane suddenly dropped a couple feet I think. My bottle of soda was in the air briefly. Lots of startled yelps from the whole plane which were quickly laughed off. It was pretty overcast coming in so it was a bit rough again as we broke through the cloud cover. I was glad to get on the ground :)

Picking up the car was a breeze, I had checked in online at Alamo yesterday and elected to skip the counter. We headed right to the Midsize aisle and picked out our car. When we got to the gate to leave and they printed our contract, it was twice what my reservation said it should be. She said they fixed it and gave us a new contract copy at the correct price. With that being said I just checked my Visa and it shows a pending charge of the 2X amount. I will wait until we get home to allow it some time to work itself out. Fingers crossed I do not have to intervene to get it fixed. All in all this was 1000X better than last year on Thanksgiving day. There was a huge line last year and Alamo was totally out of cars. There were lots this time an no lines!

So last night as we were finishing packing, I happened to ask hubby where the GPS was. Turns out he had lent it to his friend and failed to get it back. Lovely. His friend was out of town so I borrowed one from my dad. Ours is a TomTom. My Dad's is a Magellan. The Magellan sucks. Don't ever buy one. I am on team TomTom.

We headed right from the airport to the Best Western Plus Fort Lauderdale South to check in. We booked the stay using Best Western points and for some strange reason it was only 10,000 pts a night this weekend which is awesome. We have stayed here before and its normally 16,000-28,000. I will take the savings and use those points another time :)

Once we checked in and changed, we headed right to Sawgrass Mills for some retail therapy. We just got back to the hotel and are likely crashing soon. I only got about an hours sleep last night and maybe 30 min to an hour on the flights today. I think it will be an early night. :)

More shopping is in store for tomorrow and then who knows what!