Freedom of the Seas - 10/24-10/31 Days In Review

[proudpatriot07]

So I love Jen's carry on bag in those room pictures. I have a purse in that exact same pattern/design :).

 

Sorry about getting seated with the German couple. Our last cruise, Carnival had me listed as a guy and my fiance and I went into the room to find the beds apart. My card actually had "Mr" on it, and instead of sitting us with couples... they sat us with people who were just friends on a cruise, so yeah.

 

It's good to know that you can move tables though, and I doubt the German couple got offended. I mean, surely they would want to sit with someone they could speak with or wouldn't blame you for wanting to.

[annecolorgreen]

I'm enjoying your detail about the ship. We are thinking of going 9/4/11 but it will be Western Carib.

[SliderNc]

Day 2 at CocoCay

 

Being of Irish heritage, I have two colors during the summer, Lobster Red and Casper White. Even with being 50% Italian, I wasn't blessed with the olive complexion that the rest of my family has and the ability to be golden brown after two days out in the sun, without getting burnt.

 

Breakfast rolled into the room around 7:30AM this morning and consisted of eggs, bacon, sausage, assorted pastries, coffee and OJ. It was a great start to a great day as we took our plates out on the balcony with cups of coffee and watched the tenders lining up to take everyone to the island. Our plan for the most part would be to relax during all of the port days as much as we could. I had been to the islands as a kid so I've seen many of the touristy areas, but since this was the private RCCL island, there really wasn't much to see except the beach and some water. :)

 

After we ate, we put on our swim suits and packed a bag with some sunscreen (SPF30), books, iPods and other things that we thought we might need and headed up to the pool deck to get our towels. This was the first time I had seen a line at the towel exchange stations and it stretched all the way to the Sprinkles ice cream station. We waited about 15 minutes to get our towels, which the towel station attendant reluctantly got for us after scanning our card and sighing about how many we wanted (3). We made our way down to deck 2 and onto the next tender. It was about 9AM and already getting hot. I don't react well to the heat and prefer cooler climates, but I love the sand and smell of the ocean so I'm at the mercy of mother nature and the tropical climate for the best of those. I was starting to sweat pretty bad as we were sitting in the sun waiting for the tender to fill up. You would have thought I was on trial for some heinous crime and taking the stand. Finally we got underway and the breeze helped to cool me off.

 

Upon arriving at the island, there are signs that will direct you to where all of the activities are located. Since we hadn't booked anything previously, we just looked around the area to find beach and lounge chairs. We ended up going over to the left of the area, moving past the vendors without blinking an eye. There was a cove, don't remember the name of it, on the edge of the area that had a ton of people snorkeling and a good amount of chairs, with a great view of the ship. I reach into the bag to grab the camera and try to turn it on, but it won't turn on. I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with it and open the battery door to find the rechargeable battery missing. In a Doh! moment, I realized that I had left it in the charging pack in the room. So unfortunately, I have no pics of CocoCay.

 

After going to Labadee two years ago before it underwent it's major renovations, I found both CocoCay and Labadee to be pretty similar. I felt a little safer here though and I don't know why. Maybe it wasn't the vendors in the straw market hounding me to buy something as we looked around and more asking politely if I needed help or if I was looking for something in particular.

 

Anyway, we picked our lounge chairs, turned on the iPods and started reading. As I was already sweating to death, I decided about 10 minutes into sitting there it was time for me to take a dip. The bay that we were in had some rocky areas right when you got in, but once you got about waist deep, it was soft sand for the most part. There were some fish swimming around you, which was neat. I ended up spending some time in the water as it was nice and cool. Got out of the water and went back to the chairs to find Jenn napping already, which was a constant theme of our cruise this year for both of us.

 

Around lunchtime, we decided that we wanted to get something to drink, but were too lazy to get up and walk to the BBQ, which from the looks of some of the plates people were bring back, was pretty good. Jenn got a CocoLoco from one of the guys walking around and we sipped on it for a bit. I'm not a fruity drink kind of guy, but I found it to be pretty good. Ofcourse, my opinion of this changed after I saw the bill on the Seapass card later on in the week for the one drink. Around 1PM or so, we decided that we had enough of CocoCay and decided to head back to the ship to get some ice cold drinks and some lunch from the WindJammer (one of 3 times we ate lunch there).

 

We boarded the tender and about 20 minutes later, were back on the ship and in the WindJammer. I had a hamburger, some random things from the hot buffet lines and a salad. I also had about 6 Lemon/Lime waters. Anyone else think these would make a good mixer with some vodka or gin besides me? I was tempted to grab a few and go to a bar taste test, but Jenn had suggested that I wait until after dinner for that. We decided to head to the Solarium and found chairs pretty easily. To be honest, we never had a problem with finding chairs in the Solarium every time we would go there. I felt as though the Deck Patrol was doing their job at this case as I would see them roaming Deck 12 and looking down on Deck 11 for a bit, then seeing someone remove some stuff from a chair. We both ended up taking naps, only to be awakened by the sound of the ship's horn as we pulled out of CocoCay and headed to St. Thomas. The breeze picked up and we decided that we would head inside and change and relax on the balcony for the rest of the afternoon and get ready for our dinner at Chops.

 

To be continued....

[QTMichele]

Love your review! Keep it coming. Pictures too. :) We loved our cruise on Freedom this past January. In fact, we just returned from Disney World and, as much fun as we all had, my kids said they wanted to go on another CRUISE! LOL Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to write. :)

[Jenner9]

Love the review....looking for more!!!:D

[planetcadillac]

Nice review. We are a couple in our early 30s and late 20s in Charlotte, NC. We are heading out in December for 12 days on Enchantment Of The Seas. Its not as big as Freedom but its our first time on RCCI and for that long a trip.

[ecuwolfe]

We are a family from Huntersville, NC sailing on Freedom for Xmas. 2nd time of Freedom, 9th overall. Loved her last time. Great to hear she is still amazing. Keep the review coming. By the way, what is the best night to skip the dining room for Chops?

[masonpips]

This is awesome as I leave on Freedom two weeks from TODAY and love reading current reviews!

[Fuffty]

What were the 2 days that were Formal Nights, I am going next month & want to make sure I am eating in the MDR not at a specialty place, tks

[Jenner9]

I was soooo hoping for more on your review...please come back and finish!!!:p

[Bolphin]

Tell Jenn I love the Cupcakes Green duffel, I have one too and just had it with us when we did a 3 night Bahamas in May!

 

I am wondering what is up with the towel thing? When we sailed on the Serenade in Feb we had beach towels left in the room everynight and could get as many extras as we wanted from the cabin steward...then in May on the Monarch it was the towel checkout diaster that you describe. Definitely not the most efficient process.

 

We are sailing on the Freedom in Feb (90 days!!) and even though we are doing the Western itin I am looking forward to your review.

[Ariel's Mum]

I was soooo hoping for more on your review...please come back and finish!!!:p

 

Me too.....

 

PLEASE....... :D

[SliderNc]

Sorry guys. Work has been a bear since I got back from the cruise and having to catch up on everything has really put a crunch on personal time to play around on here and write my reviews.

 

To answer some questions:

 

ecuwolfe - We ate in Chops on the first formal night. We decided that we did not want to get super dressed up for dinners nor did we want to be under dressed in the MDR on formal nights. If I had to pick a night that dinner wasn't good in the MDR, it was Thursday night. I felt that the menu was lacking that night and what I did eat, I didn't really enjoy.

 

Fuffty - Formal nights on this cruise were the CoCoCay (Captains Formal) and the Friday sea day on this cruise. We did not attend either of them as stated above, however our tablemates said that almost everyone they saw in the MDR was either suit/tie/dress/tuxedo both of these nights.

 

I'll hopefully get to continue this review tonight and add some more pictures.

[warf]

Great review, please come back and tell us the rest!!! :)