Carnival Liberty 02/25-03/10 Back To Back - MissKIA finally gets to Cruise - x2!!

[MissKIA]

A little - okay a LOT of background info before I start.

 

Ever since I can remember, I've always wanted to go on a cruise. Way back in 1994 when I got married for the first time :rolleyes: , my ex and I discussed going on a cruise for our honeymoon, among many other choices of vacations. Neither of us had really been any where too far away so we had many choices! We were young and in the end Disneyland won out, which was great and all, but I still had yet to go on that cruise I dreamed of.

 

10 years, 2 kids and a divorce later, it was time for my second honeymoon in 2004 with my new (at the time) husband, Richard. I brought up that I'd always wanted to cruise, but he looked at me like I was nuts. He thought it would be boring, and we would get sick and the ship would sink and he would die cause he can't swim. <sigh> I guess I can kiss my dream cruise good bye forever. :( I suppose I should have discussed this with him on our first date, but I really didn't think of it at the time. :p So we went to Cancun. I LOVE Cancun. We've been back 3 times with the kids since then. About 6 trips to Vegas, another trip to Disneyland, Dominican Republic and 2 years ago we went to Disney World.

 

Christmas 2010, we had just come back from Disney World with the family (our family is like the Brady Bunch), and were thinking about where we should go for our next vacation. Richard was going to turn 50 :eek: in May of 2012 so I thought we should do something special and invite friends and family along. I turned around one day and sheepishly said to him "why don't we go on a cruise for your 50th?" He again, brought up the fact that it would be boring being stuck on a ship for a week. I shook my head and told him nooo no no noooo, you don't understand. The ship goes to different islands in the Caribbean every day, you're not stuck on the ship. Silly Guy. No wonder he thought it would be boring. He had no idea that a cruise ship was really like a small city. He thought it was just a boat. So after I explained all of this to him, he quickly became as excited about it as I did. Finally! Why didn't I have this discussion with him years ago?

 

So, I *immediately* started researching. I had checked out cruise critic many times before with wishful thinking, so I knew exactly where to go. To make a long story short (well this part of it anyway) I finally decided on Carnival for the main reason that it was the best value (cheapest) and I wanted to make it affordable for others to be able to join us. I sent out an email to friends and family and waited. A problem rose up immediately. My parents are divorced and their all of the family drama that goes along with that, of course, came up. They both wanted to come. There was NO WAY I was spending a week on a cruise ship with them together. So I came up with a brilliant idea. We would do a back to back and my Dad and his wife could come one week with us and my Mom and her BF could come the other week. Sounds like a good plan to me!! :D

 

We finally pick the Liberty after changing our (okay MY) minds many times. I sent out an email to everyone who was interested with the dates - Feb 25- March 3 2012 and March 3-10 2012. As usually happens with these things, many people who had originally planned on coming with us dropped out for various reasons (pregnancy, money issues etc) and in the end Richard's sister in law and her husband, we well as her husbands family from Ontario (who we didn't know) were coming with us the first week, and my Mom, her BF and my Aunt and Uncle were coming with us the second week. What about my Dad you ask? The reason we decided to do a B2B? Well they decided to go to Barbados instead. Don't ask :rolleyes: Oh well!!! LOL we weren't going to change back to 1 week now!!

[MissKIA]

For what it's worth, this might take a bit to get going. I haven't posted pics before so I am going to quickly test that out before I continue! I wanted to get it started before I chickened out or got lazy so this way I can't back out. hehe

 

So I'm putting my photos on photobucket, is that right?

[soccersharon]

Yeah! Looking forward to your review! Hope you're going to post pics!

[soccersharon]

For what it's worth, this might take a bit to get going. I haven't posted pics before so I am going to quickly test that out before I continue! I wanted to get it started before I chickened out or got lazy so this way I can't back out. hehe

 

So I'm putting my photos on photobucket, is that right?

 

 

Yep, put them on Photobucket, and post them here! Looking forward to them! I'll share some of my pics too :)

[MissKIA]

Yep, put them on Photobucket, and post them here! Looking forward to them! I'll share some of my pics too :)

 

Awesome cause I didn't take a ton of pics. I mostly took pics in port, so I don't have a lot of the ship unfortunately. I will post as many as I can though!

[navybaby1113]

Looking forward to your review.

[aggiecruiser05]

Yay! Looking forward to hearing more about your cruise, we'll be on her in less than a month.

[MissKIA]

We booked on February 24, 2011, exactly a year and one day before we were to sail away. In October, as most of you know, Carnival announced the new 2.0 upgrades which were going to be first implemented on our ship! This made me very happy with my decision to choose the Liberty after all of those mind changes. Not that I knew what I would be missing from before, but I was still excited!

 

One thing I should mention is that I think I ruined the excitement a bit for myself by doing so much research. I had seen so many pictures and read so many reviews in the past year that it felt like I knew the ship like the back of my hand already. A few things surprised me, such as I thought the atrium was rather small and not really very "grand" at all like I had pictured, and the lido also looked tiny to me compared to pictures. Other than that, it was pretty much what I expected. It was fun to watch Richard see everything for the first time though since he does not research at all really and just follows where I go for the most part. haha

 

My pictures are uploading on photobucket and since I don't have any pictures for the first couple of days I guess I will start. I wanted to post a pic of us first so you could "see" who you're reading about, but it will have to wait for photobucket.

 

We left Winnipeg on Thursday Feb 23 in the afternoon. We had to overnight in Toronto and fly to Miami on Friday morning. OF COURSE Toronto picked this day to have it's first snow storm of the whole season. Everyone was telling us our flight was going to be cancelled etc, but when we woke up the next morning it was only raining. Big deal! Our flight was on time and we arrived in Miami promptly at noon. I hate flying and dread it every trip we take, so once we landed in Miami my vacation had finally began!

 

We hopped in a cab to the Holiday Inn Port of Miami. I thought this hotel was perfectly fine! I had read some bad reviews about it, but I don't really know what is so wrong with it. Sure it's a little older but I had no problems with it. I don't need a palace, especially for one night! P & D (sis and bro in law) were already there so we met up with them and had lunch and a drink. $$$ holy smokes! I had no problem with spending $6-8 on the ship for a drink after those prices! Same goes for Bayside! I think it cost of about $70 for 2 pina coladas, a caesar salad and a sandwich.

 

Then we went to Bayside to walk around and we watched the ships sail away. I think we saw the Sensation. We had dinner that night at Lombardi's I think it was called, an Italian restaurant in Bayside Marketplace. I had a garlic shrimp pasta, It was really good!

 

The next morning we woke up, and I, of course, couldn't wait to get to the port. Everyone thought it was too early, but I told them it was fine to get there early. We ended up getting a big van right outside the hotel for 5 bucks a person. (there were 8 of us). I thought that was a pretty good deal considering how much luggage we had between all of us so we jumped in.

 

We got there right some time between 10:30 and 11 am and we walked right through security (after they shook EVERY bottle of water I had). Once we were through and in the terminal I was shocked to hear them already calling zone 11 to board! I couldn't believe it, I thought we were there SO early! We zipped through all of the lines and were on board by around 11:30. Everyone else had eaten breakfast because they thought we wouldn't be able to eat until dinner (even though I told them otherwise) but I wanted to wait til we got on the ship to try a Guy's Burger! Richard was also really looking forward to this after I had shown him pictures. The elders with us (BIL's parents) didn't really appreciate all of the loud music on the lido so after getting a DOD we went and sat on Serenity for a while. It was HOT!

 

Richard and I decided we had waited long enough and we wanted to eat so we headed down to Guy's for our first burger. It was GOOD. I didn't love it as much as most do - I'm not a big burger lover so that could have something to do with it, but I did like it. It reminded me a bit of a Cheese Nip from Salisbury House for anyone in Manitoba who knows what that is! I'm sorry I don't have a picture. I didn't really take any food porn, but I assure you, it all looks just like all of the other pictures that have been posted! I will give little reviews of what I ate though so hopefully that will help some of you out.

 

While we were eating our burgers I noticed a few tables away a couple of people I knew! Okay, I didn't really "know" them, but I recognized them from a previous review and they were on our roll call. It was Chris (Anung Un Rama) and Cassandra (ardnassac79). It was kind of bizarre seeing someone and recognizing them from Cruise Critic. :o I decided to go introduce myself. I felt a little silly but what the hell. LOL They were very nice people and it was nice to meet them in person.

 

Photobucket is still only at 9% uploaded, does it usually take this long?

[MissKIA]

I tried attaching a pic to here in the mean time. I guess we'll see if it worked. If it does, it should be a picture of us on one of the elegant nights.

 

So after our burgers I'm pretty sure our rooms were ready. We were in room 6269 balcony room right by the forward stairs and elevators. We thought it was pretty convenient at first! Little did we know that our dining room and almost everywhere we went seemed to be aft. lol It felt like we were constantly back and forth, back and forth all day, every day. Really not a big deal at all, but not super convenient either. We had ordered a bottle of Crown Royal and a bottle of Malibu from Bon Voyage before we left. We got to our room and we only had a bottle of Crown Royal, but no Malibu. :confused: Our room steward came in to introduce himself. His name was Rai from Indonesia. This guy had the hugest smile, he always seemed genuinly happy to see us. When he saw the bottle of Crown on the counter, he pointed to it and said "Hey that's me... Rye." And pointed at his name tag, Rai. It was cute. :p

 

We headed down to guest services to inquire about my Malibu. They told us they had run our the previous week and were waiting for their new shipment to me unpacked. We received it later that evening, which is fine, but you'd think they would leave a note or something since they were leaving one bottle we ordered but not the other, explaining the situation.

 

It was time for muster. When we got there I was surprised to see it packed already. I guess others had gone as soon as they started talking about it. We had waited until the signal sounded which was what they said to do in the announcements so I'm not sure what was up with that. In any case we ended up in the front row which was nice. People were a little loud and chatty but once one of the crew members yelled at them to be quiet, they were.

 

BTW, when we opened our cabin door to leave for muster, one of our suitcases was there. When we got back the rest was there so we were pleased we didn't have to wait too long.

 

I think we went to the casino for a bit before dinner. This is what we usually did the first week. We had late dining and we found a lot of the time that we were kind of looking for something to do between 6 and 8 and most stuff doesn't get started until after 7 so we usually ended up in the casino. I think our table number was 322 in the back corner of the silver dining room. It was an okay spot I guess but we couldn't really see anything going on in the dining room because a wall blocked us. Out head waiter was Donavan from Jamaica and his assistants were Alin from Romania and Chan from Thailand. They were all very nice, not overly outgoing, but they were nice and did their jobs well.

 

The first night I tried the linguini with italian sausage, peppers and mushroom as a starter. I thought this was great! Richard tried it and he really like it too. This wasn't something I had even known if I would order but it ended up bring one of my favourites. I had the sweet and sour shrimp for my entree. I liked this too, I like anything with shrimp! It almost had bit of a coconut flavour but I wouldn't come right out and say it was coconut shrimp. It was more subtle. It tried the Warm Chocolate Melting Cake for dessert that I had read so much about. It was..... okay. Tonight it was really soupy though which wasn't good. I liked it better when it was more firm. I liked it, but I wouldn't say I was in love with it or anything. My husband was though! He had it most nights. He even ate it without the ice cream! :eek: I thought it was really rich and wouldn't dream of eating it without the ice cream!

 

After dinner we went to the Welcome on Board Show. It seems like so long ago now that I don't even remember much about it, but I do remember enjoying it! I tried my first Kiss On the Lips tonight too. We were in the casino and the waiter came up and asked us if we wanted anything. My mind immediately went blank and I couldn't think of any of the drinks I had wanted to try. He looked at me and said "kiss on the lips" with a little wink. hahhahaa I remember a thread not too long ago about ordering this drink and the bartenders reaction. It made me LOL! I said YES! He ended up being our favourite waiter! Paul from Phillipines. He was really good. Always stopped and chatted every day and asked us what we did that day. Anyway I loved the kiss on the lips. I wouldn't want to have more than one at a time though because it was VERY sweet, but as a drink to sip while watching a show or gambling it was yummy.

[mrbug708]

Good stuff

[soccersharon]

Nice to see you both :) Looking forward to the rest of your review!

[jjtimes6]

Nice start! I like your conversational writing style. We are on a B2B on Liberty in 16 (YES! Sixteen!!) days. Can you tell me about the changeover day?

Where did you meet for the changeover?

What time?

How long did it take?

 

Looking forward to the rest of your review!

[meatloafsfan]

Very happy to see the start of your review. It's great so far! Can't wait for the rest.

[LynnAnne]

More, More, More, Love reading this!!

[MissKIA]

I totally forgot about sail away and my motion issues. During sail away we were up on deck 10 or 11 for about maybe half an hour. Once we got past South Beach we decided to go do something else and as soon as we stepped away from the railing I started feeling dizzy and woozy. I do get car sick if I sit in the back seat pretty regularly so I was prepared to have issues on the ship. I brought Gravol, Bonine and Ginger pills with me just in case. We went down to our room so I could try out the ginger and see if that helped. I had never taken ginger pills before for motion sickness, but I thought it would be a good idea to try these first since I would likely be drinking alcohol and didn't want to mix the meds with booze if I didn't have to. I'm pleased to say that the ginger worked fine for more for the most part. There were a couple of times where they didn't cut it and I needed something stronger, such as....

 

 

The next day was a sea day and I woke up around 9 not feeling well at all. Every time I tried to get out of bed I would start feeling weak and dizzy. I got up to take a Bonine and when I looked out the window to the balcony I started feeling even worse. I was beginning to think booking a balcony room may have been a mistake. Blasphemy, I know,:eek: but every time I looked outside I felt dizzy. If I wasn't looking outside at all, I would start to feel better. I went back to bed to lay down for a bit and finally started to feel a bit better around 11. I was feeling a bit hungry but didn't want to eat anything too heavy or rich so we decided to head to the deli. I had a turkey sandwich which went down pretty well and I was starting to feel pretty normal.

 

We decided to walk around the lido and see if we could find some seats somewhere. I knew it was probably a hopeless cause since it was already around noon, but we figured we might be able to find something up on one of the top decks. No such luck! I swear there was not even one empty chair anywhere on the ship. We looked everywhere.

 

We watched the mixology contest or whatever it's called now. I think they changed it a bit from how they used to do it with the new 2.0 upgrades. It seemed different from what I had read in reviews. They had 4 people only. Two of them were "playing" for the Red Frog team and had to use Rum in their drinks and the other two were on the Blue Iguana team and had to use Tequila. The guys who won's drink was called the Green Monkey, although it didn't end up being green at all much to Karl with a K's amusement. I guess they added something later to make it more green because when people ordered it later, it was in fact green.

 

We couldn't find any of our travel companions anywhere so we went to the casino which we thought would be a likely place they might be. They weren't there but we sat and played for a bit anyway. Let me tell you, this casino was TIGHT. I had heard about cruise ship casinos being a bit of a joke and it was all true. I love playing blackjack but for some reason I never did. Not sure why :confused:. Every time I thought about it I didn't have any cash on me and didn't feel like going back to the room to get any. It was much more convenient just to stick my card in a slot machine, which I'm sure is the idea they are going for! :rolleyes::D

 

For whatever reason, I didn't start taking pictures until we were in Cozumel, so there will be pictures eventually, I promise.

 

Coming up: Elegant Night

[MissKIA]

Nice start! I like your conversational writing style. We are on a B2B on Liberty in 16 (YES! Sixteen!!) days. Can you tell me about the changeover day?

Where did you meet for the changeover?

What time?

How long did it take?

 

Looking forward to the rest of your review!

 

Thank you!

 

We met in the atrium on changeover day, I think it was around 10:30. It actually took longer than I thought it would. I was under the impression that it all went pretty quickly. It was probably an hour before we were back on the ship. I don't know if that's normal or not, I was a little disappointed in this part, but I will explain it all later.

[MissKIA]

I was impressed with the dress on elegant night. I have to say I did not see one person who wasn't at least wearing dress pants. No jeans, no cut off shorts, no baseball caps, nothing like that at all. Not to say no one was dressed like that, but if they were, I didn't see it.

 

This is the night were I really didn't know what to order. Everything on this day was something I would like or wanted to try! They should really spread it around a bit because I have seen this comment many times before. And ribs on elegant night? Umm yeah, who came up with that brilliant idea? :rolleyes: I was really looking forward to trying the stuffed mushrooms because, I normally love them and they looked really good! Well they weren't. I was really disappointed in them. They had no flavour at all. I don't know what kind of cheese that was on them but it was like flavourless melted cheese whiz. I let others try some and they all had the same opinion so it wasn't just me. We also ordered a couple of plates of the "alligator" fritters to try. Only 3 of us would try them. The others thought we were crazy for trying them, they're not very adventurous eaters at all. I thought they were good. Nothing special really, kind of like a crab cake rolled into a ball without the crab. I didn't really care too much for the alligator meat or whatever it was. it wasn't horrible, I just didn't love it, but at least I can say I tried it. For my entree I ordered the surf & turf. Prime rib and lobster. The lobster and shrimp were good and the prime rib was delicious! I got a really nice piece with hardly any fat at all, it was very good. The baked potato was cold though so I just ate the mashed potatoes that came with the lobster. I prefer mashed anyway. For dessert I tried the apple pastry thing. It was sooooo sweet. I dumped the whole thing of caramel sauce on it before I even tried it and it was just too sweet. I had a couple of bites and that's it.

 

After dinner we were going to go to either the comedy show or the main theatre show. We went to the room to change and I sat down and turned on the Academy Awards. Next thing I know hubby is snoozing on the bed. I decided to just let him sleep since he had an early excursion the next day and I watched the rest of the Oscars and went to bed. Not very exciting but oh well! We were on vacation!

[pbmsmile]

I was impressed with the dress on elegant night. I have to say I did not see one person who wasn't at least wearing dress pants. No jeans, no cut off shorts, no baseball caps, nothing like that at all. Not to say no one was dressed like that, but if they were, I didn't see it.

 

This is the night were I really didn't know what to order. Everything on this day was something I would like or wanted to try! They should really spread it around a bit because I have seen this comment many times before. And ribs on elegant night? Umm yeah, who came up with that brilliant idea? :rolleyes: I was really looking forward to trying the stuffed mushrooms because, I normally love them and they looked really good! Well they weren't. I was really disappointed in them. They had no flavour at all. I don't know what kind of cheese that was on them but it was like flavourless melted cheese whiz. I let others try some and they all had the same opinion so it wasn't just me. We also ordered a couple of plates of the "alligator" fritters to try. Only 3 of us would try them. The others thought we were crazy for trying them, they're not very adventurous eaters at all. I thought they were good. Nothing special really, kind of like a crab cake rolled into a ball without the crab. I didn't really care too much for the alligator meat or whatever it was. it wasn't horrible, I just didn't love it, but at least I can say I tried it. For my entree I ordered the surf & turf. Prime rib and lobster. The lobster and shrimp were good and the prime rib was delicious! I got a really nice piece with hardly any fat at all, it was very good. The baked potato was cold though so I just ate the mashed potatoes that came with the lobster. I prefer mashed anyway. For dessert I tried the apple pastry thing. It was sooooo sweet. I dumped the whole thing of caramel sauce on it before I even tried it and it was just too sweet. I had a couple of bites and that's it.

 

After dinner we were going to go to either the comedy show or the main theatre show. We went to the room to change and I sat down and turned on the Academy Awards. Next thing I know hubby is snoozing on the bed. I decided to just let him sleep since he had an early excursion the next day and I watched the rest of the Oscars and went to bed. Not very exciting but oh well! We were on vacation!

So far so good! Enjoying your review and looking forward to the next installment :)

[TDCRose]

great review can't wait for more! Hubby and I just returned from a btob on the Valor and will be doing a b2b on the Liberty in Jan.

[funfamilyof6]

Great review so far....I love that you get to the point quickly but give all of the important details. :)

[Livfl]

Enjoying your review..I.have a couple questions if you don't mind answering them:). My husband and I are going on the liberty on 4/14 our first cruise..it's the eastern itenary...celebrating our 25th aniv. we have a balcony cabin on the lido deck... Anyway....here are my ?s

Do you recall if they served whole milk?

Are there excursions or shopping you would advise us to do in St Thomas or San juan?

Is there something you wished you would have known?

Thanks for any input

[OceanDreams]

So far... So Good! Really looking forward to the rest of your review (and photo's)

OceanDreams

[19031]

Livfl-I fully recommend the segway tour in San Juan!!!! It was very fun. The poeple are great. just do a search for sgeway tours san juan and you will find it. It was $85 per person for 2 hours and totally worth every penny!!!! We had a group of 7 of us that went in January-ages 15-50 and all loved it!!!!!

[KrystalWaters]

i love reading reviews. Great start! Subscribing:)

[MissKIA]

As I mentioned before, Richard had to be up early this morning for an excursion. Him and the other guys were going deep sea fishing. SIL and I had no interest in this so we decided to go to Paradise Beach for the day. I had originally wanted to go to Nachi but we decided on PB because the guys were going to be done fishing at 1 so if they decided to join us they wouldn't have to pay the admission fee that Nachi charges and could just stop by for an hour or two. It wouldn't be worth it to pay $50 plus for a couple of hours.

 

SIL and I met in the buffet for breakfast at around 9 am. We could see the guys getting on their boat and sailing past us out the window. To my surprise they had eggs benedict at the buffet, my favourite breakfast meal! I am not a huge fan of breakfast foods, but I love eggs benedict. It was surprisingly good. I have had EB from buffets before and it's usually pretty hard from sitting under lamps for awhile, but I must have gotten a fresh piece.

 

After breakfast we headed to Paradise Beach. I tried looking at the sign near the taxi stand to see what they charge was but they whisked us away too fast and I didn't have a chance to check, so I'm not really sure how much it cost. :confused: I know I gave the driver a $20 and asked him if it was enough and he seemed quite pleased to I'm assuming he got a nice tip. :cool:

 

When we walked into the complex it was DEAD in there. We were the only ship in port today so we practically had the whole place to ourselves. It was awesome! Throughout the day a few more people showed up here and there, but there was never more than maybe 20 people in the pool area all day. They had these great lounge chairs in the pool where you could sit submerged other than your chest up, it was great. They also had free wi-fi available which I took full advantage of. I set up my blackberry and chatter with my kids and some friends and other family for the afternoon. Unfortunately this would be the last time for the next 2 week I would be able to connect to free wi-fi, but it was nice while it lasted.

 

For lunch I ordered a quesadilla and SIL had a chicken burger. Both were very good. Before leaving to head back to the port area we walked down to the beach to check it out. It was nice but I didn't like the sand. It was like quick sand! It kind of freaked me out a bit. Every time I would stand still for a couple of seconds my feet would start to sink into the sand. Very strange!

 

I'm going to attempt my first picture now, I hope it works! This was my view for the day.