Carnival Freedom 6 Day Review with pictures

[lovestocruise19]

That night we had dinner in the MDR. DH had a drink called The Italian.

 

 

For an appetizer I had chilled cucumber soup, which I didn't end up liking (only because I'm a picky eater).

 

 

DH had field greens.

 

 

For an entree I had chicken Sicilian style, which was pretty good.

 

 

DH had pork.

 

 

I had WCMC for dessert again and DH had a diet lemon cake.

 

[lovestocruise19]

Our first towel animal:

 

 

After dinner we had a drink in the Players Bar and then headed up to Lido to watch some of the basketball game on the big screen. The only bummer part about the big screen is that it had three black spots where the screen was worn out. DH got popcorn, but declared it not so good since it didn't have any butter on it. But he ate it anyway. LOL.

 

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

We watched the Love and Marriage Show in the main show lounge that night and it was funny. After that, we got some late night snacks from the area where sushi usually is. We got cookies and watermelon. The next day was a sea day. We ate breakfast from the buffet on Lido.

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

Then I went to the cooking demonstration by myself and had a great time watching them cook and sampling the food. It was held in the Sun King Restaurant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

 

 

 

 

 

Tiramisu!

 

[lovestocruise19]

Here are some more interior shots of the ship:

 

Lobby:

 

 

Club O2:

 

 

Scott's Piano Bar:

 

 

 

 

The Web (Internet):

 

[lovestocruise19]

For lunch I had the chicken tenders and they were okay.

 

 

Freedom Restaurant (buffet):

 

[lovestocruise19]

Tonight was the first of two elegant nights. DH and I had Mai Tais while we waited for dinner. We both didn't like Mai Tais, however DH is cheap and quickly finished mine to get his moneys worth. LOL!

 

We actually had tons of drink coupons that his sister had gotten us. The drink coupons are delivered to you on the first night in the MDR. You have to sign for them. The coupons are $5.75 each so we used them to buy our Shade-Ades and Mocha Chocolate Getaways and ended up paying less than $2 per drink of our own money. Although, now that I think about it, we couldn't use our coupons on the Mai Tais because it was happy hour or something. Not exactly sure how that works...

 

The icky Mai Tai:

 

 

For dinner I had strawberry bisque (which I fell in love with on my first cruise):

 

 

and DH had the fruit cocktail:

 

 

For my entree I had spaghetti carbonara:

 

 

and DH had prime rib:

 

 

DH had an apple puff pastry for dessert and I, of course, had WCMC.

 

[alreadypacked]

So I was kinda upset because after muster drill, they let one side leave and then the other side and by the time our side was called, we had missed sail away! :( I was bummed because we had wanted to wave to the webcam! Oh, well. We ate dinner in the MDR and I had heart of iceberg lettuce and DH had chicken fingers for an appetizer. Then I had grilled chicken for my entree and DH had flat iron steak.

 

 

 

 

Great review!

 

Question: How was the chicken tender appetizer in the MDR?

 

In the past, I have always loved the MDR chicken tender appetizer, served usually on the first night--all white meat chicken with a light breading. The ones in your photo look more like the thickly breaded (probably frozen) ones they serve on the Lido deck.

[lovestocruise19]

We had an elephant towel animal. The elephant is one of my favorites. :)

 

 

I was hoping to get a monkey this cruise, as we didn't get on last cruise, but no monkey this time either. :(

[lovestocruise19]

Great review!

 

Question: How was the chicken tender appetizer in the MDR?

 

In the past, I have always loved the MDR chicken tender appetizer, served usually on the first night--all white meat chicken with a light breading. The ones in your photo look more like the thickly breaded (probably frozen) ones they serve on the Lido deck.

 

DH just told me that the chicken tenders in the MDR were really good and much better than the ones from the grill on the buffet line. I didn't care for the buffet ones and the MDR ones did look better to me.

[lovestocruise19]

We went to The Big Easy show in the main show lounge which was okay. I think that not being from the South and never having been there was why it didn't appeal to us.

 

We saw Macio in the Punchliner Comedy Club. We both liked him.

[lovestocruise19]

The next day was Grand Cayman. There wasn't much instruction on how to tender (as we never had before) and the instructions on the TV said to just go down to Deck 0, which we did. We were able to hop right on one of the first tenders, which was good because our excursion was scheduled for 7:45 a.m. Here is a picture of the bottom level of the tender we were on:

 

 

 

We had a Beach Horseback Riding Excursion. Here is a shot of the beach:

 

 

This was my very first time ever on a horse. DH had been on horses before and he told me later that the instructor kept telling him how comfortable he looked on a horse.

 

[smilegirl07]

thanks for such a great review!

 

Q: was there any fee for the cooking demonstration thing?? It looks like such a great experience!

 

Also I wanna see pictures of you and your DH on your first elegant night! I am sure you guys looked awesome!

 

:)

 

Just wondering how much people got dressed up!

[lovestocruise19]

What I thought was really cool was that the instructors took the time to take everyone's pictures using their own personal cameras. Some places take pictures and then charge you to buy them, but this wasn't the case. Here are the shots they took for us:

 

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

thanks for such a great review!

 

Q: was there any fee for the cooking demonstration thing?? It looks like such a great experience!

 

Also I wanna see pictures of you and your DH on your first elegant night! I am sure you guys looked awesome!

 

:)

 

The cooking demonstration was free! I highly recommend it!

 

We did poses on both formal nights and I bought my favorite shots. Here are two pictures of the ones I bought:

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

Here is a picture of the ship in Grand Cayman.

 

[smilegirl07]

great, I love the first picture!

 

Thanks for posting such great pics!

[lovestocruise19]

We were on the top of the tender boat on the way back to the ship.

 

 

 

Carnival Paradise was also in Grand Cayman when we were.

 

 

When we got back to the ship it was in between breakfast and lunch. I managed to snag some hot chocolate and cereal and then we waited a half hour until lunch began.

 

I found the potato salad today. Delicious!

 

 

And they had red velvet cupcakes for dessert! :D

 

[lovestocruise19]

The towel animal that night was the sting ray appropriately enough.

 

 

We also got our invite to the past guest party, which was held on Thursday (Jamaica day).

 

[ribbitt]

Great review !! I am leaving for this cruise on Sunday.....5 more days !!

On the past guest party, was that the only time? If so, that stinks, I think our excursion runs right through time to get back on board. We would be really rushed to make it...

Looking forward to reading more.

[lovestocruise19]

For dinner we ended up eating in the Lido buffet because nothing on the menu looked good to us (you can preview each night's menu on your TV). I forgot to bring my camera, but I had turkey, which was good and mashed potatoes which I didn't care for because it was chunky and infused with brie. I had a slice of chocolate cake, which was okay (I don't like whipped frosting and after attending the cooking demo I found out that they use whipped frosting on most of their layer type cakes, which is why I don't like them as much) and a slice of lemon chiffon cake. Boy was that good! DH got two slices and then went back for two more. The lemon cake just had a bit of glaze on top, which is probably why I preferred it over the layer cakes with whipped frosting.

 

We went to the Gender Showdown game, which was interesting. The guys answered girly type questions and the girls answered guy type questions. We were going to go to the Superstars Show, but didn't end up going.

 

I filled out another ticket for room service breakfast. I had filled one out the night before, but it never came. I think it is because the door hanger tag slid around on the door handle, so they didn't see it.

[lovestocruise19]

Great review !! I am leaving for this cruise on Sunday.....5 more days !!

On the past guest party, was that the only time? If so, that stinks, I think our excursion runs right through time to get back on board. We would be really rushed to make it...

Looking forward to reading more.

 

You have to get back on the ship in Jamaica by 2 p.m., so you will be onboard in plenty of time for the past guest party.

[lovestocruise19]

I got my room service breakfast on Jamaica day. The toast was cold and kinda soggy and the hot chocolate was lukewarm, but at least I had something in my tummy.

 

 

I didn't realize Jamaica was so mountainous!

 

 

So we had prebooked our dune buggy excursion. We got off the ship and headed into the building for prebooked tours. Our excursion was supposed to start at 8 a.m., but we didn't get called until 8:30 a.m. We then got on a bus and less than five minutes later they told everyone for dune buggies to get off the bus. The bus left us at the side of the road and we stood there for at least 20 minutes. Thankfully, our driver, Howard, was there with us and called for a Chukka (that is the name of the company) van to come pick us up. When we got into the van he apologized profusely and said that this rarely happens and the bus was supposed to drop us off further down the road. As they say in Jamaica, it was a "sticky situation" but turned out to be "no problem." :)

 

Howard drove us a little over an hour to the dune buggy location. There we met LeRoy, our dune buggy guide.

 

[lovestocruise19]

DH drove the dune buggy and I took lots of pictures. It was very fun! And DH was nice and didn't go fast through the mud puddles, so I didn't end up getting very muddy.

 

 

 

 

 

One dune buggy broke down, but we got going again quickly. During the lull, LeRoy took a picture of us in the dune buggy. They had a guy on an ATV taking pictures along the way and you could purchase them once the excursion was over. So this was cool since this was a free shot using my camera!