Carnival Freedom 10/13/14 Review....toddler in tow & pics

[Mrs.C05]

Tommy wasn’t hungry yet to walk over to Daffney’s so once we got back onto the ship we unloaded everything and changed Ethan. Today is not a good day of making it to the potty (grrrr). We did go get some lunch though around 12noon. I grabbed the Mongolian wok and Tommy got a burrito from Blue Iguana Burrito Bar? Ethan ate off our plates. Once done eating we went back for a long 2.5hour nap for all of us. Ethan and I woke up first, so we let Tommy sleep while we went to scope out the Dr. Seuss Bookville and Camp Ocean.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mrs.C05]

 

 

We went in to Camp Ocean for a little bit but he said he wanted to go with me. Maybe on sea day I’ll leave him. You get a phone when you sign your child in, so you can contact them. We walked around a lot and we left Nassau around 5:30pm, after they called 3 people’s names a few times. We went to the room to get Tommy, and go get Ethan’s pictures from last night. He posed on a surfboard and it turned out excellent. We got 2 of the 4 pictures and a photo book. The photo book came with several pictures of and around the boat. We walked around some more, before grabbing dinner at 7pm. We don’t normally eat that late but we weren’t hungry yet.

 

Tonight was elegant night but didn’t feel like dressing up, so we ate at the buffet. After eating Tommy headed to the casino while I took Ethan to find music. It was pretty busy since it was elegant night, with the photo ‘ops. They had music outside the casino as usual but it was too loud for Ethan so we headed to the Red Frog for a little. It wasn’t long until he was tired and we went to the room for the night. Tomorrow is Half Moon Cay and we need tender tickets, so I need to go down to guest services to ask if platinum needs a tender ticket or not. We went to bed at 10pm.

 

Here is our towel animal for the night, and our lil man.

[ProfCruise]

Loving your review so far! As I mentioned, I'll be on the Freedom with my (almost) 2 year old in December. Is the outdoor playground open for free play with parental supervision or do the kids have to be checked in to Camp Ocean to use it? Our son is too young for Camp Ocean, but would love to play on the playground.

[Mrs.C05]

We're in Half Moon Cay today from 8am-4pm. Last tender back is at 3:15, and back on board by 3:30pm.

 

Today is such a beautiful day. Ethan and I woke up at 7am and headed up to breakfast by 7:30am. Tommy stayed in bed. After Ethan and I ate omelets, hashbrowns and pancakes, we filled up our cups and headed to the room to get Tommy. The weather on this cruise really has been great. No rocking or rolling, or any thought that there was a tropical storm/hurricane out there. Today was a gorgeous day.

 

To get off at Half Moon Cay (pronounced “Key” according to the ship) the ship was doing tender tickets for first come first serve at the Alchemy bar starting at 8am. We headed down there at 8:30am and hopped in line. We got tender group #6 and went straight to the tender, as told by Chic Restaurant workers. For all guest, Diamond, Platinum, Red card, Blue card, didn't matter....it was by tender sticker, however I don't know why they even bothered because other crew members were telling us to just go get on a tender, and no one was checking the #.

 

We got on the island at about 9:30am and grabbed a clam shell for $25.

 

View from our "clam-shell":

 

We all played in the water and Ethan played in the sand while we were at the clam-shell. We ordered him this, knowing we'd have 2 beach days.

He loved this, and for everything in it, it's not badly priced!

 

We played on the island for 3 hours before heading back to the ship for showers and lunch. After quick showers for all of us, we went down for some lunch. I got a Guys Burger and a small Mongolian wok bowl.

[Mrs.C05]

So after lunch, we headed to take naps. Any nap for Mom and Dad is truly a luxury, so we definitely took advantage of it on this cruise. Waking after 2 hours of napping, we see that we'll soon be leaving Half Moon Cay. We pulled out of HMC right at 4:30pm.

 

They had a photo shoot with Cat in the Hat and Sam I Am at 5:45pm which we attended.

 

Tonight’s menu looks pretty good to go sit down at. We were seated rather quickly and we ate pretty quickly. I ordered the black bean soup, and cocktail shrimp, and for the entrée Chicken Sicilian, but it wasn’t that great, which I quickly remembered once it was placed in front of me. Ethan had the hotdog and fries, and Tommy had the quesadilla and jerk pork. We left after Tommy finished up and headed to the room for a little before going to Red Frog for some live music. Ethan thought it was too loud before wanting to go to the room for the night. We fell asleep around 10pm probably.

 

Next up is Grand Turk! We haven't heard of any itinerary changes so I guess we're still going. We don't arrive there until 11am, but we have been rocking and rolling with the waves since leaving HMC. It's not bad, but I did take some pepto before it upset me too much.

[Mrs.C05]

I think your CD's name is Jen Baxter, not Baker, hehe. We had her on the Triumph. We loved her.

 

Yes, you're correct. The cruise director is Jen Baxter. My apologies.

[Mrs.C05]

I LOVE reading cruise reviews, esp. with pictures, even if I never have nor ever will be on that particular ship! ;):p Great start. You have such a cute little boy!

 

Thank you!!! Sorry I don't have many food pics or around the ship pics.

[Mrs.C05]

BTW, We did not wait around for Sam I Am. After taking pics with Cat in the Hat, Sam I Am was nowhere to be seen. It was dinner time anyways.....

[Mrs.C05]

Since we were not getting to Grand Turk until 11am or so, crew members were making towel animals to place all around Lido Deck.

My favorite:

[Mrs.C05]

Here's another little cute towel animal baby:

 

Not sure if you can tell, but these were the swells / waves that were going on Wednesday night into Thursday morning:

 

We were excited about being able to go to Grand Turk. Last time we were here was in 2007 with some friends.

 

We got up around 6:30am since I wanted to do a yoga stretch and ab workout but Tommy and Ethan wanted to walk around while we waited for the buffet and omelet stations to open. Ethan didn’t eat too well so we took him to the room for a bit and had him eat a turkey sandwich. Not ideal for breakfast, but he needed to eat something.

 

Afterwards we all get dressed and ready to get off at Grand Turk. We arrive around 10:30am, and we were the only ship there.

 

 

 

 

We get off rather quickly and head straight to Jack’s Shack. The beach is free here and Margaritaville is right behind it.

[Mrs.C05]

We get off rather quickly and head straight to Jack’s Shack. It was a lil bit of a walk along the beach but not bad. Topher quickly greeted us once we got closer (I should've taken a picture of Topher, but Ethan was clawing me to get up in my arms since he seems to be afraid of big dogs) and we went up to order food and drinks.

 

 

More Jack's Shack coming.....(I really wish we could do more than 6 photos per post....just sayin')

[Mrs.C05]

 

The Reef Wrecker which was soooo yummy! I had 2 of them:

 

Edited October 26, 2014 by Mrs.C05

[Mrs.C05]

Ok, I just went through and resized all the pictures, however it is still showing up humongous in the review.....what am I doing wrong??

[Mrs.C05]

I will do Margaritaville's review tomorrow. I'm tired, and photobucket and/or cruisecritic is aggravating me with not resizing the pictures, lol.

[Mrs.C05]

After finishing up lunch at Jack's Shack we walk back and find a chair at Margaritaville. We get to the pool at Margaritaville and hop in.

 

Our chair, under an umbrella....

 

Walking towards the bar.....

 

The pool bar was pretty crowded and crazy busy. I got us drinks while Tommy took Ethan to watch the Flowrider. After 15-20 minutes I finally got drinks and headed back to our chair.

 

Around the pool:

 

 

 

Family picture:

 

We swam and stayed for about 2 hours before Ethan wanted to head back to the ship. We head back at 2:15pm, so that Ethan can nap.

[Mrs.C05]

Ethan fell asleep pretty quickly in the room, as I came back with sandwiches around 3pm. We left Grand Turk right at 5pm, and the sea was kinda rough still. We had a late dinner in the buffet, and finally had ice cream! We’ve still yet to have pizza…..My stomach was not liking the seas, so Ethan and I went back to the room. (I know I’m sorry, now that I write this, I’ve realized we hung out in the room a lot) Ethan and I watched Rio and the start of Frozen before it was 9pm which was his bed time. Tommy came in sometime around 10:30pm from the casino.

 

Side note: Margaritaville was fun and relaxing but.......I don't know if it's normally this busy, since this was our first time here. However, I will say that Margaritaville should have had more servers outside walking around for drink orders, or more people at the swim-up bar to help out. It was hard to tell who wanted drinks since many were standing behind those that were sitting at the bar.....Just sayin'.

 

Coming up: Sea Day, Dr. Suess character breakfast and Ethan's first time in Camp Ocean......

Edited October 27, 2014 by Mrs.C05

[hlb76]

Our friends went to order drinks and where gone for about an hour. I was getting nervous they left us or something. .lol. I had thier son playing with my son so I knew it was not true. I personally never saw a wait staff to order anything they whole time I was near the pool.

[lovestocruise19]

I had sucky service at Margaritaville and we had a cabana! We got a couple drinks and some onion rings and then a little later we wanted lunch so we pushed our call button for a server and waited and waited and waited and they never came! Plus someone stole our deck chairs right off the front porch of our cabana! Not worth the money we paid for the cabana! Next time we go to Grand Turk we'll have to check out Jack's Shack.

[momof3cruisers]

Cant wait to read more and see if your experience was the same as mine. I did not like Jen at all! I did not like her before either. Yes she really dropped the ball on disembarkation. So much that my friends missed there flight and had to stay an extra night in FL and spend another $600 they did not have to spend. WE barley caught our flight at 315.

 

I've been debating writing a review myself but I don't know if I want to put myself through it as I'm sure I will get flamed left and right as we had many mis-adventures even though we made it a good time all the same. Thanks for being so brave!

 

Just ignore the flames. I personally would like to hear your experiences. We said the Freedom in Dec.

 

Mrs CO5, thx for taking the time!

[Mrs.C05]

Just ignore the flames. I personally would like to hear your experiences. We said the Freedom in Dec.

 

Mrs CO5, thx for taking the time!

 

Yes, I'd like to hear others reviews as well.

 

No problem Momof3cruisers! I find it helpful, and fun when reading others reviews, so it's sort of a "pay it forward" thing for me.

Edited October 27, 2014 by Mrs.C05

[Mrs.C05]

The other "issue" I spoke of earlier that I said happened at Margaritaville was this:

While waiting 20 minutes at the swim up bar for drinks, the DJ was playing songs left and right to keep the party going. Everyone was having a good time.

 

The songs being played were mainly booty and music, no songs of which I knew because I haven't listened to it much lately, however I don't mind it. Well one song comes on, and everyone that wasn't at the bar, started splashing. Like 10 feet in the air splashing, ridiculous splashing. Now, people at the bar down on the left of me were not happy at all, as they were getting pretty wet.

 

I felt it was pretty rude. Now I know we're all in the pool, and you're bound to get wet, but the splashing was pretty unnecessary. Just my thoughts....

[Mrs.C05]

Is anyone interested in me scanning the FunTimes?

I don't see this itinerary anymore on Carnival's website......

[Momofthreeprincesses]

The music was definitely different when the groups party started and there dj took over 12, when we first arrived it was more to my families preferences and what I was expecting, we had a great time there early and then we decided to check out the beach as it started to resemble my spring break days in college, which were some of the best times but I had a teenager and 10 year old with me who will learn all those things soon enough:) I figured on it being a little crazy too but we really wanted to check it out, glad we did early as we had a great time.

 

 

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[Mrs.C05]

The music was definitely different when the groups party started and there dj took over 12, when we first arrived it was more to my families preferences and what I was expecting, we had a great time there early and then we decided to check out the beach as it started to resemble my spring break days in college, which were some of the best times but I had a teenager and 10 year old with me who will learn all those things soon enough:) I figured on it being a little crazy too but we really wanted to check it out, glad we did early as we had a great time.

 

 

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Yeah, eon't get me wrong, we had a great time too and it was a blast. I'm glad we went.

[hlb76]

We keep teasing my 14 years who got an eye full a few times riding the flow rider. A couple of the ladies bared a little too much when they wiped out. A little off topic of what you where talking about. The crowd never bothered us over by the FR it was quite calm and peaceful. But I could tell the other side had some party going on.