Freedom 12/28 NYE Cruise Review! - Never again!

[siestaclaud]

I wonder if you could dispute the $300 charge with your cc since Royal didn't deliver as promised. I'd be livid with the photo cd issue and upset at everything OP had to put up with. And I'd probably not roll with Royal again given the choices he's got.

 

Thank is my next course of action. At least I have the hard copies - and I guess I can scan those, but what a pain!

 

Thanks everyone for letting me bend your ear with my disappointments. Like I said - we had a fun time with our family, and perfect weather, but it stings to shell out that much cash, and plan for that long to be let down so much! :cool:

[belles]

That vacation doesn't sound good at all. I'm sure you spent a fortune on this cruise.

I've never sailed on RCI, have been on Carnival, NCL and Princess. Of all the Carnival cruises I've been on (there are many), never have I experienced any of the issues you did. You are always seeing people cleaning the ship and I've never encountered an unpleasant worker onboard.

Maybe you should give Carnival another try

[manlie]

We also sailed this cruise and I have to agree there was absolutely no WOW factor, unless meant in the negative way. Unfortunately, due to schedules and the fact this was a 'family reunion' of sorts, we had to book over the holidays For the price we paid for our 3 person balcony room we could have had a sky loft in August on the Oasis (when we originally wanted to sail). The extra price makes it harder to swallow that this cruise was disappointing. And the only reason people knew about drydock as late as September (when we booked) was because of Cruise Critic. RCCL did not admit it to my travel agent when she enquired. They also told her the propulsion issue would have no bearing on the cruise :confused: The shortened port times made a HUGE difference to my family - 5 different families of 15 people who hadn't cruised before (my husband and I convinced them to cruise). They didn't find it relaxing at all and only one family will cruise again.

 

I have to highly commend the staff - they were amazing and worked very hard and everyone I encountered was very pleasant. The bartenders were especially generous :D I was surprised though that you didn't see people cleaning banisters, etc (the last ship I sailed was Princess and it amazed me that someone was ALWAYS cleaning the areas that were constantly touched like the railings, elevator buttons, etc).

 

I wasn't wowed by the food at all; It was certainly better than I would cook on a daily basis at home :p, and our server Calbert was fantastic (and the only reason we retuned to the dining room regularly), but I never walked away hoping to have a particular dish again or thinking 'that was great'. It was food - no better than a chain restaurant, not as good as a fantastic steak house.

 

I know the OP has been flamed for saying it looked worn, but it did! There were rips in the cushions (where you could see the stuffing) in the Windjammer, carpet was quite threadbare, and our cabin had a huge red stain (seriously looked like blood, although I am quite sure it wasn't, and larger than my husbands size 13 shoe). I assume all this will be taken care of in drydock, but that should have been accounted for in the price, even for a NYE cruise.

[The Big Booper]

People getting off the Quantum are also reporting problems with the photo CD. Evidently you need some kind of updated software to read the photo files and RCI supplied the software to these Quantum cruisers after the sailing. Check with Miami.

 

The Freedom class is a stretched Voyager class with the same number of elevators. I would never take any of these three ships on a crowded holiday cruise.

[ryano]

 

I know the OP has been flamed for saying it looked worn, but it did!.

 

No she wasn't. A disagreement or people saying they didn't witness the same should not be considered being flamed.

[ryano]

People getting off the Quantum are also reporting problems with the photo CD. Evidently you need some kind of updated software to read the photo files and RCI supplied the software to these Quantum cruisers after the sailing. Check with Miami.

 

The Freedom class is a stretched Voyager class with the same number of elevators. I would never take any of these three ships on a crowded holiday cruise.

 

Imagine what it will be like once they add more cabins :eek:

[mac66]

I was not impressed with the Freedom or NCI this time. My wife and I were on the Freedom on the Dec 7 cruise. Not a good experience. Though the food and shows were good overall entertainment poolside and in the bars was lousy. We didn't know about the propeller problem until we got on the ship and found most of our excursions cancelled. It wasn't until later that we found out about the problem and our port times were cut way short. Due to a medical problem with another passenger Cozumel was cut (but only because of the propeller problem). We go not comps and we are still seeking our port taxes back since we didn't go there. Only grip I have is that we should have been told about the problem. In the future, if I find out about a ship problem, that cruise gets canceled.

 

Be that as it may, we are booked on another RCI cruise in Feb but not the Freedom.

Edited January 14, 2015 by mac66

[Mcpe29]

I was on the 12/28 sailing also and could not agree more with the OP. I have been on six other cruises, five with RCI, and I have never experienced anything like this before. I'm not one to say never again, but I will think long and hard before I put my money and vacation time in the hands of the cruise lines. It was very disappointing.

[Coolcruise02]

Sorry you had a bad cruise! I know how much I look forward to a cruise and having to put up with what you did is not acceptable.

[fhowell2]

Sorry you had such a bad time on the Freedom. I will be cruising the Freedom in mid-March and will be looking forward to it. I have been on clunker cruises before and I will say 'stuff happens'

If your photo problem is still unresolved, then Royal Caribbean has not fulfilled the contract they made to supply you with the photos/cd you ordered. You can complain to the credit card company and quite probably get a refund.

Good luck on your future cruises. I wish everyone could have a great cruise every time.

 

Rick

[grab007]

Sorry about your cruise. Just a few thoughts to share...

 

First, we've been on 20+ RCI cruises and the worst one happened to be the last cruise prior to a refurb on Legend. So we always avoid those. Its a shame that this one was also a holiday cruise.

 

We were on Enchantment for this NYE - a much older ship than Freedom - and it was AWESOME!!! Happy crew, happy passengers, great food. Ship is in great shape.

 

Having said all that, given the effort the OP put into flaming here, I hope they give the same level of scrutiny to the next cruise line and see how they compare. Its all about meeting expectations and how realistic those expectations really are.

 

Hope your next cruise is better.

[spazzyjanet]

My takeaway (as I look forward to a NYE cruise next year) is that the holiday sailing wasn't the reason for the bad experience.

 

It was doing a holiday sailing out of Port Canaveral (Orlando/Disney) on a Freedom class ship (less crowd-friendly) that was having mechanical problems on top of everything else.

 

I'll keep that in mind in considering future holiday cruises- stay away from Orlando/Freedom class.

[cruisegirl1]

My takeaway (as I look forward to a NYE cruise next year) is that the holiday sailing wasn't the reason for the bad experience.

 

It was doing a holiday sailing out of Port Canaveral (Orlando/Disney) on a Freedom class ship (less crowd-friendly) that was having mechanical problems on top of everything else.

 

I'll keep that in mind in considering future holiday cruises- stay away from Orlando/Freedom class.

 

This was our 3rd NYE cruise in as many years, and the second time we had NYE on the Freedom.

 

I attribute most of the problems to the ships mechanical issues. Our itinerariy, while not changed, was shortened a good bit. That, added with leaving all of the ports late, (to wait for someone) made our shortened port stops even shorter. This also caused us to return to Port Canaveral an hour or more late.

 

Then, just to make it a bit worse, this cruise unlike others several weeks prior, did not offer any compensation, onboard credit, future cruise credit because of the mechanical issues.

 

The issue is that the cruise line knew of the problems for a long time, surely when we had to make final payment, and told us of changes just a couple of days prior to boarding. In fact, if I had not read about the problems on CC, I would have never known about them at all until we received the email a few days before boarding. Those who said we should cancel, really??? and lose 100% of our very high cruise price. Not to mention any travel costs. Not really an option for anyone.

 

The cruise line promised us a fully operational ship at time of booking, and at final payment, and failed to provide this at the time of sailing.

 

We really enjoy sailing New Year's Eve, and will probably give it another try. In between the two Freedom cruises we did a Celebrity New Year's eve, and enjoyed it very much. Maybe that is the way to go.

 

M