Liberty OTS Review w/ Compasses - Jul 17-24 -Costa Maya, Roatan, Cozumel

[bakingem]

I learned so much from reading reviews before our first cruise, so I wanted to take a stab at sharing a few things from our adventure. Bare with me while I recap our adventures on the Lib!

 

Who we are: DH and I traveled with 3 other couples. All of us are in our 30s with kids (who we happily left at home...sorry, kids! Love you. Mean it.). Two of the couples had cruised before and two of us were cruise virgins. I'm typically a photo nut, but in all candor, I was too busy avoiding "adulting" to take many pictures of anything besides our friends and us making poor, but delightful, life choices, so sadly I can only share a few photos of the cruise. My bad. I'll do better next time.

 

Here we go. If you have any questions, I'll do my best to remember. I saved all the compasses, I believe, so I will either take photos of them or scan them in later.

[jeanneful]

Can't wait too read your review!! We go on her in Nov for a B2B

[bakingem]

Pre-cruise: DH and I loaded up our passel of small children (three 3-years old and under!) and drove ten hours to Galveston to meet DH's family for a few days of beach fun before we started the kidless part of our vacation and before the Littles went to "Grandparent Camp," where if we're being real, I'm sure they consumed more ice cream, candy, cake, and who knows what other cavity-causing delights than are on the entire Liberty of the Seas. Whatever... Mom's off duty and not the one that has to get them to sleep. :)

 

My in-laws rented a condo right across from the Gulf, but we had to drive about a quarter of a mile down Seawall Blvd. to get to the sand. It wasn't bad at all, and we all enjoyed the crystal blue water . . . or grey sand and murky water depending on what filter you have on your camera. :D

 

Honestly, when you're from West Texas, it's all pretty great. A day at any beach is better than a day at no beach, and the Littles had never seen the ocean before, so we had a glorious time.

 

Cruise

Day 1

The morning of the cruise, I looked out the balcony, and we could see three water spouts not too far from the shore. One was actually pretty large and you could see it whipping the water up. Right after that we got a tornado warning alert on our phones. I was not feeling super confident about the literal motion of the ocean. It soon turned into a torrential downpour. My FIL grew up sailing, and assured me that it would probably be just fine because there was very little wind. He turned out to be right, but it was a dreary way to start the day.

 

My FIL took us to the port and totally ignored/didn't see/plead ignorance about the "employees only" sign, which stressed me out but meant we got dropped off right by the shuttles with no waiting in line. We arrived about 10:30. The line was just inside the doors, but we needed to wait for the other six people in our party. We found were to drop off our luggage while we waited. Within just a few minutes, the line was out the door and starting to wrap around. By the time our friends arrived and got their luggage checked in, the line was moving a little faster, but still outside. We waited quasi-patiently. I'm not going to lie: it took a really, really long time to get through the line. We finally made it through, signed our lives away, got our SeaPass cards and headed up stairs, only to discover that RCI was helping us to build a little more anticipation, i.e. more waiting. One couple has sailed out of Florida numerous times and said they hadn't ever had to wait this long, but the other couple had left out of Galveston before and said this was typical of their experience. Who knows?! I can say that it did seem a little long (took about two hours from when we got in line, I believe), but on the other hand they're trying to get thousands of people on board in a few hours and I certainly wouldn't want to be in charge of that. :eek:

 

At long last, they called the magic number and we were suddenly transported to a magical land of restaurants, bars, shopping, and $10 cocktails. The ship truly is astounding to the eyes of a newbie. Not only is the sheer size incredible to consider, but the promenade floor is lovely, ornate, and excessive in the best way. Who wants to get on a plane Jane ship? "Not I," says this girl. We found our rooms in the bowels of the ship (Deck 8, interiors, actually) and quickly met our room steward (porter? What's the proper name?) Anyway, her name was Donna, and y'all, she was freaking phenomenal. If I could have her at my house all the time, I could die a happy woman in my neatly made up bed, with hilarious towel creations, and all my needs being anticipated. The toilet towel animal that made an appearance later in the week made me die laughing. I'll share it when we get there. Donna was truly great at her job, and as a soap box, that I'll throw in now and get it over with:

 

Please be nice to the cruise employees! They are so nice, and a few times I heard people really talk down to them. Ask them about their family. Ask them how they started working on cruise ships. And just use some dang manners and remember they all have cultural differences but they are trying very hard the vast majority of the time. They sacrifice a lot to have these jobs and to make our vacations amazing. Everyone we talked with was happy to share their story, tell us of their home, and what life is like on a cruise ship. Most that we talked to had children at home, were gone for 6-7 1/2 months at a time, and said this was a better option to provide for their families than the options available to them at home. So in summary, I know they're doing their jobs, but being kind and showing you care goes a long way for people who don't see their loved ones often and make a lot of sacrifices to work hard and provide. End of rant. <Steps off soap box to continue with review.>

[bakingem]

After checking out our rooms, we went up to the Windjammer, which was every bit as chaotic as the reviews I read made it seem. Wowza. We survived. That is all.

 

We unpacked and went to muster, which was just shy of pointless since it said everything that had been repeating overhead, but I understand it is a requirement. I am however super grateful for that requirement because while walking to our muster station we saw a mama and baby dolphin right beside the ship. This was the best picture I could get, which could be a shark in the "clear" Galveston water for all you can tell, but I'll take it. They surfaced several times and I wanted to stay to get a better picture and keep watching, but apparently when lining up for muster drill, dolphins are not priority for everyone. Sigh. (I kid, I kid. Mostly.)

After that we went our separate ways for a while to explore the ship. The other girl that had never cruised and I were determined to go up and down every deck and find where everything was. We were pretty proud of ourselves for getting it all done in a little less than two hours. Over the course of the next week, we would laugh often at how silly we were to think we had actually seen it all. I think we missed entire floors. Rookies.

 

Dinner

We were on the Fourth floor MDR, and we found the food to be overwhelmingly delicious. And, y'all, we ate an obnoxiously embarrassing amount of food. I'm almost too embarrassed to admit what all we ate each night. But we're all friends, here, right?!? The first night started out at a reasonable one appetizer, one main course, and one dinner for each person. This would be the smallest meal consumed by our party for the rest of the evenings. Our poor waiters. This night, I had the shrimp cocktail, which was delicious. Several people had the Strawberry, Kiwi, Pineapple Medley which also got rave reviews. For the main course, I had the Horseradish-crusted salmon. It was good, but not the best. It had very little horseradish flavor. Someone mentioned that our assistant waiter had been asked by another table about additional horseradish, but I was almost done at that point, so it wasn't worth it to have him go to the trouble. I think it would have been delicious with a little more flavor, though, so if you get this, consider that request. Other hits at the table were the steak and the mojo-marinated pork chops. I can't remember what I had for dessert that night, but I can guarantee I ordered it and I'm sure it was delicious.

 

Post-dinner

We skipped the show for a chance to explore the ship, get a couple of drinks, and head to the piano bar, where we made ourselves known a couple different nights. The boys in our crew are show offs when they've had a few drinks and soon a couple of them had taken turns singing and were generally making merry. :p

 

At some point, we finally headed to bed. Not going to lie, the best thing about an interior room is the glorious pitch black it becomes at all times of the day when the light goes off. And it helped that there were no kids that could wake me up in the middle of the night! Day 1 was in the books, and so far we were winning at vacation.

[bakingem]

Can't wait too read your review!! We go on her in Nov for a B2B

 

That sounds divine! We wanted to stowaway and do an unofficial B2B! ;)

[vettecruiser1]

We got there about the same time, last Sunday and as we were going up stairs they made the call for Diamond and emerald so we just go to keep on walking to the skywalk. Here is were the issue was because it happened on the person right in front of us. The computer the guys scans you card once you get on the ship crashed and we stood there for at least 30 minutes waiting for the I.T. officer to come over and try to fix them. I felt bad for the people in the glass skyway because just standing on the deck I was melting. They called and told the port agents not let anyone else come up until they got it fixed. Finally they got 1 terminal working and we got through.

 

I just wanted to give you an insight on what happened since we witnessed the whole thing. Also if you have Plat and about CA status you can go thru the short security line. It saved us some serious time since the other line was snaking pretty good. I believe I heard that we had over 3000 1st time cruisers on this run.

[3happykids!]

Bakingem

Looking forward to the rest of your post. Easy to read. Our cruise will take us to the other islands that LOS sails to (Falmouth, Cozumel, and Grand Cayman). By the way, we are from the west texas area also.

[tokyotea]

We are also driving in from West Texas to sail on LOS in September!! Looking forward to ( and enjoying) your review!😊

[tokyotea]

We got there about the same time, last Sunday and as we were going up stairs they made the call for Diamond and emerald so we just go to keep on walking to the skywalk. Here is were the issue was because it happened on the person right in front of us. The computer the guys scans you card once you get on the ship crashed and we stood there for at least 30 minutes waiting for the I.T. officer to come over and try to fix them. I felt bad for the people in the glass skyway because just standing on the deck I was melting. They called and told the port agents not let anyone else come up until they got it fixed. Finally they got 1 terminal working and we got through.

 

I just wanted to give you an insight on what happened since we witnessed the whole thing. Also if you have Plat and about CA status you can go thru the short security line. It saved us some serious time since the other line was snaking pretty good. I believe I heard that we had over 3000 1st time cruisers on this run.

 

Has the new terminal opened?

[ckmommy]

Going on this same itinerary over New Year's!! Love hearing your perspective as a 1st timer!! Can't wait to read more.

[ukintheus]

Following along, thanks for taking the time to do a review. :D

[vettecruiser1]

Has the new terminal opened?

 

Yes, you go thru security. Then down a long hallway to the new terminal. Check in and go upstairs to wait to be called on to the ship. They are now redesigning the old terminal for disembarking. It is suppose to be done in the next couple of months.

[Marinagirl1443]

Thanks for the review! As a first time cruiser, you just answered some questions I had about the first day! Look forward to reading more! We are leaving on 7/31 so we're super excited!

[Toomanycritters]

I'm a first time cruiser going on Liberty OTS in a couple of weeks with the exact same itinerary. Very excited and also, for some reason, nervous. Really want this vacation to be a good one because it's a bit of a budget stretch for me. Taking my 7 year old daughter and 17 year old son and his best friend. Sharing adjoining Promenade rooms with the boys in one and me and daughter in the other. Looking forward to the rest of your review and would love to see the Cruise Compass. :)

[Marinagirl1443]

I'm a first time cruiser going on Liberty OTS in a couple of weeks with the exact same itinerary. Very excited and also, for some reason, nervous. Really want this vacation to be a good one because it's a bit of a budget stretch for me. Taking my 7 year old daughter and 17 year old son and his best friend. Sharing adjoining Promenade rooms with the boys in one and me and daughter in the other. Looking forward to the rest of your review and would love to see the Cruise Compass. :)

 

We're sailing this weekend, I will do my best to post the Cruise Compass when we return.

[BlueCollarCruiser]

Thank god your kids are safe after getting in the Galveston water. You couldn't pay me to get in there with those levels of flesh eating bacteria. :eek:

[TXMary]

Following along...I love to see cruising through the eyes of a newbie! Glad you had a good time!! It's an addiction, you know?! :D

[nativetexan]

Pre-cruise: Donna was truly great at her job, and as a soap box, that I'll throw in now and get it over with:

 

Please be nice to the cruise employees! They are so nice, and a few times I heard people really talk down to them. Ask them about their family. Ask them how they started working on cruise ships. And just use some dang manners and remember they all have cultural differences but they are trying very hard the vast majority of the time. They sacrifice a lot to have these jobs and to make our vacations amazing. Everyone we talked with was happy to share their story, tell us of their home, and what life is like on a cruise ship. Most that we talked to had children at home, were gone for 6-7 1/2 months at a time, and said this was a better option to provide for their families than the options available to them at home. So in summary, I know they're doing their jobs, but being kind and showing you care goes a long way for people who don't see their loved ones often and make a lot of sacrifices to work hard and provide. End of rant. <Steps off soap box to continue with review.>

 

THIS. Exactly. Nice doesn't cost a dime. Just be kind!! Can't wait to read more. We leave in 12 days.

 

Thanks in advance!! Hope you've conquered the laundry!!

[JaniceB]

Enjoying your review, can't wait to read more.

[wolfganghowell]

Oh no - where'd she go? Fabulous review - keep it coming.

 

Cracked up at the "making poor decisions." :D Hey - sounds like you have a lot of responsibility at home - good for you having a good time with friends.

[tlatrice]

I'm a first time cruiser going on Liberty OTS in a couple of weeks with the exact same itinerary. Very excited and also, for some reason, nervous. Really want this vacation to be a good one because it's a bit of a budget stretch for me. Taking my 7 year old daughter and 17 year old son and his best friend. Sharing adjoining Promenade rooms with the boys in one and me and daughter in the other. Looking forward to the rest of your review and would love to see the Cruise Compass. :)

 

I was nervous the night before my first cruise, too. The wonderful people on my Roll Call talked me down. I was ready to cancel! LOL!!! I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time!

 

Looking forward to this review!!!!

[JaniceB]

Still waiting, please come back and continue.

[LHARTWICK]

Pre-cruise: Please be nice to the cruise employees! They are so nice, and a few times I heard people really talk down to them. Ask them about their family. Ask them how they started working on cruise ships. And just use some dang manners and remember they all have cultural differences but they are trying very hard the vast majority of the time. They sacrifice a lot to have these jobs and to make our vacations amazing. Everyone we talked with was happy to share their story, tell us of their home, and what life is like on a cruise ship. Most that we talked to had children at home, were gone for 6-7 1/2 months at a time, and said this was a better option to provide for their families than the options available to them at home. So in summary, I know they're doing their jobs, but being kind and showing you care goes a long way for people who don't see their loved ones often and make a lot of sacrifices to work hard and provide. End of rant. <Steps off soap box to continue with review.>

 

Amen, Sista!! Got room for another on that soap box?? I get so tired of witnessing the way some passengers talk to the crew members. They are human beings, too - and hard working ones at that!! And don't even get me started on those passengers who won't allow others to exit the elevator before they get on.....geez!!! We're on Liberty in October - looking forward to the rest of your review. :)