Cheapo dad's trip report on Freedom of the Seas

[cruiser1956]

Thank you for such a detailed review! Freedom is my favorite ship. But, I haven't sailed them all yet. Love your pictures too. You have a lovely family. Maybe when you are done getting this all down on paper, (not real paper of course) you would consider doing a review of San Francisco? I am sailing there with my Sisters in October, and am trying to figure out the trolley car system.

About me - anal level - 10. Number of spreadsheets for upcoming Jewel of the Seas sailing in 55 days, 1 - of course it contains 8 tabs, and cataloged backups. Leaving nothing to chance (if I can help it) Priceless.

[Nessa1dc]

Harry,

 

Loving your review. We will be on Freedom on this coming Saturday. So excited. We are doing our first back to back. I got the info about the shuttle and booked today. They will pick us up from the Hilton Marina. Thanks so much. Love reading along.

Edited January 2, 2017 by Nessa1dc

[SthrnCruiser]

Loving your review so far. Feeling a little homesick for the Freedom class. Been on Liberty multiple times and Indy once. Freedom this past June. So I do love these ships. Can't wait to read the rest of your review.

[SherriZ366]

They are opened 24 hours & located in various states.

 

 

 

 

Dude making our pizza after we placed the order

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are few restaurants on the way to the pizza place if you want to there instead of slumming it and eating in the hotel.

 

 

Street of Fort Lauderdale beach area

 

 

 

 

On the way back, had to stop for the draw bridge to come down

 

 

 

 

As a tourist, I like the draw bridges as they are neat and something we don’t have back home. But as locals, I am sure they are not always happy to be stuck on the back end of the wait line while some billionaire sails around in his expensive yacht

 

 

Primantii Brothers is a chain that started in Pittsburgh in the strip district and now is in many locations in Pittsburgh and around the country. The food network has done shows on Primati's primarily for the sandwiches that have the fries and coleslaw in the sandwich.

 

http://www.primantibros.com/locations/

http://www.primantibros.com/story/

[aubreyc1988]

 

 

 

 

 

What are the cupholders like in the main theater? A weird pet peeve of mine is when the cup holders make NO sense for ANY of the size glasses/containers you get either from the bar in the theater or wherever the bartender goes to bring you something back. I then usually have to hold my drink all through the show, which is just highly annoying to me. I've only been on a FEW ships that really have had cup holders that you could realistically use in the theaters, so I always ask reviewers :)

 

patiently waiting for the next post!

[harryfat1]

Not to be anal but I'm sure you meant the ship feels more crowded AT 98% of the theoretical max of 4,500+ or within 2% of the theoretical max. ;)

 

Thanks for the pic of the luggage drop area. Between your pic and Google Maps I know exactly where I'm going when I drop off the family before returning the car to FLL in a few weeks. (Uh oh, I may must be at least an 8 on your AS index)

 

Haha, yes, you are correct. Thanks for catching the error. That’s the thing about CC – someone with a sharp eye will point out something you posted is not right.

 

As for Anal Scale (AS), that’s purely subjective. The way I see it (of course, you might differ), an average person is a 5 on scale of 1 to 10. Just by finding and reading CC online to try and make your cruise 0.03% better adds 1 to your score to make you a 6. Then when you have the stamina to read a really long saga like this one with hundreds of posts adds another 1 to your scale to make you a 7. Then add in the fact you didn’t fall asleep and catches a mathematical error in all those blah blah stuff, that gets you another point at 8. Then you take the pictures uploaded online and cross referenced it with Google map adds another 1 to the total of…

 

So not sure if your self-assessment of 8 on the AS scale is a bit to conservative…

 

Just remember if you get there early, you will need to fight the crowd that is trying to leave as well as the arrival people. There’s nothing like the chaos of any port area during the 10 to 2 time frame on a ship’s turn around day.

 

Have a great cruise later this month.

[SherriZ366]

Enjoying your review of our favorite ship. We will miss her now that she has moved to Fort Lauderdale. We love sailing out of Port Canaveral as it is only 4 1/2 hours away so now we will be trying Oasis.

[harryfat1]

Hey Harry! Other Harry here - loving the trip review so far! Unfortunately I am way behind getting mine wrapped up, but it should be done in the next day or two now that our DD is flying back to college this afternoon.

 

Anyway, I had a technical question. We both use Flickr to share photos on trip reviews. I noticed you do like me and try to use only the minimum info as possible. Do you have a way for Flickr to only show the info between the "img" tags?

 

I have always copied the output of the "share" option, then I have to paste it into a text file and shave off the "url" tag sections that I don't want to include in my posts, which gets old and tiring. :)

 

Just wondering if you have a better way?

 

Hi, Fletch,

 

Good to talk to you again. Glad you made it to my trip report. I also have an eye out for your Freedom report as I know you are on Day 5 already.

 

CC has a special thread on how to deal with various photo uploads, not sure if you are aware of it:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1714741&page=51

 

 

Yeah, this upload picture stuff on CC is a pain. I used to have Photobucket (technically my account is still active) and they have more storage space than Flickr and you can easily use their URL link without trimming it like Flickr.

 

But I know Photobucket has a bandwidth limit per month such that if too many people reads your trip report, Photobucket will stop the view unless you pay them extra for the “pro” version. Don’t think so. As much as I love my fellow CC cruisers here, I am not willing to pay extra for photo upload and bandwidth limits. Flickr has no such issues.

 

However, I think I have a different “cut off” on the URL from Flickr than other people. I cut off all the words BEFORE and AFTER the {IMG} link when I post my pictures.

 

For example, if you move your mouse over any of my pictures, the mouse doesn’t change shape. But on other photos, the shape changes to a finger and people can actually click on the picture and see all the other photos in that album and can download any pictures for their own personal library.

 

It’s everyone’s personal preference on how much privacy they want but for me, as much as I love sharing my vacation pics with the world, I rather they don’t have direct access to my photos via just a quick link. But in theory I have nothing special there as I only use Flickr for the CC pics. I use different service provider for my master photo uploads.

[harryfat1]

Harry, thank you for your detailed review! We are first time cruisers, leaving on the 15th on the Western Caribbean itinerary that includes Grand Cayman, Cozumel and Costa Maya. So not the same ports as your trip, but I appreciate all the photos and the tips on embarking! Hoping you finish your travel log before I leave the 13th. :)

 

Hi,

 

These are the same ports as ours. Only difference is for our cruise, they switched Costa Maya with Cozumel but than that, it's the same 3 ports.

 

I don't know where I will be at the report by the 13th. I have to work daily and can only access CC at night so there's a limit on how far I can go every day.

 

But in theory I already gave you 75% of what you need as a newbie with the minute by minute getting on the ship info. After that, it's like eating at the buffet, everyone will be different so unless you want to do the same exact tours as us, I can't really help you by telling you we went to Mayan ruins while you want to go to the beach.

 

Best advice I can give to you is look up and around you and take lots of pictures. Only look down to see the daily schedule. Don't play games or check email on your phone. Enjoy your cruise as is. Have a great one.

[harryfat1]

Thank you for such a detailed review! Freedom is my favorite ship. But, I haven't sailed them all yet. Love your pictures too. You have a lovely family. Maybe when you are done getting this all down on paper, (not real paper of course) you would consider doing a review of San Francisco? I am sailing there with my Sisters in October, and am trying to figure out the trolley car system.

About me - anal level - 10. Number of spreadsheets for upcoming Jewel of the Seas sailing in 55 days, 1 - of course it contains 8 tabs, and cataloged backups. Leaving nothing to chance (if I can help it) Priceless.

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the kind words.

 

I don't think I will do any review of SF as I don't have pictures of all the sights. My trip report is only good in that I actually experienced every step of what I did so you can follow along. If I review SF, it's more theoretical and tourists sees the city differently than locals.

 

But there are tons of reviews on Trip Advisor or online or in free guide books you can borrow from the library that show you many wonderful sights of SF. Many times the tourists know more about the city than the locals as we were daily and have no time to see the sights.

 

Have a great trip.

[Jasperdo]

I used to have Photobucket (technically my account is still active) and they have more storage space than Flickr ...

I'm curious how much storage space Photobucket has? Flickr gives everyone a terabyte of storage for free. I have over 44,000 photos on Flickr, and it shows I've only used 8.7% on my free terabyte of storage. Does Photobucket really give you more than that? Pretty impressive if they do!

[harryfat1]

Harry,

 

Loving your review. We will be on Freedom on this coming Saturday. So excited. We are doing our first back to back. I got the info about the shuttle and booked today. They will pick us up from the Hilton Marina. Thanks so much. Love reading along.

 

Thanks for the compliment.

 

Which shuttle company did you end up choosing and the time for pick up? You soon should be getting an email from RCI asking you to come to port later in the afternoon. Up to you to follow that suggestion or ignore it.

 

Have a great cruise.

[BigHouseFootball]

Harry,

 

I don't know whether to praise you or hate you! I absolutely love your trip reports! i love your writing style and humor. You are so detailed and entertaining that it makes me feel like I am taking the cruise with you! It gets me all excited. But maybe it gets me too excited because it makes me want to book a cruise ASAP! And for this cheapo husband that's bad haha!

 

Hey, there's an idea for you! Market your trip reports to RCI and maybe they will knock off a percentage for your next cruise!

 

In all seriousness though loving this report!

[harryfat1]

What are the cupholders like in the main theater? A weird pet peeve of mine is when the cup holders make NO sense for ANY of the size glasses/containers you get either from the bar in the theater or wherever the bartender goes to bring you something back. I then usually have to hold my drink all through the show, which is just highly annoying to me. I've only been on a FEW ships that really have had cup holders that you could realistically use in the theaters, so I always ask reviewers :)

 

patiently waiting for the next post!

 

Hi,

 

Yes, there are cup holders in the seats. I know that for a fact as I brought water into the theater for couple of presentations – I am too cheap to buy drinks but it was easy to get water at the RP and walk into the theater with it. But not sure I took any pictures – didn’t think a cup of water was that exciting.

[harryfat1]

Enjoying your review of our favorite ship. We will miss her now that she has moved to Fort Lauderdale. We love sailing out of Port Canaveral as it is only 4 1/2 hours away so now we will be trying Oasis.

 

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the info on Primanti Brothers. I looked them up 2 years ago when I tried them and I knew they were pretty good for the price in FLL area where it can get pretty expensive to feed the family. The lady that takes the order has a mean streak/attitude about her but that’s part of the charm of the place.

 

You know by now I love the Oasis class sized ships. Hopefully you will like them as well.

[harryfat1]

I'm curious how much storage space Photobucket has? Flickr gives everyone a terabyte of storage for free. I have over 44,000 photos on Flickr, and it shows I've only used 8.7% on my free terabyte of storage. Does Photobucket really give you more than that? Pretty impressive if they do!

 

My bad. I thought Photobucket gave you more.

 

I stand corrected again. Today is day of humility to keep admitting my errors online. Never mind.

 

Just checked online on my old account and it wasn't very much at all at only 10 GB free.

Edited January 3, 2017 by harryfat1

[harryfat1]

Harry,

 

I don't know whether to praise you or hate you! I absolutely love your trip reports! i love your writing style and humor. You are so detailed and entertaining that it makes me feel like I am taking the cruise with you! It gets me all excited. But maybe it gets me too excited because it makes me want to book a cruise ASAP! And for this cheapo husband that's bad haha!

 

Hey, there's an idea for you! Market your trip reports to RCI and maybe they will knock off a percentage for your next cruise!

 

In all seriousness though loving this report!

 

Thanks for the kind words.

 

Keep in mind you get what you paid for when you read my report. If you need a refund on the money...

 

In my previous trip report on the Allure, I called RCI execs "greedy gravy sucking scum pigs " in their attempt to make extra money by taking away the secret balconies on the Allure. Not sure they will love me enough to want to employ me after that...

 

Although that brings me to an interesting story - under my signature, in one of my early days of long report writing (not as long as the modern days but you have to start out somewhere), I write a trip report on the Carnival. Then over a year later, some cruiser contacted me asking me about the review I wrote a year plus ago.

 

I was really surprised that he was able to reach that far back on a CC front page to find my review. Nope, he said, he didn't find the report. His personal Carnival cruise rep that took his order online told him to read my report when the cruiser needed some basic info on the Carnival Spirit. I was floored by that. Never knew the Carnival rep would actually read the cruise comments here on CC and on top of that, recommend my report a year later to his clients.

 

Of course, nobody paid me a penny for all that, but it's just another digression useless bar story...

[DisneyDatknee]

Furthermore, on two separate occasions while we were dining in the WJ, the waiters came up to try and up sell something while we were eating! What’s next - will RCI have mandatory time share presentation after the mandatory muster drill for where you have to sit through 30 minutes of infomercial? Shhh, don’t give them any ideas…

 

First one was around day 3 lunch time where some European waiter who was cleaning our table at WJ started talking to us and telling us about the special brunch event with kitchen tour. He suggests we should sign up for it later in the cruise at $35 per person. No thank you. Did those many years ago for free on other cruise ships when they were free. Not paying for them now at $35 per head.

 

Second one was on day 6 of the cruise around lunch time at WJ. So everyone knows we are Chinese and we are bi lingual. At lunch time with the in laws we were all speaking Chinese. Guess the workers must think we don’t speak English somehow and they brought in a Chinese wait staff with a Giovanni sales person standing in the back with a sign to try and upsell Giovanni to us in Chinese. Heh? I replied back using English, “Thank you for the info but we are not interested in Giovanni”. The looks on their faces are priceless as they didn’t expect us to speak English.

 

As I don’t want to side track the trip report with a negative vibe on starting on day 1 but just thought I point out what happened to us and would be interested to know if anyone else had experience with a hard sell on the recent RCI cruise. My preference would be the selling just at their assigned stations and the workers answers questions instead of trying to hawk their info as guests walked by. Certainly when I am eating at WJ with the family, don’t try to sell me extra cost stuff.

 

My mother and I were eating at the WJ on the Empress and we were approached by two people from Chop's trying to sell us a dinner. I rolled my eyes and turned around. Seriously? Who's smart idea was to piss me off while I was eating? :rolleyes: If they start doing this in the MDR, I'll have a fit. On the Radiance, they wouldn't allow anyone to use the stairs/elevators RIGHT in front of us when we got on the ship and instead made us walk around the centrium to be attacked by aggressive salesmen. They did this too at the entrance of the Windjammer.

Edited January 3, 2017 by DisneyDatknee

[harryfat1]

My mother and I were eating at the WJ on the Empress and we were approached by two people from Chop's trying to sell us a dinner. I rolled my eyes and turned around. Seriously? Who's smart idea was to piss me off while I was eating? :rolleyes: If they start doing this in the MDR, I'll have a fit. On the Radiance, they wouldn't allow anyone to use the stairs/elevators RIGHT in front of us when we got on the ship and instead made us walk around the centrium to be attacked by aggressive salesmen. They did this too at the entrance of the Windjammer.

 

So it sounds like it’s not just the workers on Freedom that is doing the hard sell but more of a fleet wide corporate marketing plan. Wonder if the workers had quotas to fill in having to sign up so many people every week?

 

It just saddens me to hear the various tactics they are trying to upsell their high profit products. They are really starting to diminish the feel of a cruise.

 

I don’t cruise as often as most of the folks on CC but I started 20+ years ago. Even though those old ships are crappy by modern day standards, I miss some aspects of the “good old days”. One of which is lack of the hard sell.

[harryfat1]

I miss the Allure drill where you sit in comfort at the MDR and listen. Freedom has the old school method of everyone packing in like sardines outside as they scan your sea pass card to make sure all cabins and you hope the big dude standing next to you has showered in the past 48 hours.

 

 

 

 

By then other ships have already sailed out of the harbor.

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

After the drill, the cruise director told us the passenger info I have already posted earlier - in that the ship is packed super full (4,416 people) from the numerous holiday cheapo families like ours. With the ship at 117% of double capacity and 1,000+ kids under age of 17– other words, tons of cheapo moms and dads brining the flock with them on the big family cruise and it will be loud and ruckus. So if you don’t want to run into people every 3 steps, avoid cruising same week as us.

 

During the drill, I got the reply back from the tour people asking how sure are we on the pier change – how do I know? I am not the captain. Maybe they will dock there or elsewhere. Not like they ask for my opinion where to dock at Cozumel. So I proposed that if we dock at International pier, we meet at Hard Rock as originally planned. If we docked at downtown, they need to tell me where to meet. I know they already said they will have a sign with my name on it so I can find them if they tell me where to meet.

 

That was the last email exchange I had with them on day 1 before sailing away. The saving grace is that the Cozumel stop is day 5 so there’s still time to set things up and I know we would have free Wi-Fi at Grand Cayman so I could still have access to email. Worst come to worst, I would need to shell out $$ for 24 hours of Internet on abroad by day 4 if we didn’t get this resolved by day 3. But this issue did worry me for the next 2 days as we have a tour for 16 people and others will blame me if things go wrong on the private tour as I was the one who set it up – no pressure, right? Stayed tuned for the final resolution (shameless way to have cliff hanger story line).

 

At any rate, we stayed on deck 4 to take few picture as we waited for the massive muster crowd to dissipate. No need to fight with the crowd. Just wait around for 10 minutes and take few pictures of the scenery at the port and you can walk anywhere without them around. Not to mention it’s cool to take pics of the cruise ships sailing away.

 

Only problem is I left the mega zoom camera in the cabin so I can’t zoom into the ships. The zooms on the cell phones are all pretty pathetic compared to the physical zooms on the actual cameras.

 

Here is the Celebrity Silhouette sailing off. As luck might have it, that could be our next cruise. We’ll see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then good old Allure is next in the parade out of the channel

 

 

 

 

Here is the parade of ships with at least 3 already out in the ocean

 

 

 

 

One last one before we headed back to the cabin

 

 

[harryfat1]

So we went back to the cabin after the drill knowing we are not sailing off at the 5:30 scheduled time as everything got pushed back. We unpacked the luggage and stored away all the clothes. And my younger one decorated the windows and door for holiday themes as that’s his thing.

 

He also decorated the front doors as well but I didn’t take those pictures until later so you will need to wait to see those as I upload the pictures based on the time stamp, not event.

 

Yes, we brought along Santa hats as well. But those won’t come out until day 5

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

So here’s another digress point. Couple months ago, CC had an article in the front pages/email that they listed the top “over rated” cruise events. I could not disagree more. To me, cruise is a buffet. You can make it any way you want – there is no right or wrong way to cruise.

 

How dare the CC editors thumb their noses at the things they don’t like and call it over rated? If you like to do it, it’s not over rated. It’s your vacation and your money and time. Don’t read the article and let those people influence you.

 

First thing they say is over rated is sail away. I like sail away. Like Samantha Brown puts it on her cruise video many years ago, a cruise vacation is different than land vacation in that a regular round trip vacation in North America, everyone starts and ends the vacation the same time. It’s a special thing that is not available on land vacations. The sail away, the waving of goodbye to the people at the shore side is a fun thing to do if you wanted to do it. That’s not over rated.

 

Having said that, do keep in mind that the Freedom sails away LATE at 5:30 from PE. Believe it is typically the last scheduled cruise ship to leave every weekend. Princess typically leaves early as they blow out by 4 something, so does HAL and then Celebrity with Allure not too far behind.

 

The issues with 5:30 sail away are two folds: 1) in winter time, sun sets around 5 something in FL. So chances are you will sail away in the dark with very few people waving goodbye. Not big issue in July when it gets dark after 8 PM but in December, not so good. 2) Freedom has the early dinner at 5:30. So that means even if the ship is not delayed in sailing, some of the passengers will miss the sail away at 5:30 because they have to be in MDR for the early dinner at 5:30. So there’s a big conflict in schedule for those in early seating.

 

So if you are a newbie cruiser and you want to do a sail away and you signed up for early dining at 5:30 for your entire cruise, look into doing specialty dining or windjammer for your first night. Being cheap, I don’t typically go for specialty dining unless it’s free as part of some promotion but if you want to go that route with the BOGO promotion, just have your first night dinner on the Freedom to be later, say 7 something. Plenty of time for sail away and shower and change for dinner or just go to WJ any time before 9 PM. The one and only welcome aboard show was at 9:45 for us (but check your compass to be sure) so if you have dinner before 8, you should make it to the show. Aim for 7:30 if you want a little buffer time.

[happy cruiser1234]

 

 

 

Looks like we were in the same muster station Harry! I'm the blonde with the pink shirt and DH is behind me in the black T-shirt.

[harryfat1]

Looks like we were in the same muster station Harry! I'm the blonde with the pink shirt and DH is behind me in the black T-shirt.

 

I love it. Small world indeed.

 

We couldn't meet up for dinner at MDR due to hour conflicts and then you showed up in my random picture about the ship. What the odds of that happening?

 

That's why people would never want to be on the same sailing as me as you never know when my cell phone would be out taking pictures of you...