Cheapo dad's trip report on Freedom of the Seas

[tigerbeth]

Harry

We have just returned to Australia from our South Pacific cruise on the Explorer of the Seas . Just reporting back about the dress code on formal nights !

1st formal night was a bit of a miss as many people were absent due to sea sickness as we had sailed for 2 days in seas affected by the end of Cyclone Debbie ! I made it to the dining room but left to return to the cabin to take a Kwel ,which worked well.

2nd formal night was a great night , it was my observation that the majority of the guests in the dining room dressed to impress ! A few wore tux's & bow ties, however most were in suits or good shirt & tie . Ladies wore a variety of good clothes & bling .It was also lovely to see the small children sitting proudly in their best clothes.

So I was actually impressed at the amount of people who had made the effort on these nights.

We ate in the dining room each night & most people looked presentable to me .

[Elerja]

Great trip report! I read it at work for 3 days. Ha! We are going on the exact same cruise next March. Our times to travel during the school year are very limited. We don't get the week before Christmas off. That would be perfect. And spring breaks are rarely a full week. Next year we are lucky. It is our first family cruise.

 

We also do long road trips in the summer. This year Black Hills, Yellowstone, and Grand Tetons.

 

Kim

[harryfat1]

Harry

We have just returned to Australia from our South Pacific cruise on the Explorer of the Seas . Just reporting back about the dress code on formal nights !

1st formal night was a bit of a miss as many people were absent due to sea sickness as we had sailed for 2 days in seas affected by the end of Cyclone Debbie ! I made it to the dining room but left to return to the cabin to take a Kwel ,which worked well.

2nd formal night was a great night , it was my observation that the majority of the guests in the dining room dressed to impress ! A few wore tux's & bow ties, however most were in suits or good shirt & tie . Ladies wore a variety of good clothes & bling .It was also lovely to see the small children sitting proudly in their best clothes.

So I was actually impressed at the amount of people who had made the effort on these nights.

We ate in the dining room each night & most people looked presentable to me .

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for checking back to tell me about your cruise experience. I am always interested in hearing about othe rpeople’s cruises after they read my trip report.

 

Glad to know you had a nice cruise, even if you had to deal with some stormy weather. I must confess I am not familiar with the term “Kwel” – I tried to Google it but not finding the definition as it relates to motion sickness. I assume it’s some sort of medication to alleviate motion sickness symptoms?

 

I think there are many reasons why some of the cruises in the Caribbean are not as dressy as other places. Maybe partly is culture as Americans have dressed down the past few decades. Also with domestic airlines charging $25 per luggage for check in, people have opted to pack light and do carry-on when flying to cruise ports and leave the more formal clothes at home.

 

I’m old school and I don’t mind dressing up even though it costs me $50 round trip on the flights to have a large suit case to fit in my suits and dress shoes and whatever else I throw in there.

 

Thanks again for checking back and hope you enjoy your future cruise down under.

[harryfat1]

Great trip report! I read it at work for 3 days. Ha! We are going on the exact same cruise next March. Our times to travel during the school year are very limited. We don't get the week before Christmas off. That would be perfect. And spring breaks are rarely a full week. Next year we are lucky. It is our first family cruise.

 

We also do long road trips in the summer. This year Black Hills, Yellowstone, and Grand Tetons.

 

Kim

 

Hi, Kim,

 

Thanks for the compliment. Wow, you are able to read this whole thing from work in 3 days – I want to work at your place instead.

 

How fun - first family cruise. Hope some of the info I have provided will be useful for you and the family.

 

Sounds like you have a great road trip planned. We went to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons in 2011 and Rushmore/Black Hills in 2015. I had to dig deep in the archives to find few old pics.

 

First one is one of the Tetons – don’t ask me which is which. Second and third pictures are the famous Old Faithful area. The last 2 are the pretty colors from the boiling water around the many pools in the region.

 

Have a great trip this summer. We are heading south this summer to Arizona and Utah.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ourusualbeach]

Harry, hope life has been treating you well.

 

I know how you like a deal so I though I'd share this. Not sure what your plans are for this coming Christmas but the 5 day NYE cruise on the Navigator starts at just under $600pp. I know, it's not nearly long enough but we are going to possibly add a day or two at Universal.

[harryfat1]

Harry, hope life has been treating you well.

 

I know how you like a deal so I though I'd share this. Not sure what your plans are for this coming Christmas but the 5 day NYE cruise on the Navigator starts at just under $600pp. I know, it's not nearly long enough but we are going to possibly add a day or two at Universal.

 

Hi, Ken,

 

How are you? Good to hear from you. Things are fine – been busy trying to plan for the summer driving trip over at TripAdvisor.

 

Thanks for the tip on the Navigator. I will keep them in mind.

 

For now, I am doing a “Ken maneuver” in double booking our December cruise on both Celebrity and RCI. My preference is for the port intensive southern Caribbean route as we have never done it before.

 

The deciding factor is the airfare from San Francisco to San Juan. Right now, I’m looking at $600+ airfare per person to San Juan and an ugly layover at way north at Philly or Newark which make for 10+ hour flight. If we can’t get a decent flight to SJ, then we will likely go on the Celebrity.

 

But if we can find something on sale later in the year on the mega ship, we might still switch. Think both of us have preference for the bigger ships. I see you have already jumped on the Symphony booking for next year. 2018 winter will be a challenge as I think the school district will likely move over to a later vacation period and that will price us out of any expensive holiday sailings and we might end up going to the theme parks instead.

[Ourusualbeach]

Hi, Ken,

 

How are you? Good to hear from you. Things are fine – been busy trying to plan for the summer driving trip over at TripAdvisor.

 

Thanks for the tip on the Navigator. I will keep them in mind.

 

For now, I am doing a “Ken maneuver” in double booking our December cruise on both Celebrity and RCI. My preference is for the port intensive southern Caribbean route as we have never done it before.

 

The deciding factor is the airfare from San Francisco to San Juan. Right now, I’m looking at $600+ airfare per person to San Juan and an ugly layover at way north at Philly or Newark which make for 10+ hour flight. If we can’t get a decent flight to SJ, then we will likely go on the Celebrity.

 

But if we can find something on sale later in the year on the mega ship, we might still switch. Think both of us have preference for the bigger ships. I see you have already jumped on the Symphony booking for next year. 2018 winter will be a challenge as I think the school district will likely move over to a later vacation period and that will price us out of any expensive holiday sailings and we might end up going to the theme parks instead.

 

 

We are good here, the snow is gone and it is warming up nicely.

 

Yes we do prefer the Oasis class however barring finding some pricing mistake those will be out of my price range for the next few Christmas's as they will all be the full 7 day sailings including either Christmas or New Years.

 

Had a great time on Harmony and booked Symphony as soon as it was released. Bit of sticker shock with the prices but we have a lot of friends that also booked on that sailing. It will also be our last March break cruise as a family as DD will be off to university after that.

 

I know what you mean about the airfare to SJU. I gave up on our Adventure cruise that I had booked for this coming March break as airfare was going to be as much as the cruise.

[dani negreanu]

Hi Harry,

How are you?

We're just back from our Jewel cruise out of San Juan, and I've promised you my "musings" on return. No pics...

 

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2486807

 

 

Pls. let me know if you have any questions, best wishes, Dani

Edited April 18, 2017 by dani negreanu
doesn't show the thread

[harryfat1]

Hi Harry,

How are you?

We're just back from our Jewel cruise out of San Juan, and I've promised you my "musings" on return. No pics...

 

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2486807

 

 

Pls. let me know if you have any questions, best wishes, Dani

 

Hi, Dani,

 

Thank you for checking back and providing the link to your trip report.

 

Looks like you had a nice cruise, albeit tiring. Which is to be expected since the Southern Caribbean route is port intensive and you spend a lot more energy exploring the islands than on sea days on the ship. I will post my questions on your thread.

 

Have fun on your fall foliage cruise.

[dani negreanu]

Have fun on your fall foliage cruise.

 

Thanks, Harry.

 

Trying to post my first pic on CC ....

 

[shay1]

It's RCLDining@rccl.com.

 

On the Allure, I emailed them too early and they said they can't take any requests until about 50 before your sailing. This time, I emailed them around day 49.

 

Who's counting, right?

 

Thank you for this information.

[taylortime05]

Hi,

 

I am really enjoying your trip report. We have our 3 adult kids and their spouse joining us for Freedom 8 night January 6, 2018.

 

Normally if it's just me and hubby we would go for early dining. But with a bigger party I am thinking the later dining time might work best. I like having a fixed table & waiter.

 

Did you dine at 8? Did you like this time?

 

Also, we have sailed twice during summer months and loved having a table by a window. I never thought about the fact that in January it will be dark by the time we eat. I would like a little privacy and a table for 8. One time we got a table of 2 right near the entrance where they brought out the food. It was very noisy and we did not like it very much. Do you have any recommendations? Will they send us a layout of the dining rooms for us to get a closer look so we can make a special request for location?

 

Thanks

 

Sue

[Clarea]

... Will they send us a layout of the dining rooms for us to get a closer look so we can make a special request for location? ...

We've never seen this on RC.

[harryfat1]

Thank you for this information.

 

Hi,

 

You’re welcome. Hopefully the info is useful for you.

 

Funny story on our cruise is that after I emailed my request around the 49th day, they replied back with a screenshot of what our table floor plan neighborhood looks like and I was surprised to see another table was already reserved prior to my request. I thought I was pretty anal in making the request 7 weeks out but it turns out another person from our roll call sent her stuff out one day prior to mine so it goes to show you that people do track the 50th day prior to the cruise for submission.

 

Pretty funny but not surprising as you figure most likely it’s the CC folks that are aware of the deadlines more than the average cruising public who don’t even know you can make a request. Guess that’s why you pay your annual dues to be a member of CC…;p

[harryfat1]

Hi,

 

I am really enjoying your trip report. We have our 3 adult kids and their spouse joining us for Freedom 8 night January 6, 2018.

 

Normally if it's just me and hubby we would go for early dining. But with a bigger party I am thinking the later dining time might work best. I like having a fixed table & waiter.

 

Did you dine at 8? Did you like this time?

 

Also, we have sailed twice during summer months and loved having a table by a window. I never thought about the fact that in January it will be dark by the time we eat. I would like a little privacy and a table for 8. One time we got a table of 2 right near the entrance where they brought out the food. It was very noisy and we did not like it very much. Do you have any recommendations? Will they send us a layout of the dining rooms for us to get a closer look so we can make a special request for location?

 

Thanks

 

Sue

 

 

Hi, Sue,

 

Thank you for the compliment. Glad the trip report is entertaining.

 

Yes, we did dine at 8. As I mentioned in my report, we went back and forth on the dinner time on this cruise partly due to RCI changing their dinner time. For a period of time, it was 6 and 8:30 and then at the end, it became 5:30 and 8.

 

It’s matter of personal preference but for us 5:30 is a tad too early as if you come back late from a shore excursion, you won’t have much time to shower and dress for dinner in the MDR. The one worry we had with the later dining time is if the shows were after dinner, which would push our evening pretty late. But I think most of our shows were pre dinner so that worked out well.

 

As for seating by the window, if you do the 5:30 seating and the ship is sailing in the more southern part of the globe in the Caribbean,the sun will set a bit later there so you should be able to catch a glimpse of the sunset if you have a window seat.

 

We wanted to be entertained during our meals so we asked for seats overlooking tables below and close to the staircase for singing waiters. If you want privacy, I think many of the window seats are pretty much away from the center so they should be pretty good. I would avoid deck 3 in the open area as people like me can look down with our cameras and your meals might end up on someone else’s trip report.

 

As Bob already pointed out, they won’t give you a whole layout of the MDR. You just ask for area/size (e.g. round table for 6 on deck 4 by the balcony near the back where the waiters perform) and they will do their best to assign you the table. Just need to provide your entire party’s names/cabin numbers so they can link the info.

 

Depends on how high you rank on the anal scale, you can look at you tube videos for Freedom of the Seas main dining room videos and see approximately how things are laid out. Thing can and will change from seating to seating but at least you have a good idea on how things look.

 

Below is the screenshot of what you may get when they reply. This allows you to see your table number and the seating capacity. For example, table 468 is round table for 8 and you can see the opening to walk to that row area away from the main traffic area (the red tables) so that area has very little foot traffic.

 

Hope this helps. Have a great cruise in early 2018. If things go according to plan, we will have just return from our December cruise by then.

 

 

 

 

 

[dreadpirate3]

Harry,

I want to thank you for your informative, witty, and wandering review. :cool:

 

It helped me decide on our upcoming Freedom OTS cruise leaving 12/17/17!

[shay1]

Hi,

 

You’re welcome. Hopefully the info is useful for you.

 

Funny story on our cruise is that after I emailed my request around the 49th day, they replied back with a screenshot of what our table floor plan neighborhood looks like and I was surprised to see another table was already reserved prior to my request. I thought I was pretty anal in making the request 7 weeks out but it turns out another person from our roll call sent her stuff out one day prior to mine so it goes to show you that people do track the 50th day prior to the cruise for submission.

 

Pretty funny but not surprising as you figure most likely it’s the CC folks that are aware of the deadlines more than the average cruising public who don’t even know you can make a request. Guess that’s why you pay your annual dues to be a member of CC…;p

 

Hi Harry,

I just finished reading your trip report! Awesome report, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. Love your wit and the photos, it made me feel like I was cruising right along with you and the family. It was a nice way to spend a few hours each evening reading your report.

 

I was looking at the Freedom but I have not done anything about it yet. We have a RCCL cruise booked for April 2018 and I was checking to see about changing it to something earlier like the Freedom in early December 2017. Still looking to see if we want to switch our April 2018 for something earlier. We have to choose ones that are after hurricane season is over though.

 

Have a safe and wonderful summer road trip. Look forward to catching up with one of your future trip reports. Thank you again.

[taylortime05]

Hi, Sue,

 

Thank you for the compliment. Glad the trip report is entertaining.

 

Yes, we did dine at 8. As I mentioned in my report, we went back and forth on the dinner time on this cruise partly due to RCI changing their dinner time. For a period of time, it was 6 and 8:30 and then at the end, it became 5:30 and 8.

 

It’s matter of personal preference but for us 5:30 is a tad too early as if you come back late from a shore excursion, you won’t have much time to shower and dress for dinner in the MDR. The one worry we had with the later dining time is if the shows were after dinner, which would push our evening pretty late. But I think most of our shows were pre dinner so that worked out well.

 

As for seating by the window, if you do the 5:30 seating and the ship is sailing in the more southern part of the globe in the Caribbean,the sun will set a bit later there so you should be able to catch a glimpse of the sunset if you have a window seat.

 

We wanted to be entertained during our meals so we asked for seats overlooking tables below and close to the staircase for singing waiters. If you want privacy, I think many of the window seats are pretty much away from the center so they should be pretty good. I would avoid deck 3 in the open area as people like me can look down with our cameras and your meals might end up on someone else’s trip report.

 

As Bob already pointed out, they won’t give you a whole layout of the MDR. You just ask for area/size (e.g. round table for 6 on deck 4 by the balcony near the back where the waiters perform) and they will do their best to assign you the table. Just need to provide your entire party’s names/cabin numbers so they can link the info.

 

Depends on how high you rank on the anal scale, you can look at you tube videos for Freedom of the Seas main dining room videos and see approximately how things are laid out. Thing can and will change from seating to seating but at least you have a good idea on how things look.

 

Below is the screenshot of what you may get when they reply. This allows you to see your table number and the seating capacity. For example, table 468 is round table for 8 and you can see the opening to walk to that row area away from the main traffic area (the red tables) so that area has very little foot traffic.

 

Hope this helps. Have a great cruise in early 2018. If things go according to plan, we will have just return from our December cruise by then.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for so much useful information. We were able to change from MTD to 8:00 PM. So I am thinking about requesting a location similar to one you described instead of by the window since it will be dark by 8:00 PM. Was this location very busy?

[harryfat1]

Harry,

I want to thank you for your informative, witty, and wandering review. :cool:

 

It helped me decide on our upcoming Freedom OTS cruise leaving 12/17/17!

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the compliment. I think the key work in there is wandering as I am all over the place in my trip report. Just like Forest Grump and a box of chocolate, you never know what you are going to get in my daily posts.

 

Ah, the mid December sailing. That is the exact same sailing time slot as our sailing from 2016. Hopefully you will have good weather as well. I like cruising that time of the year, not as hot and you get the holiday decorations as well. Not to mention good value as it’s not the overpriced Christmas cruise they charge the following week. Just make sure you don’t get the Christmas tree obstructed PR cabins.

 

Have a great cruise in December as we will likely be sailing that weekend as well on either RCI or Celebrity. I’m leaning for the Southern Caribbean cruise on Adventure of the Seas but won’t decide until after we come back from our road trip. My limited brainpower can only plan one vacation at a time…

[harryfat1]

Hi Harry,

I just finished reading your trip report! Awesome report, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. Love your wit and the photos, it made me feel like I was cruising right along with you and the family. It was a nice way to spend a few hours each evening reading your report.

 

I was looking at the Freedom but I have not done anything about it yet. We have a RCCL cruise booked for April 2018 and I was checking to see about changing it to something earlier like the Freedom in early December 2017. Still looking to see if we want to switch our April 2018 for something earlier. We have to choose ones that are after hurricane season is over though.

 

Have a safe and wonderful summer road trip. Look forward to catching up with one of your future trip reports. Thank you again.

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the kind words. Glad you enjoy reading the tome.

 

I know the Freedom is scheduled to be re-positioned to Southern Caribbean next year, are you looking to sail on her before or after the repo?

 

That’s one big reason why I want to sail on Adventure of the Seas this winter before Freedom moves down there in 2018. As much as we liked the Freedom cruise, we are typically the “one and done” cruise type in wanting to see different ships.So I would rather go on AOS instead this year before she is swapped out with the Freedom that we have already sailed on.

 

Thanks for the well wishes on the road trip, as luck have it, we are leaving for the road trip next week. Driving 2,000+ miles in the dry 100+ degree heat to see the rocks in southwest US. Not even close to any seaports for hundreds of miles in Arizona and Utah. Hopefully I will have few decent pictures from this trip to share in my next wandering cruise trip report.

 

Or if my pictures suck, I will just copy and past someone else's pictures from Google search and claim those were mine...;p

[harryfat1]

Thank you for so much useful information. We were able to change from MTD to 8:00 PM. So I am thinking about requesting a location similar to one you described instead of by the window since it will be dark by 8:00 PM. Was this location very busy?

 

Hi,

 

That area is toward the back so you don’t get much foot traffic and it’s next to the railing and down the small ramp so you don’t have much traffic.

 

Take a look at my post #1254 and check out the pictures. You see on one side, it’s the balcony and on other side, you have few feet of buffer from the walk way so you don’t have many people walking by your area.

 

It’s toward the back and you can look down beneath you and have good view of the performing waiters. I plan to request the similar area on AOS if we sail on her in December as it fits our requirement.

[taylortime05]

Hi Harry,

 

We've only sailed 3 times. Twice with RCCL on Allure & Oasis and once on Celebrity Eclipse. We enjoyed all 3 cruises but we had to plan all our shows on Allure & Oasis. On Eclipse you just showed up. The entertainment options & quality on Allure & Oasis were better than Eclipse in my opinion.

 

Do you like the fact that on Freedom you don't have to pre schedule all the shows? I really don't know which I prefer. I am hoping that the entertainment options & quality are closer to Allure/Oasis than the Eclipse. We loved our cruise on Eclipse but the entertainment wasn't as good.

 

Thanks again for all your great feedback.

 

Sue

[harryfat1]

Hi Harry,

 

We've only sailed 3 times. Twice with RCCL on Allure & Oasis and once on Celebrity Eclipse. We enjoyed all 3 cruises but we had to plan all our shows on Allure & Oasis. On Eclipse you just showed up. The entertainment options & quality on Allure & Oasis were better than Eclipse in my opinion.

 

Do you like the fact that on Freedom you don't have to pre schedule all the shows? I really don't know which I prefer. I am hoping that the entertainment options & quality are closer to Allure/Oasis than the Eclipse. We loved our cruise on Eclipse but the entertainment wasn't as good.

 

Thanks again for all your great feedback.

 

Sue

 

Entertainment is subjective so hard to say what is “better”. As you said, there are more choices on the Oasis class ships than your standard cruise ship.

 

On our cruise, the showroom never really seems overly crowded so you don’t really feel the need to fight the crowd to get in. That is typical of most non-Oasis class ships. Not a big deal to us either way to reserve or not to reserve as I am anal enough to pre-reserve if necessary or just show up either pre or post dinner for the shows.

 

You can ask RCI couple weeks before your cruise on what entertainment venues are available on each night. That way you can look at You tube prior to the cruise to see if you like the comedian/musician on your sailing.

[DebbieMo]

Thank you very much for the tips on all the ports. I will start to get serious on SJ walking tour come this Fall.

 

 

 

We typically do a long 2,000 miles+ road trip every summer to just go from place to place. So I need to research that in the Spring after all the cruise stuff is behind me. And when that road trip is done, I plan for the cruise.

 

 

 

Other people love to work, I work to support my vacation habits...

 

 

Harry,

 

I'm in FL and wanting to do a road trip out west in 2019 with stops to check out the sights. Would love to hear about the places you visit and what you would recommend. I'm a cheapo mom so I'm sure I could learn a lot from you.

[C&F]

Great report. Looking forward to my spin on her in February.

 

 

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