Liberty Review 7/31/16: Presidential Suite

[onedaysevening]

Liberty of the Seas – Royal Caribbean

July 31 – August 7, 2016

Booked Itinerary: Roatan, Belize, Cozumel

Actual Itinerary due to Hurricane Earl: Cozumel, Nassau

Cabin: Presidential Family Suite

Here’s my better late than never review. This was my second cruise, and we were travelling with 7 adults and 2 children to celebrate my in-laws 40th wedding anniversary. My review won’t be extensive, but I will be sharing things that I know I was searching for information on before our cruise.

Embarkation was a breeze for us, since we were in the Presidential Suite the concierge, Carlos, met us while we were checking in, and escorted us directly onto our ship, stopped by our room (which was still being cleaned) so we could see it and drop off our carry-ons and gave us a quick tour of the ship that ended in Giovanni’s restaurant where we could sit while getting food from the windjammer café.

 

We really enjoyed our time on the ship, there were visible signs of light wear and tear, but overall the ship was in great condition. We stayed in the Presidential family suite, which has 4 bedrooms, 2 master and 2 interior rooms. We slept in one of the interior rooms, and my SIL and BIL with their 2 kids (7 and 3) slept in the other interior room. We found the interior room to be enough space for us, just wish there had been more storage room. The rooms had a pull-down bed, which since my niece and nephew are young, they were able to share the space for sleeping, they were however kind of cramped in there with 4 people.

 

Thankfully the living area was very nice and spacious so we only really used the room for sleeping and changing.

The suite was very nice, we had breakfast several times out on the balcony, it was the only place we could all sit together. Our cabin was aft facing but has a big area behind it so we could not look directly down to the water, as you can see in the pictures. The “refrigerator” in the room is really just a cooler made to look like a fridge, so don’t count on that to keep a glass of milk cold.

Balcony View

 

Balcony

 

I personally did not like being in an aft cabin, the engines would wake me, especially when we were pulling into ports. I also did not like how dirty our balcony would get, our feet would be black from being out on the patio, and the children playing, goodness did they and their toys get sooty.

 

 

Service on the ship was great, since we were in a suite we got some nice perks. The suite lounge, which had just been updated, was very nice with great views, we spent a lot of time in there, especially during the evening when they were serving complimentary beverages. During the evening hours, before and after dinner there was a bar set up in the Suite Lounge. We had two bartenders, Ishmael (Ishi) and Hitesh, they were very personable and remembered your preferences. The bar set up was simple with a few options for Whiskey, Vodka, Rum, with sodas and juices for mixing, as well as beer (I think just one brand), and a house White and Red wine.

 

Suite Lounge

 

Another perk was being able to eat at/in Giovanni’s restaurant during breakfast and lunch. During breakfast and lunch, you could order off a menu they had or get food from the Windjammer and bring it in to eat. The menu was pretty basic, I didn’t get a picture of it. At breakfast, they had many different egg preparations, pancakes, potatoes, fruit, etc. For lunch, they had a few items, grilled steak, salmon (I honestly can’t remember) with pasta as a side. We never ate at Giovanni’s for dinner, but we did have their pasta at lunch and it was amazing!

 

Also, having Carlos the concierge as a resource was great! He helped us with so many things, especially when our “Chef’s Table” dinner was in danger of being cancelled because for the date we wanted, we were the only ones signed up. He knew we preferred that date, not wanting to miss formal night with the family which was the other date option, so he talked the “Chef’s Table” up to some of the other suite guests and the dinner made the minimum! He also helped us find new activities to do when we had to get re-routed to Nassau when Hurricane Earl changed our itinerary.

 

For dining on the ship, I will say for the most part my husband and I were under whelmed. There were only few things I enjoyed from the Windjammer. I did enjoy the fresh made waffle at breakfast and one lunch I tried the eggplant parmesan and it was actually really good. However, when I had eggplant parmesan in the main dining it was not good at all, I only ate one bite of it. I found a lot of the food in the Windjammer to be overly salted, on the first day I got meatballs and they just tasted like a salt bomb in my mouth.

 

Main dining food was between decent and good. Other than the eggplant, there wasn’t any meal I did not enjoy in the main dining room. Our servers were great and our food was always prepared how we wanted it. They also did a great job catering to the kids.

 

Room service breakfast was a FIASCO! We did breakfast for our group of 9 serval times and not once did the correct/complete order arrive, it was very disappointing.

[onedaysevening]

The star dining experience of the cruise was doing the “Chef’s Table”. The experience was amazing, the food was delicious and the wine was great! The dining experience was $85 per person and was 6 courses with wine pairings and a glass of champagne before dinner as well.

We started by meeting at “Vintages” and were given a glass of champagne while we waited for the group to arrive and be escorted upstairs to the dining area. For the dinner, they closed off part of Windjammer, by Giovanni’s for our group. I was apprehensive of this at first, but it was very secluded and private for our evening. Everything was delicious, the chef did a great job explaining the process of making each dish, the sommelier then would explain our wine that was paired with it. Each dish was delicious, I was most surprised by how much I enjoyed the vegetables and sweet pea soup. The lobster, as expected was spectacular, and the dessert was amazing, the chocolate mousse in the little cup was remarkable, I raved about it so much they gave us an extra one to take back to our room.

 

Here is some of the food from the Chef's Table dinner:

 

Menu

 

Bread Service

 

Mille Feuilles of Vegetables "en vinaigrette" Tuiles of Parmesan and Fresh Basil Pesto

 

Sweet Pea Soup: Crisp of Prosciutto, extra virgin olive oil, garnished with poached quail eggs

 

Braised Short Rib Ravioli: Green & Liver sauce, Truffle perfumed gravy

 

Brandy Flambeed Lobster: sweet potato puree, capsicum coulis, lemon butter sauce

 

...

[onedaysevening]

Prime Beef Tenderloin: Smoked mashed potato, morel sauce

 

Chocolate Sabotage: Duo of Chocolate Mousse, Ganache, Cardamom Lava cake

 

Here's our point of view of the Chef beginning his presentation (There were a total of 8 of us)

 

 

We didn’t participate in many of the onboard activities, we swam in the adults only pool, I also went down the slides as well. I would recommend doing the slides first thing when they open for the day, we did this and our first round we barely waited and then got back in line and it was already growing. By the time we went down the slides our second time the line was getting long, and I was glad to check doing the slides off my list. The slides were very fun, and not too scary for me or my 7-year-old niece.

 

We did go to the ice show which we enjoyed. There was a comic-magician one night and we had a great time at his show. We also really liked the acrobatic show, I can’t remember the name, but the whole family enjoyed the acrobatics and music.

 

We enjoyed our ports of call, and didn’t mind too much when our itinerary changed because of Hurricane Earl. We did overhear people complaining about the change, but honestly our safety comes first and the day we were expected to be in Belize was the day the hurricane hit.

We ended up being in Cozumel on a different day as well, but that didn’t affect our shore excursions at all. In Cozumel we did swimming with the Dolphins at Dolphinaris, we really enjoyed it. We got ample time with the Dolphin, and then it included lunch and drinks as well.

 

In Nassau two from our group went diving and the rest of us took a short walk to the Hilton and got a day pass to use their pools and beach, it was pretty reasonable because it also included a food/beverage credit. We had considered Atlantis but the passes that we wanted were already sold out (since our ship wasn’t planned on being there).

 

All in all we really enjoyed our cruise.

Edited January 16, 2017 by onedaysevening

[George C]

Thanks for review, looking forward to breakfast and lunch in Giovanni's ( was in Chops last year for suites), will be back in April

[easyboy]

Thanks for the feedback. Glad that you still had fun in the alternate ports caused by the hurricane.