Just back from the Freedom's Shortened Cruise 12/12-12/17

[divaofdisney]

Good Morning everyone- Finally home after a long travel day yesterday and a shortened cruise on the Freedom. I hope that some of you were able to read my posts from the ship since this will be short and sweet. All in all and despite a rough start to our cruise week, we really did have a wonderful time. Despite the unfortunate circumstances surrounding our cruise, I really personally felt that royal caribbean did a fantastic job handling the situation. We were bussed to the Hyatt and had a lovely room for the extra 2 days we spent in Miami. And once onboard, I think they tried very hard to make our 5 days the best and better than any 7 day cruise could have been. We heard that from over 3,600 passengers there were only 4 that later in week experienced any flu like symptoms...and this is nothing. So, the extra days of hard work cleaning and disinfecting the ship really paid off. If anyone has any questions I would be happy to answer them. Good to be home and looking forward to our next family cruise on the Adventure in June. Oh I will try to have pictures up on webshots by the end of today so click on my link to view.

 

Stef

[cruzobsessed]

stef.....welcome home. as i am about to depart on the mariner this sunday i was wondering if you could help me with the whole PREVENTING NORO VIRUS THING!!!

i have read just about every post on the subject but i was thinking since your ship was soooooo infected recently did royal caribbean give you any guidelines? do you have any personal advice?

i'm glad that everyone was able to make lemonade out of the lemons:)

[isujim]

WElcome Home..........sounds like you made the very best of the situation!

[divaofdisney]

cruzobsessed- The best advice I can give you is to constantly wash your hands. This is really the best way of preventing the spread of any infection. As far as our ship, the staff served us everywhere including the windjammer and we had to sanitize our hands before we entered any eating place whether it be in the dining room, windjammer, specialty restaurants, or up on deck. They would not even let us pour a cup of coffee or handle the sugar packets...they did it for us. Once we left an eating place they were right behind us to spray the table and also the seat we were sitting in down to the legs of the chair. For many people this became tiresome by weeks end but I really think this is a practice they should keep to prevent the widespread risk of this happening again. I think you'll be fine....just be smart and have a great and fantastic cruise!!!!

[Host Star]

our captain on Radiance last week constantly announced please wash your hands singing happy birthday twice to yourself and to please use the sanitizers at the entry to all dining rooms.. btw , there was none at the entrance to chops and portofinos but I carried a small bottle of purell with me which is the same thing they have in the sanitizer machines, or at least smelled like it.. later in the week he also instructed his staff to no longer shake hands.. I believe there was a few cases of it on the radiance but not enough to warrant any alarm... by the way captain Brearly is the most out and about captain I've every encountered on my 28 cruises.. a great personality and always mingling with the passengers, as well as Roger the hotel manager.. I've never seen a captain walk thru the dining room and stop at every table talking to pax..the same as the head waiter does.. lol

[sherin65]

Stef,

 

I'm glad to hear that the cruise was a success! My dad was onboard but I still haven't heard from him. I'm hoping he had a good time despite the delay.

 

Sher

[Borat]

cruzobsessed- The best advice I can give you is to constantly wash your hands. This is really the best way of preventing the spread of any infection. As far as our ship, the staff served us everywhere including the windjammer and we had to sanitize our hands before we entered any eating place whether it be in the dining room, windjammer, specialty restaurants, or up on deck. They would not even let us pour a cup of coffee or handle the sugar packets...they did it for us. Once we left an eating place they were right behind us to spray the table and also the seat we were sitting in down to the legs of the chair. For many people this became tiresome by weeks end but I really think this is a practice they should keep to prevent the widespread risk of this happening again. I think you'll be fine....just be smart and have a great and fantastic cruise!!!!

 

was the ship still covered in bleach like people had reported last week?

[Willum UK]

stef.....welcome home. as i am about to depart on the mariner this sunday i was wondering if you could help me with the whole PREVENTING NORO VIRUS THING!!!

 

i have read just about every post on the subject but i was thinking since your ship was soooooo infected recently did royal caribbean give you any guidelines? do you have any personal advice?

 

i'm glad that everyone was able to make lemonade out of the lemons:)

My wife and I were on Mariner from 3rd to 10th Decmber. Staff insisted that everyone entering the dining room or Windjammer used a sterilizing fluid on their hands. The Promenade cafeteria had a dispenser for guests to use. If you are worried about hand hygiene whilst on board I would suggest you obtain a personal hand sanitiser from a pharmacy before boarding.

Have a great cruise!

[CaddyB123]

how come the cruise was shortened?

[Sue L]

how come the cruise was shortened?

 

 

They shortened the cruise to give the ship a super cleaning after the virus hit the ship very hard.

[shazzz]

just a thought.....what did they do for the frozen yogurt machines?????? Was everyone serving themselves? That is something that is touched quite often !!!!

[divaofdisney]

Shari- There was someone to serve the frozen yogurt to everyone. It was not self serve. Still delicious as ever. And Borat- the cleaning solution they used did have a touch of bleach scent to it....but it really wasn't overbearing. It was tolerable. But, they were very diligent about the cleaning esp. in the Windjammer.

[willysgrandma]

I can't tell you how refreshing it is to read posts from someone who truly made the best out of an unfortunate circumstance and did not let the shortened cruise spoil their fun.

 

It seems RCCL did as much as possible to accomodate the passengers - what more could anyone ask for? Thank you for posting about this.

 

How did you like the Hyatt? We are staying there before our September cruise.

[divaofdisney]

The Hyatt was very nice. I have a few pictures of it in my cruise album I just finished, if you want to see what it looks like. I just finished the album so just click on my link in my signature to view our pics. I hope every likes them. Let me know your comments and thanks.

[Borat]

i see that you stayed in the family promenade stateroom. Anything you want to add to that? i am booked in one in a few weeks with 4 people. We were originially in a cat L inside cabin with 4 of us! so this upgrade is definitely good, just want to know from someone who has stayed in them. what is the bathroom like? thanks.

-Jordan

[divaofdisney]

Borat- Check out my pictures that I just uploaded on webshots....I have several pics of this room. We were in room 7607. The bathroom is nice- has a shower and a tub. There was tons of space to store things and spread out and having the 2 promenade windows was definitely a nice plus. Hope you enjoy.

[corsies]

Hi. My Dad and I went on FOS thanksgiving week 11/19 to 11/26. I saw your pictures. It's funny we had totally different set of towel animals than you did. We had a cat, monkey, elephant, swan and lobster. I love those animals they are so cute. We had a great time. There were some sick people on our voyage but not enough to make the media.

 

Corrie

[willysgrandma]

Great pics, thanks for sharing.

[sherin65]

I just heard from my dad and he too had a wonderful cruise. He said it was too short but the full seven days would have also been too short ;) .

 

The airline lost his luggage on the way home and it had his souveniers and camera card in it so he's bummed but it may turn up.

 

Sher

[katleigh3]

Hey all...

 

I was unfortunately on the FOS for the 12/3 sailing. I was very happy to hear the CDC decided to dock the ship for 2 days for a thorough cleaning for your cruise on the 10th. It was very unfortunate for those of us that did not have that option on the previous sailing. The compensation they offered you was more than fair. I'm glad RCCL did the right thing. I wish I could say the same for us. Overall we did our best to enjoy ourselves. I watched the Samantha Brown FOS special last night on discovery (i think) and it made me realize how much I missed on my vacation.

 

Some of the things you may not have been aware of on the 12/3 sailing:

I want to say first of all, the staff did an amazing job in keeping the ship clean. Unfortunately it was with excessive amounts of bleach. Being served by the staff was not an inconvience. Washing my hands excessively, not a problem. Using sanitizers before and after every meal, not a problem. Some of the problems we did have...we missed out on the midnight buffet, BBQ on Labadee, rum tasting, the captains dinner, Johnny Rockets didnt open untill the last day at sea...etc. The worst part was everytime you went to the bathroom or your stomach felt the smallest twinge you wondered if you were sick. We even spent Monday night in our cabin and watched a movie because Steven wasnt sure if he was sick...he just didnt "feel right". I feel terrible for the poor person who let loose of their bowels on the 5th floor in front of the elevators.

 

Anyway...I really wish for the amount of money I spent, I would have had a relaxing and enjoyable vacation. Now I must say, I am not a complainer and we really did make the best of it and enjoyed ourselves, especially when we went to the islands (off the floating virus as most guests said).

 

I just thought I would share my experience. If you would like to read more...I wrote a review...

 

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=23647

[BearySweet2Cruise]

How did you like the Hyatt? We are staying there before our September cruise.

 

I have never sailed the freedom, but we did stay at the hyatt before leaving on enchantment last july...the Hyatt was one of the best hotels we ever stayed in. They have sleep number beds and we stayed in a jacuzzi suite..was absoluelty beautiful..then there is a view from the top (hyatt pier 66) that has a 360 degree view of all of fort lauderdale. We had a balcony room and woke to see the ship coming intop port and docking...

 

I bet the hyatt you are referring too though is in Miami, just realized that when I realized freedom sails from miami and not fort lauderdale, anyways we LOVED our stay at the hyatt in lauderdale very much!

Happy cruising

[ckrobyn]

Stef - Great pictures! Glad to hear that in spite of the shortened cruise, you still had a wonderful vacation!

 

Welcome back! :)

[BearySweet2Cruise]

also wanted to add that the pictures are beautiful :)

[BuyReallyLow]

Glad you were able to have a good cruise. Watching Samantha Brown on Discovery last night (she's one of my favorites!) made me more anxious to get on board!

[penguin6969]

Just got off the FOS 12-12 cruise. We think that RCCL did a fantastic job of handling the situation. I'm glad they decided to look out for all their passengers by not cruise on Sunday and making sure that the ship was ready for us on Tuesday.

 

They also compansated everyone very well and since I have only crusied with RCCL - plan on staying with them.

 

Yes, they had those sanitizer machines everywhere and glad that everyone choose to use them (that we could tell anyway)- we really need to make sure we take care of our health and everyone elses in we can (by washing our hands etc).

 

We missed two ports but will catch them the next time around.

 

Happy cruising to all.