Presidential Family Suite, Freedom Class

[LAKaye]

Just for the record, I would like to re-submit my comments about this suite. I had done so in response to a post a while back, never as a post on its own. There is some detail in the body of the post that has not been addressed in other posts. I thought it was important to reframe the information, especially for those newcomers to this site.

 

Leslie

 

"Our experience with the PFS/Freedom/November 11, 2007

Our family cruised in the PFS on the Freedom in order to reunite a family who lives in separate cities across the country; we wanted the togetherness--and we got it! There was grandma and grandpa in the master bedroom on the port side of the suite. Brian and I (oldest son, no children) were in the stateroom on the starboard side of the suite; I would not call this a master bedroom--more like a cramped, dark Cat E. The next couple with 3 yr- & 1 yr-old children had the inside stateroom nearest the grandparents master bedroom, and the last couple (adult daughter, husband, no children) had the inside stateroom on the starboard side of center. To recap: 4 couples, two young children.

 

I cannot imagine more than 8 adults in this suite. We seemed to max it out with the 10 occupants we had. I suppose two more little children could be in the suite without feeling cramped. I think it would start to get hairy with anyone sleeping on the sofa in the living room, just because the sharing-of-the-common-bathrooms.

 

If a family had two or three couples, each having their own rooms, and then shoved a total of six pre-teen children into the last interior and on the sofa and got all six of them to share one bathroom---it might work out without stress.

 

The sharing of a suite with radically different classes of bedrooms worked for us because our family has a distinct pecking order. I don't know what non-related equal footing couples would do to even out the unfairness of the accommodations.

 

Now onto the description of the suite, pasted from another post of mine from a few months ago:

 

There are two entrance doors to the suite. The main entrance (port side) opens into a small marble-floor short hallway that is between the master bedroom (port side) and the port-side interior bedroom. Further into the suite is the dining area of the common living room. The master bedroom is roughly the size of a Junior Suite; it does NOT have a walk in closet. The bathroom has a tub/shower, a single sink, slightly more floorspace than the bathroom in a Junior Suite.

 

The other entrance to the suite is between the starboard side stateroom and the starboard side interior room. This is a long hallway that ends up in the living room. This bedroom starboard side is where we stayed, so I have more detail about it. It was much more cramped than I had expected. It seemed the size of a Cat E, but with a small JS bathroom/tub.

 

The room is not an open space as a regular stateroom--it feels quite cramped; it is broken up into three tiny rooms: a 9.5' x 9.5' bedroom, with a barely 2' wide walkway (forward) to a very small dressing room with a vanity desk and closet. The bathroom is forward of the dressing area. The way the bathroom door opens up next to the closet, the "tunnel" opening into the bathroom was only 19.5 inches. Very tight.

 

In the bedroom, there is a frosted glass door between the foot of the bed area and that hall that leads to the living room--If you need darkness to sleep, bring your glamour mask because any light from early risers in the living room will light up this stateroom, even if your drapes to the balcony are pulled tightly shut. There are odd, glass-front cabinets in the bedroom which look as if they belong in a dining room. Also the dressing room has a door out to the hallway; we never used this door--who would want it swinging open to the common hall while getting dressed?

 

Now, on to the two other rooms: Both of the interior bedrooms have no en suite bathrooms. The bathrooms for both are situated across the common hallways. If you need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, or you want to take a shower, you probably want to use a robe to cross the hall.

 

The sofa area of the common living room worked well for us; the dining table area was small; the table had 6 chairs which we never used; we found it helpful to push the table up against the wall. It served as a catch-all counter top. When we wanted to sit around a table, we went out onto the balcony where there were 14 chairs around the huge teak table. This worked even in the rain.

 

Just for the record, this was the first cruise for everyone except me and Brian. Therefore, the other three couples had nothing to compare this to.

 

This PFS worked for our family because we greatly relied on the massive common balcony and the living room to have our little reunion. I dare say though that the adults who had the two interior rooms really did have the undesirable end of the stick: ***No cruise ship in the mass market these days has bathrooms down the hall, except for this top-dollar, one of a kind suite. Let the occupants beware.

 

Leslie

[cb at sea]

Were it me, I'd rather have had totally separate cabins, and met up with the family somewhere else on the ship!

Thanks for the description!

[ownedbypets]

We stayed in the PFS last June. The description above is great. The cabin was great for us as we had 4 adults and 4 kids. I wouldn't want to have any more in the suite. The only issue that we had was the balcony. It is beautiful and huge but we had garbage, lit cigarettes, ping pong balls and pillow chocolates thrown down at us. We saw which cabin it was coming from and we reported it many times only to be told that unless a RCCL employee saw it there was nothing that could be done. We went to the offending cabin-did no good. They didn't speak English. Needless to say that after spending $$$ on this suite and only feeling safe staying under cover on the balcony we were disappointed with the way that it was handled. I relayed this on the comment card. Everything else was fantastic and we didn't want to come home!!