Liberty of the Seas – October 18-25, 2008
We cruised on Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas out of Miami between October 18 and 25, Saturday to Saturday. This was our 12th cruise on Royal Caribbean – around 22nd overall. We also have cruised on Celebrity, Carnival, and Costa. Liberty is said to be “the biggest cruise ship in the world – two inches longer than Freedom of the Seas”, according to James Andrews, Cruise Director. Freedom and Liberty, together with Independence, are sister ships that each carry about 3,600 passengers and a crew of about 1,300 for a total of about 5,000 on board. We rarely feel that the ship is crowded – the only exception being a couple meals in the Windjammer, when thing do get a little crowded.
This was a very impulsive cruise in many respects which derived from our original thought of cruising to Bermuda this fall – long story – never mind. Our Bermuda cruise will be next May 30. As I recall, and my memory is not the best any more, I think I had asked Bonnie a couple questions re Bermuda cruises, decided it was going to be too cold in the Fall when we could go, but could not give up some kind of cruise – and came up with Liberty for the heck of it. Bonnie did her usual thorough job – thanks for the wine and OBC, Bonnie. The purpose of this cruise was to relax and rest after an unusually exhausting work schedule in our business for the past couple months before this.
We always want to arrive at least the day before cruising, to minimize the chances of a problem arising. We arrived in Miami late morning on Friday, October 17. We could not check in at the Holiday Inn across from Bayside where we stayed Friday night until later in afternoon, so we left our luggage with the bellman and spent the afternoon at Bayside, taking a cruise on one of the boats that takes you around the islands and shows you the mansions of the rich and famous. We had dinner at Bubba Gump’s at Bayside. We were upgraded to a suite at the Holiday Inn, which was very nice – although kind of wasted given our very limited use of it.
Saturday morning, we walked over to the plaza where the Library, the Museum of History of Southern Florida, and the Miami Art Museum are located. The Museum was very interesting – the Art Museum was a little too modern for us. Coming back, we rode a bit on the Peoplemover – the free mass transit monorail (is that what it is?) in downtown Miami.
We boarded about 2 and had about a 15 minute wait to get through security. We are Diamond and had the priority boarding – but there was not much of a line after security for anyone. Very smooth boarding for us. The wife got the all you can drink soda thing – she really does not drink all that much soda, but unless she gets that, then she would worry too much about each drink she gets. I think it is a total of $48 to get the soda card for the week.
For the first time in a long time, and to balance the fact that we are taking too many vacations and spending too much on them – and (primarily) to make the wife feel less guilty about taking another vacation this year, we got an inside cabin on Deck 8. It was fine and perfectly adequate for us. We spend very little time in our cabin even when we have a balcony – although balconies are nice and we will have one on our next cruise. This was a western Caribbean itinerary – Labadee-Haiti (Royal Caribbean’s private area), Montego Bay-Jamaica, Georgetown-Grand Cayman, Cozumel-Mexico – with two sea days.
Sunday, the first cruise day, we did the Meet and Mingle – meeting with others who are signed up with Cruise Critic and post on the roll call there. I mostly just lurk on the site there, but there is a lot of information helpful to cruisers on the site. We had a good time at the Meet and Mingle, but had to leave a little early to get to a Trivia event on time. We love doing the Trivia. This cruise, partly from some good choice of teammates, we won our first four Trivia’s before suffering severe humiliation and disaster in all the rest. We won a total of six Royal Caribbean highlighters, some Bingo cards – some of which we gave to our tablemates, and a small photo album. Wow – almost makes up the cost of the cruise!
One of the things we like most about the Freedom class ships is the Diamond Club up on Deck 14, where you can look out at the water as you relax in a nice lounge. Between 5 and 8 in the evening, you get “free” drinks. On this cruise, in addition to Mario, the concierge, there was Nigel and another fellow, whose name I forget, taking care of us. As there were not that many Diamond pax on this cruise, we were treated VERY well. The wife thought I was being treated too well, actually – Nigel in particular seemed to take offense at an empty or almost empty glass. I tipped them each at the end of the cruise for great service. With the wife having the soda card, “free” drinks in the Diamond Club, two “free” drink coupons in our Diamond coupon book, “free” drinks at the various parties, and some wine for me from our tablemates, we did not buy a single drink on board – that is a first and very different from some of our other cruises. Among other things, the Diamond coupon book has a lot of casino coupons – match play things – and I gave all of them, along with the bingo coupon to our tablemates. We did not gamble a penny this cruise – sometimes we do, but just never did this cruise. Our tablemates for dinner were a very nice family from England who were on their first cruise. They liked it so much that they signed up for a cruise on Oasis in 2010! We think Oasis is going to be too big for us, but we’ll see. We met a lot of British folks this cruise and also seemed to encounter other pax speaking Deutsch a lot. IN generally, it seemed there were more Europeans, enjoying a high Pound and Euro value at the time of booking and payment, on this cruise.
At Labadee, we did very little except snorkel a while – the snorkeling is not all that great, although we did see a couple interesting fish. This year, because of my annoyance with being required in the past to rent a snorkel vest to snorkel, I had bought us a couple vests online to bring with us. Also this year, however, the Royal Caribbean guy at the beach gave people vests to wear without charging them anything for them, if they had brought their own gear and were heading into the water. They required the wearing of the vests, but did not make you go rent one (at least this guy did not). I thought that much better. This year, I also noticed that the Cruise Compass had a note asking you not to pay the people for chairs. I am not sure what this meant. I tipped the guy who set two chairs up for us $2, like I always have in the past. I do not know if the notice was asking us not to tip, but I did not think so. Perhaps, some guys in past have told people they had to rent the chairs. Barefoot beach was closed off for some work they are doing to get ready for Oasis. Someone said it was to have another pier – so they would have two places for the tenders to come in – but I do not know if that is accurate. The zip line was going and we watched people do it. It seemed like people really enjoyed it, but we did not want to bother doing it.
In Montego Bay, we went to Doctor’s Cave beach, as we had this past March. We had thought about going to Sunset Beach Resort, but we had trouble getting a cab there and the dispatcher told us that they had just raised the day pass rate to $60 from $40 and he told us that he thought we would do much better at Doctor’s Cave. I don’t know if he was right about rise in price – have not checked on Cruise Critic – but do not know why he would tell us something wrong intentionally. Doctor’s Cave was fine. We snorkeled off a boat and the wife snorkeled off beach and said it was almost as good as further out off boat. The reef there in Montego Bay is a great reef and much better than anything else we saw – at least on this trip. We ate lunch in our chairs on beach – getting very good service from the waitresses who cover the beach from the onsite restaurant. Other than the snorkeling off the boat, I did very little requiring caloric expenditure.
In Grand Cayman, we got a cab to Cemetery Reef (just North of Seven Mile) and snorkeled a while. It was good there, said to be the best spot for off beach snorkeling in the Seven Mile and North area. We took a pretty long walk down the beach to the Courtyard Marriott and had lunch on the beach there and then checked out the reef there. Not as good as Cemetery.
In Cozumel, we again did the 3 reef snorkel and lunch with Eagle Ray divers. They are nice and do a good job. Conditions were not good, as it was raining a good part of time and the light was not good. Also, there was a temperature differential in the water which made it difficult to see well what was below us in relatively deep water. We enjoyed the trip. As we walked back through pier area, the wife had a guy trying to interest her in a “silver” bracelet come down from $125 to $10 – she really had not been that interested and the guy kind of hurt himself with the level of discounting. Prices in Cozumel seemed good generally and the people seemed more anxious about selling than we remembered from earlier trips over the years.
Once again, we felt the ship’s company of singers and dancers was a group of extremely talented young people – but, we did not think that much of the shows and the way in which the company was used. We simply are too traditional in our tastes, I think. The comedians, jugglers, etc. were very good. We enjoyed the shows, but nothing struck us as really great – except the ice show – which we really enjoyed. It is absolutely mind boggling what the skaters can do on that small rink.
The style of the Cruise Director does not matter all that much to us, but we do think that James Andrews, the Cruise Director whom we have seen before on Freedom, is exceptionally personable and energetic. He had a good crew working for him, as well. He did a particularly good job, in our opinion, with the street shows on the Royal Promenade.
The food was fine for us. We ate all dinners in the main dining room and we ate only dinners in the dining room. We ate all breakfasts that we ate in the Windjammer. At ports of call, we always were ashore for lunch, but ate lunch in the Windjammer on days at sea. Our waiter was Rex from India and our assistant waiter was Jorge from Mexico. They did a good professional job and I tipped Rex some extra, partly because of his good work and partly because only 6 out of his 16 assigned pax at our seating actually showed up for any dinner , and I felt sorry for him.
I had hoped that they would have the valet luggage deal, where we could pay $20 pp and get rid of our luggage at the pier. Our flight did not depart Miami until 7 pm or so. Guest relations advised me, however, that US Customs had made it impossible for them to offer that this cruise. Late in week, I went on internet and investigated car rentals. I could not get anything that involved pickup at pier because everything was taken. A lot of companies had no cars available. Finally, I found and reserved a car at the National lot near airport and on Saturday morning, we got a taxi to the National lot and picked up a car for the day. We got a GPS unit, which we do not normally do, but we found it cut down greatly on the usual bickering between the driver and navigator. We went to Vizcayez – an incredible mansion and took a tour and looked around. In the afternoon, we drove around South Beach, parking and walking out on beach a little. Unfortunately, it was drizzling most of the day.
Flights home were fine, no problems and it was back to the real world. Next cruise is on Carnival out of Puerto Rico in February.