judatt

We have stayed at the Caribe Hilton, Hampton Inn, and Doubletree. The Caribe Hilton is closest to the pier. The Hampton Inn is closest to the airport. The Doubletree is in the middle somewhere. As someone said earlier, taxis use a zone charge so don't know that you are better off at one property over another if you are looking at cost.

The Caribe Hilton is on the beach and you can walk to town. Yes, it's a good walk but if you want to get some exercise it can be done fairly easily. We walked all the way to the fort and back and also walked over to the cruise port (where ships come in for the day - not where the Celebrity and RCCL Ships leave from).

The Hampton Inn was probably the cheapest but not by a whole lot. WE would recommend any of the three.

Those are correct for the Freedom of the Seas.

Thank you. David

We are getting ready for our first cruise on RCCL. We are elite with Celebrity and I've already contacted RCCL and they have granted us diamond status. We will also be in a suite. I'd like to contact the concierge in advance to touch base and to ask for something. In looking through these boards it looks like the best email addresses would be:

FR_Concierge@RCCL.com and

FR_DiamondConcierge@RCCL.com

Can one of you fine people on this board please confirm this for me. Thanks.

Looking forward to your continued review of the Freedom. We will be on Freedom in August. We are veteran Celebrity cruisers (also have an NCL and a couple of Carnival) but this will be our first time on RCCL. Fortunately Celebrity and RCCL are sister companies so they gave us reciprocal Diamond status. We have a small group (5 cabins) of friends and family.

My wife (a nurse) retired 7 years ago and we both love her being retired. I'm still working (CPA) but she travels with me almost all the time when I'm gone on business and we always try and tack on a few days vacation when we are in nice places.

One of these days I'll join her in retirement and we hope to do a lot of what you and your husband are doing - last minute cruises and extended cruises whenever we can.

Thanks again - and continue looking forward to your review of the Freedom. David

I don't have any experience with RCCL. However, on Celebrity which is a sister line of RCCL, they have a package where you can buy all the photos taken throughout the cruise. We have done this two times. One a 7 night cruise and I believe it was $199 when we purchased it on the ship. We did about 80 photos if I remember correctly. On the second one, we heard that you could purchase the package in advance and it was less expensive. We bought the package for $229 for a 12 night Med Cruise and actually had over 200 photos.

Would we have bought 200 photos at $23 each? Absolutely not. But we probably would have bought 10 or so over the 12 nights and that works out to about the same price so we got all the others for free. My wife made them into a nice scrapbook.

Just a thought.

Hi,

quick one - how many power sockets are there in a room? I'm on the adventure this week, balcony room.

 

thanks,

dalcross

We are new to RCCL but veterans on Celebrity. Typically there is one in the room and one in the bathroom. We always take a power strip to plug into the one in the room and it works well.

Greetings everyone - thanks for all the good information. We are taking our first RCCL cruise in August - we are veterans of the sister line, Celebrity. We are Elite on Celebrity so understand that we can get Diamond status with RCCL. We are taking our family - 2 balconies for children, 1 cabin for the grandchildren and a GS for us. We typically do balconies but did a sky suite last year and decided with all the family (9 of us) on board it would be nice to have the extra room.

Thanks again for all the good info - will keep coming back and looking for more!

We just got off the Summit the day you got on. It was our third trip on the Summit and we have enjoyed them all. I enjoy a good meal as much as the next person and think the Summit does a great job. Is it comparable to the restaurant we go to when celebrating a special occasion? - in a word, no. But it is very good and very much on par with the normal restaurants we go to. It amazes me how they can serve a thousand people at one time with a variety of foods and do such a remarkable job of it.

Our food was good and our service was just as good. We were in a suite last time we were on Summit and could have eaten in Blu but always default to the MDR. Just really enjoy the food, the service, and the company of our table mates.

Have a great cruise.

Only thing I've ever seen has been the cruises to Bermuda (not quite the Caribbean) from New York or sailing their sister line, Royal Caribbean, which has Caribbean cruises through the summer.

This is what we are doing - we did the Summit to Bermuda and this coming summer (2014) we are taking the kids and grandkids on our first ever cruise on RCCL - Freedom of the Seas out of Port Canaveral.

We just got off the Summit on Saturday, Dec 7. We have never done Select dining as we really enjoy a large table and getting to know some new people as well as getting to know our waiter and assistant waiter. We do often go to a specialty dining venue but on this cruise we enjoyed our table mates and waiter and assistant waiter so much we did not go to Normandie or QSine. We did go to Bistro on 5 for lunch and it was excellent as usual.

We had a table for 8. 2 of the 8 wanted water with no ice. 6 had water with ice and 4 of the 8 often had wine but sometimes did not. A couple had coffee and a couple had cappucino's with dessert. After the first night both our waiter and particularly our assistant waiter knew exactly what everyone wanted and gave us what we wanted without even asking. The Sommelier seemed to do a great job as well.

I thought the food was fine - sure there were a couple of things that probably could have been done better but when I think about serving 1,000 dinners at the same time they do a great job.

This was our third time on the Summit and I'll go back again any day.

If he has a passport that is all he really needs. I'm in just the opposite situation - my passport is at the Brazil embassy getting a visa. This cruise came up last minute so I'm using a birth certificate and drivers license and my wife will use her passport (she is not going with me to Brazil :().

You should be fine.

We are in that category that had 9 credits and received the 16 bonus points. I was trying to figure out why 16???? Then it hit me - 30 X 9 + 270 + 16 = 286. Still shy of 300 but still guarantees us elite after our next cruise - even if we were in an inside (2 X 7 = 14 + 286 = 300).

So, as much as I'd like to have received the rumored 50 bonus points and become elite, we have no reason to complain - under the old system we would be elite after our next cruise (leave Friday for San Juan) and under the new system we will be elite when we get home.

We're on the Summit for the second time in two years on the 11/30/13 sailing. We enjoy lunches in Bistro on Five. We've enjoyed wine service with lunch and are wondering if it is possible to order cocktails as well, i.e. will the servers bring cocktails to the table if requested? Thanks for your response.

We will be joining you on the 11/30 sailing out of San Juan. We were on a similar cruise last Dec on the Summit but with another itinerary. It was great. We'll be in Bistro on 5 as soon as they will let us on - our favorite place for lunch on embarkation day.

I went to the Captains Club portion of the website and clicked on Membership benefits and clicked on what I was and up popped my new information. I was select with 9 credits and now am select with 286 points. I suppose I don't have anything to complain about although I was hoping the point bonus would get me over to elite. We sail a week from today out of San Juan on the Summit and are in cc so that will take us over 300.

Did anyone clear this up? We have 9 points now (=270 in the new system) an extra 50 points added right now (=330) would put us into Elite for our upcoming cruise. This would be a nice thing if true.

We are in the exact same situation - 9 credits now. Be nice to move to elite before our next cruise. Thanks for all the good info - always get better info here than on the website.

We were on the Summit in December in the Southern Caribbean. They were on the menu every night and had them 3 or 4 times. They were great!

Great Review.

No butler on our cruises, but in May we'll be staying at Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi, and the room comes with butler service.

Now I have to think of something I will "need"...

Enjoy your time in Dubai. It is a fascinating place - we were there for about 10 days last summer. Don't know what it's like in May but in July it is hot - we got up one morning at 7 and it was 108 with a heat index of 128. One day we drove by and took a picture of the famous 7 star hotel and the next day we drove by and at the same place we took the picture you couldn't even see the hotel because of the dust in the air. All that said, enjoy your time - it is truly a fascinating place. Oh, and go by the mall where they have snow skiing in the mall - phenomenal engineering.

We were in the sky suite that connects to the penthouse suite (used as a second bedroom for the penthouse when needed) on our last cruise on the Summit in December. Our butler was great. I had preordered some flowers for my wife and they didn't show up. He checked and said there was no record. I showed him on my ipad where it hit my credit card. We came back from dinner and there was a beautiful flower arrangement in our suite.

He served us breakfast most mornings on our balcony - white tablecloth and the whole bit. It was wonderful. He also came around every afternoon at tea time with the "goodie" tray.

As others have said, we didn't ask him to help with packing /unpacking but everything we asked he made happen.

We have actually been on all three lines - our preference is Celebrity. Our cruise on NCL was 20 years ago and on a very old ship (SS Norway). We enjoyed the cruise but it is not comparable to the modern ships of most lines.

We have been on Carnival with our family - our kids and grandkids love Carnival. Our grandkids absolutely love camp Carnival. They haven't been on Celebrity so don't know how they would like the Celebrity kids program. On our two Carnival cruises there have been oodles of kids and they all seemed to be having a good time. I enjoyed the food on Carnival in the MDR. The specialty dining was horrible - food was decent but service was just plain not good (example - you can't fill 6 water glasses from the same spot :confused:).

One item that is a good example of the difference between Celebrity and Carnival is announcements. On Carnival they have constant announcements - on Celebrity you get one a day and it is usually from the Captain.

Celebrity does tend to be a somewhat older crowd although there will still be children and younger people on board. We start cruising at 40 and are now 60 but Celebrity has been our line of choice for the past 15 years or so.

This is second hand so take it for what it's worth. We were docked end to end with an NCL ship in Bermuda last year. We had opportunity to ride the ferry's with people from both ships. More than once I had people on the NCL ship ask "how's the food on your ship?" They didn't like what they were being served and all the different venues for dining.

So for us, Celebrity is our choice for just my wife and me. Carnival is our choice with our kids and grandkids and we would not likely sail on NCL again.

Cruise Bucket List

Panama Canal

Baltic Sea

Transatlantic

Mediterranean once Egypt is visited again

Just an affirmation of your bucket list - we have done the full transit of the Panama Canal and it was awesome - one of our favorite crusie ship experiences. Of course it was on a 15 day repositioning cruise so it was an overall great experience. We are on a Med cruise this summer so will be fulfilling that goal as well - would also confirm Egypt as a great place to visit (as soon as things calm down a little maybe). Cairo Museum is the best museum I've ever been to. Have fun!

Thanks for the review guys. I would second the opinion that the quasi-Italian restaurants on Celebrity are better than the quasi-French, with the exception of The Olympic on Millenium, where I had the best meal I have ever had at sea, agneau en croute.

Just wanted to agree with this comment - the Olympic on the Millie is by far the best specialty dining we have had. We went back twice it was so good. Great service, lots of dishes prepared table side, the food was all good and the staff just seemed to enjoy what they were doing and it was reflected throughout the entire experience.

Greetings everyone. Let me add a slightly different twist to the current promotion. Three great options and if you sail Europe you get to choose two. We booked today and were told that one of our options had to be the drink package. I understand that for our 12 day cruise this is worth over $1,000 and most people will choose the drink package, but my wife and I don't drink alcohol and not a lot of soft drinks so that is a lot of bottled water and specialty coffee's (my wife doesn't even drink coffee so she gets a lot of tea :)). We actually love San Pelligrino but I understand that you can't even get that since it is considered premium. Interesting.

I told our travel agent that it says choose 2 and he actually called Celebrity and was told that one of the 2 had to be the drinks package. So, we have a 2 drinks packages and $300 OBC.

Silly question, but how does the butler dress?

We just got off the Summit about 3 weeks ago. Our butler always had a tie on - usually with vest. Did a great job.

We have access to a great last minute price on the Pride on Jan 23 sailing. Can someone give us some input on what the ship environment is like sailing from Baltimore to the Bahamas and back. Seems like it would be very cold this time of year! Thanks everyone.