CruzinScotty

As we toured, I was all excited to show everyone the Hot and Cool Disco. When we arrived, I realized that during the 2.0 – they must have painted the large hand and feet. It’s more sleek now than tacky, I guess. But, it doesn’t have the same WOW factor to me. Here is Hot/Cool from 2008:

Now, the hands/feet are black fading to silver. I didn’t look nearly as impressive to me; I didn’t think to take a photo to compare. It was dark in the room, but even so - it was hard to tell the difference between the hand and feet now. I looked on the Carnival website. There’s an icon for Hot/Cool – but no photo (old or new). Anyone got a photo of the new Hot/Cool Disco they would like to share to compare???

I was on the same cruise.... and I was waiting for someone to post a review..... :) Can't wait to read it..

Feel free to chime in with your thoughts as well, especially for events you may have attended differently. One of the things I love most about these reports is hearing a different perspective.

But surprised the garage associated with the Liberty was full unless the Liberty pulled at 10:30AM and the ship's boarding not delayed. Must have pulled into a different berth than the one she departed from.

There was a parking lot, but not a garage directly in front of the Liberty. It was full, couldn't even find how to get into it. We parked in the next garage down, I believe "D". This is exactly as it was 4 years ago. And there will be more on the parking at the end. ;)

We had a wake up call for 6:30. We let the sun wake us up the rest of the week, which was a much nicer way to start the day. :) We met all the grandparents at Pop/W’ma’s house at the appointed time. The trip to POM was uneventful.

I printed instructions to the port since 4 years ago, I missed the turn off and we ended up on the wrong side of the Causeway. :eek: Beautiful view – but we didn’t want a repeat of that. Luggage drop off was easy, the parking garage was not. I usually have to drive around twice to get to the parking garage. This time, it was 3 times….. If they ever get construction done at POM, maybe it will be better. But, the 1st parking sign is for a regular lot that is always full. I have no idea where the 2nd parking sign takes you – but it wasn’t a parking lot. LOL Finally, into the lot and time to start boarding around 11:05.

The security line was way longer than 4 years ago (10:30 arrival), but the line kept moving; and at least we started the process in air-conditioning.

Helpful Hint: remove all metal objects before going thru the metal detector! My I-pod was in a different pocket than normal and caught me several times before I realized. My Dad is a vet and his WWII baseball cap had some metal pins in it. That one took awhile to figure out…. Speaking of which; while waiting in line for our sign/sail cards, something very nice happened. A woman noticed my Dad’s cap and asked him about his service. She had an uncle (I believe) who fought in Europe, while my Dad was in the Pacific.

Back to Security: The carry-on bag with the laptop and power strip was unquestioned. The one with the carry-on drinks was. I purposely brought blue Gatorade as opposed to another color figuring it didn’t look like any other drink someone would try to smuggle; but he looked at that more closely than the couple of loose bottles of water. DB/SIL had traveled to POM on their own. Security tried to take their power strip. After some discussion and calling over another person; it was allowed with the guy covering for himself saying, “they just changed that”. Riiiight…..

We saw DB/SIL as we entered the Sign/Sail card line. They were ready to board. We said we’d catch up on the boat, but didn’t specify a location. I purposely wore my 4 year old Carnival Liberty shirt on boarding day. Someone noticed and asked me how the ship was. It was her first Carnival cruise, I told her the ship was great. She’d cruised HAL, RCCL and NCL – I hoped she enjoyed this trip.

They called for general boarding by the time we had our Sign/Sail cards. After the line for photos and the final line on the ship to board; we finally entered the lobby at 12:15. This was a few minutes longer than last time; but no waiting to board after the Sign/Sail line, so I consider it a wash. We hate the crowds on embarkation day; but that’s part of the process. The Lobby was more crowded than I remembered. We quickly made our way to the Lido, which was also quite busy. So busy that we later found out we literally walked by the table DB/SIL had for us and none of us saw each other.

The 7 of us headed up to the Fish and Chips area because that’s usually not overly crowded until later in the cruise when others find out about this area. I had the Fish and Chips and fried oysters, especially since there was no line at all. It was Italian Day on the buffet. I remember the Lemon tart and Mango Mouse were the best dessert choices today.

It was now 1:30, time to head to the room and rest a bit. DB/SIL had booked a balcony guarantee and ended up on the Lido Deck, forward starboard. The rest of us had booked starboard balcony rooms, aft on Deck 7. Our 3 rooms were within 7 of each other. I wondered if we would have a lot of noise since our room was the one you would see right off the Elevator/Stair landing. We only heard people twice for a few seconds each time. Both were the night of the Mexican Fiesta. It wasn’t long enough to keep us wake.

Next, we showed the parents how to use the safe and called to have housekeeping unlock the fridges. We had all brought drinks. We all had trouble getting items removed from the fridge. We were the only successful ones, and only because I explained that I had a teenager that would be in the room alone at times and there would NOT be any alcohol in the room.

We caught up with DB/SIL and walked with everyone so they could start learning their way around the ship. We're not great photographers, and have been on the ship before. So some of our pics may be a little different. And, pay no attention that these pics are dated the 2nd day of the cruise.;)

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This is cruise #10 for me and #7 for DW. It is also our 2nd time on the Liberty, the last being a Western in July 2008.

We hadn’t seen our parents for almost two years; they all live in Florida. We decided that instead of visiting each family for a few days, we would broach the idea of going on a cruise. If no one wanted to go, we had extra vacation time to visit afterwards. Silly thought – 10 seconds in to each phone conversation, the question wasn’t “where”; it was simply “when”. This was a good thing because DW and I had picked the itinerary before speaking with anyone else. ;) My brother and his DW were able to join us as well. So, our 3 generations are:

Myself and DW – early 50’s

DS – indoor loving, school hating, typical teenager (by today’s standards :o )

Pop and W’ma – my father and his better half - in their 80’s

Ma and Pa – DW’s parents – in their 70’s

DB and SIL – my brother and sister-in-law – also in their 50’s

I became the main organizer. I don’t want to say planner, because I tried to be clear with everyone that there’s no way 9 people are going to want to do the same thing – 7 days in a row. DW and I chose this itinerary because we’ve done the western Caribbean the last two trips, and I’ve been promising DW for almost 30 years that I’d take her to St. Thomas. It’s about time I fulfilled my promise. :D I had strayed from CC because I had no trips planned. I had no idea about the Liberty 2.0 upgrades until after we had already booked.

I tried to make everyone's expectations clear – you don’t have to stick with the pack. No hard feelings if you don’t want to do something, or if you want to do something on your own. But, at the same time – we weren’t planning a lot of the physical activities we had done in the past. This trip is about visiting and re-connecting with family. I did lots of research on CC. I wanted to have options available. But, we did not make any shore excursions ahead of time. This was to be a more relaxed and go-with-the-flow type of trip.

Friday, May 25th

We had a very uneventful trip from SC to Southern Florida. We stayed close to my Dad’s house. We checked in with all the parents to make sure everyone was ready to go in the morning. We stayed at a Marriott Courtyard which had a nice hot tub that I relaxed in during the evening. Before bed, we caught a show on Comedy Central. For those of you familiar, it was a show with “Peanut” and his friend – as he calls him - “Je-fa-fa Dun-HAM”. If you’re not familiar; it was ventriloquist, Jeff Dunham. He’s a big favorite in our household and a fun way to end our long travel day.

Coming next – the trip really starts

I did a google search for Reggae Beach and came up on this thread. Lots of great info.

Anyone have anything recent to update this info. I'll be on the Carnival Liberty in July.

WOW - what a great thread! I've been to Nassau many times and have been reinvigorated for my upcoming return in August.