beastiemom

A few general notes:

The internet service was barely passable. It was slow, it kicked us off repeatedly, and texts sometimes took forever to get through. I did visit the wifi service desk and they did help alleviate some of the problems. I will say this is one area that RC needs to fix.

It is March Madness-but it was hard to find the games anywhere. Not a huge deal, but it would have been nice to go to one of the bars and have drinks and watch the games. Our college girls were from Madison so we really wanted to all watch the game together. We ended up crowding into one of the state rooms and watching on the small TV.

We had low expectations for the food, but for the most part it was better than we anticipated. The last meal was probably our worst, but I would say good to very good the other nights. Chops was excellent. The desserts as a whole were a disappointment, but the key lime pie the last night was great, and the lava cake at Chops was fabulous.

Before dinner we wanted to have chips and guac on our balcony with drinks (we had them leave the balcony divider open), but were hard pressed to find any chips on the ship. A couple of days we did find the chips at Windjammer and brought them down, but it was only two days. We did order the cheese plate, and it was great, but ask for extra crackers.

We got the drink packages and for us it was totally worth it.

I wish we got to see the shows, but they were at incovenient times for us. We had 8:00 seating for dinner, and generally were not organized enough to get to a show by 7:00. Ideally for us (but probably not for others) they would have the shows after the 8:00 seating, but I understand that why they don't.

On the last day, the college girls noticed and older man taking their pictures on his phone. They reported him to security, and they did take a statement from them. We don't know the result, but after intially appearing to blow it off, security did approach they girls and were pretty responsive.

We just returned from the Freedom of the Seas Eastern Caribbean Cruise. Our traveling party consisted of 12- four parents, two 13 yo (girls), two 15 yo (boys) and four college girls. We flew in Friday to PBI and stayed at the Marriott Beach and Spa Friday night (on points). We used (and were VERY satisfied) with Black Pearl Limo to transfer 8 of our party of 12 from PBI to the hotel. TIP: while it was several hundred dollars cheaper than MIA or FLL, we booked our tickets in October before the election. While we lucked out and we managed to get in before President Trump landed on Friday and the healthcare bill forced him into staying in the DC area the weekend we landed, you need to be aware that travel could be (and has been repeatedly) delayed and grounded when the president is entering or leaving the area.

On Saturday we followed the advice of others and left the hotel for the port about 10:30 on Saturday. We had intended on leaving at 10:00, but getting 12 people moving in one direction was a bit more challenging than expected. We took Uber to the port. It was fine, but one of the Uber drivers was apparently new and didn't know exactly how to get to the port. Following the GPS took us a bit out of the way, but we did make it to the port by 10:45-10:50. The lines were very short and we basically walked right on to the ship. I would highly recommend getting to the port between 10 and 11. We each brought a large purse and/or backpack with suits, etc. and checked the remainder of our luggage. I did get luggage tags from Amazon and they worked really slick.

We had two balcony rooms and two inside staterooms. We booked one adult in each room and then switched onboard. We decided the easiest and best way to do it was to get duplicate keys. That way an adult had access to kids rooms at all times. That worked really well for us, and I would do it again.

We went right to the windjammer and then to the pool. Our rooms were ready right around one, and luggage arrived around 5:00. While the kids and husbands explored the ships (which for the husbands meant checking out all the bars) my girlfriend and I went to the dining room to check on our table and ensure that the staff had been made aware of my son's special food needs (he has Celiac's). Fortunately, they had been and were prepared. This was the part of the trip that I was most concerned about-because I knew if we had an issue with the food, it could ruin his entire trip. They were wonderful all week. Our waiter and the staff even made sure that he had a gluten free creme brulee every night for dinner, even though it was not listed as GF on the menu. I'm sure they made it special each day (and something I noted on our post-cruise survey). Originally we had requested a table of 8 and a table of 4, but they had us at a table of 12. Although we were initially disappointed, it turned out wonderful. We thought it was unlikely that the college girls would join us for dinner every night, but they did. I honestly think it was a combo of the food, our waitstaff and the fact it was fun to reconnect with everyone at the end of the day.

During the boat days the teens generally wandered off to meet up with other kids, but would check in occasionally. We were pretty comfortable with it since they always were with their friend. We debated about how best to stay in touch before we left. We ultimately decided that each family would buy two wifi packages (purchased during a sale for 8.99 per day). One kid from each family had the wifi and one adult from each family had wifi. For us it worked, and we would probably do it that way again. The college girls each bought their own. We had a curfew for the teens and they checked in with us each night. The first two nights the four of them just hung out together, but after prompting they did each find their own set of friends.

On Labadee we rented a beach bungalow. My husband got off the boat pretty early and grabbed BB1. We loved the location and would do it again in a heartbeat. The weather was cold and rainy early, but definitely got better later in the morning. On the last night, we went around and each said our high and low moments on the cruise. Several of the kids said Labadee was their high.

We did the Canopy Zip Line Tour excursion through the ship in San Juan. We got it during one of the cruiseship sales, so I think we got a pretty good price. There was a little confusion between the ship and the tour operators, so it was a little confusing at the beginning, but ultimately it got straightened out. The tour as a whole was good, but I do think our zip lining experience in Costa Rica was a bit better. There were 8 platforms, but some zip lines were pretty short. There was also a lot of people in our tour group, so there was a lot of waiting for the next zip line. It was a beautiful day and we all had fun, though.

In St. Maartan, we split up. One group did a catamaran tour (through the ship), one group did the Discovery Dolphin tour, one group went to the beach and my husband stayed on the beach. Both the catamaran and dolphin excursion were booked through the cruise during the sale. We all really enjoyed our days.

Our last port was St. Kitt's. In St. Kitts we did the Jeep rainforst and beach tour through Greg's Safari's. It was an excellent tour and we would highly recommend them. We were in a open air land rover that sat 16. Our guide provided a lot of history and botanical information about the island. We ended at Friar's beach for an hour. The college girls met us there (they took a cab from the boat) and three of the teens stayed with the college girls and took a cab back to the boat a bit later.

The last two days on the boat were pretty relaxing. The weather was a bit rough on the first cruise day, but weather was better on our second day. We used Mobile Passport to get off the boat and would HIGHLY recommended it. We basically walked through customs when others had at least a 45 minute wait. Black Pearl was waiting for us and took us back to PBI.