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Friday- Cozumel

We all did the Playa Mia excursion together. Its a nice resort, especially if you have little ones, plenty of things to do for the whole family. Nice lunch under the covered pavilion and a very friendly bartender who kept our drinks full for the few hours. We did Le Bistro for dinner, somewhat robotic but efficient server. Everyone liked their entrees, only item that wasn't right was my salad with goat cheese. We think they messed up the salad dressing in the kitchen, it tasted extremely bitter, I even had my wife try it to make sure it just wasn't a bad mix after the crab salad but she agreed. I've never had a salad dressing taste that awful so I really do think there was a mistake made somewhere. I had the Dover Sole entree and it was absolutely delicious. Very slow service for dinner, plan 2 hours! Did comedy with Andy after dinner.

Saturday- Final Day

Multiple trips on the waterslides and nice relaxing day in the Vibe. Cagney's was absolutely packed when we arrived for our 7pm reservation. Amazing dinner and service but over 2 hours from start to finish. Million Dollar Quartet finished off our cruise, what you want to watch on your final night!!

Sunday- Disembarkation

We had a 11:15 flight on Delta to ATL then our connection to CMH and parents to CAK. Took our own bags off and got in line at 7:05, off the ship at 7:25-7:30, in a cab by 8am, at MIA and through security by 8:45, very easy! Arrived back home into CMH on time at 4:30 and pulled in the driveway at 5:30 with time to mow the yard, literally the easiest travel we have had home.

The Recap- We all worked together on these in Atlanta airport lol

Pro's

Room layout and shower

Ropes course

Million Dollar Quartet

Speciality dining

Vibe- buy a pass, you will NOT be disappointed!

Cold towels arriving back on the ship

Cons

Customer service friendliness- noticeable difference between them and RCCL and Carnival, always worries me thinking how does management treat these people?

Atrium noise- Its not a concert hall or nightclub NCL, its a pass through place. I can't imagine an exec from NCL cruising and seeing people at guest service having to scream to get a question answered and thinking "oh yeah this is just what we imagined"

Housekeeping- Claudia couldn't do the same basic functions the parent's housekeeper did perfectly fine. Not overly friendly either, when you have to ask repeatedly for beach towels and bar soap, finally get towels, and then don't get them replaced, I was starting to get pretty frustrated. Here's the kicker: final morning while double checking under our coach, we find beach towels she'd put in for the next cruise!

Room A/c unit- shut off during the night resulting in us waking up sweating just to turn it back on, I think the thing was possessed honestly!

Roatan disembarkation- Extremely crowded and a mess overall

O'Sheehan's waiters were the least friendly of the boat- not sure if it's the worst assignment or just the traffic runs them down but they always seemed not that happy.

Time changes- Drove us nuts, Tuesday night I think we were all asleep by 10:30, never could get our bodies to change!

Ship Overall 8

Room 9

Housekeeping 5

Things to do on ship 9

Entertainment 8

Speciality food 8

Normal food 6

Customer service/Cruise director 5

Ports 7

Excursions 8

Overall 73/100 7.3/10

Had a great family vacation, enjoyed some things but probably back to Royal for us, hoping for Harmony next year!

Here's a short review of last week's Getaway sailing from Miami. My wife (26) and I (28) were celebrating our 4th anniversary and were joined by my parents. They recently sailed on Pride of America and we had only sailed on RCCL (once) and Carnival (4x). Please remember these are just opinions and every sees things different, I'm just trying to help out the group and especially people who are going on this itinerary soon! We had the UBP and 4 free speciality meals, parents purchased a 4 meal package on top of their interline discounted rate.

Friday/Saturday

We got a great deal on Delta on our flights from CMH-RSW, MIA-CMH only $270 pp round trip so we happily added two days to our vacation. We drove down to Naples and spent two nights at the Gulfcoast Inn, a place my parents took me when I was child and we had went there a few years ago for a long weekend. It's definitely a hole in the wall but it does have its pluses: Only $180 for two nights, a free dinner and drink, and a nice pool with cheap drinks and all sorts of Buckeyes stuff!

Sunday- Cruise day!!!

We drove our rental car over to Miami early Sunday morning, about 1:50 to the rental car center, grabbed the free National Car Rental bus to the port and entered the terminal at 9:55am. Check in was quick with an incredibly unfriendly agent, she looked like she would rather be absolutely anywhere other than where she was, maybe not the best job for her! Boarded the ship at noon and walked briskly to guest services to get our Vibe passes. My parents flights on Delta from CAK were changed a few weeks back, making their arrival in MIA go from 9:45am to noon, the gentlemen at Guest Services was nice enough to let me buy all 4 passes after I explained that they would be coming. Ate at Savor for dinner and had a family with out of control kids screaming and playing in the windows with the curtains when we got there. Luckily they were done about halfway through dinner, lowering the decibel level of the dining room by half, overall a normal MDR experience after that.

Days of the Cruise will be a little shorter...

Monday- Beautiful weather on the sea day and we went to the Brazilian steakhouse, absolutely delicious! One tip however, do not over-eat the salad bar!! There's tons of meat coming your way...

Tuesday- Maya Key excursion in Roatan, very nice beach and good food, drinks were a tad expensive, after one each we just waited to get back on the boat! This is where things began to go downhill for the night..We decided to try Shanghai for a quick dinner in order to watch the Cavs game in O'Sheehan's. The food was just overall bad, in my noodle bowl I had three strips of BBQ pork and my wife said her beef was fatty and tough. Even my parents admitted it was nowhere near the quality of the Asian restaurant on POA. We head to O'Sheehan's where I'm going to finally have some dinner and watch the Cavs. Only problem is the atrium is having a Bob Marley tribute concert so loud that we couldn't think let alone talk to one another. The girls bailed to the rooms after halftime as my wife now had a thundering headache and Dad and I go in bar searching to watch the game without experiencing more hearing loss...only positive, Cavs win game 1!

Wednesday

Belize- Been there two times already so this way a stay on the boat day all along. Short lines at the waterslides and on the ropes course. I couldn't believe it but my 55 year old Dad (who's afraid of heights) walked the plank ahead of me! We dined at Tropicana Room and had another uninspired waiter who rolled his eyes when Dad asked for a wine list. Looking back on it I should've called him out on it but we were on vacation and sometimes it's not the time. This guy continued to make it even more known that he wasn't enjoying his night working, it was almost shocking considering in all our cruises we had never had a server be so unhappy and disconnected.

Thursday-

Costa Maya- Chacchoben excursion, a very HOT day but a fun excursion just the two of us did. The parents snorkeling excursion was cancelled due to gusty winds and waves. We decided to split up for dinner this night, we went to La Cucina, they went to Ocean Blue. Very good meal and great service by Frederick our server, he asked us to fill out a comment card and we happily obliged and gave him a nice tip. This was the night we decided to celebrate our anniversary and we even got sang to! Overall just a great meal and fun time together, after the past few nights we definitely needed it. Cavs win again, we now use the Sunset bar as our place to watch without losing hearing.

More to come soon!!! I will also do some pros and cons on things I don't mention for each day.

Thanks for the replies everyone!

We took a taxi ($4/person) to Royal Palms, $2/person to get in, $8/chair. We each had 3 drinks apiece and split a margarita pizza. They automatically add 18% tip on so it came to about $70. All in all it was about a $100 day, Carnival had people coming in on an excursion around noon, no idea what they were paying. We were the second boat into GC that day so we got there pretty early (9am) and were probably in the first 20-30 people there, it did get busy in the afternoon. Clean restrooms and showers also.

We were at Adrenaline Beach in Labadee, had restrooms, food hut, and bar nearby.

We were in rooms 7386 and 7392, right side very close to back of the ship. Decent walk to the closest elevators but we did the steps a lot of the time up to windjammer and the pools or down 2 flights of steps to the Royal Promenade.

Overview

This will be mostly short and sweet and review, no pictures, there's plenty out there! It was our first time sailing with RCCL, had sailed Carnival four times before (Legend x2, Valor, Victory). My parents are loyal RCCL customers and finally convinced my wife and I to give them a try. They are in their early 50's and we're in our mid 20's so we broke apart for most of the day and reunited for dinner and the shows at night.

Positives

We purchased 3 nights at the specialty restaurants (Sabor, Giovanni's and Chops) and received 20% each reservation, a great idea if you want to try different places

Giovanni's Table- Absolutely amazing dinner for $20 person, we all got different entrees and shared, everyone was stuffed! Excellent service!!

Chops- Everyone else got the filet, I did the 12 oz. NY strip, everyone's steaks came out perfect, excellent service even though they were busy on the final night of the cruise.

Cabin Attendant- We had Siri as our room steward, easy name to remember! He was extremely pleasant and attentive to our needs. We gave him an extra tip at the end of the cruise and he couldn't have been more appreciative.

Clientele- We had not grown weary of the customer service by Carnival but our fellow guests somewhat and the cutbacks in entertainment also. It seemed every cruise the behavior became more and more mob-like whether it was for food, lines for comedy, anything. Maybe it's the midwest in us, but we seemed like the Freedom guests were a lot more courteous to others, children were well behaved, etc. It was definitely an older clientele from what we noticed, if you've ever sailed out of Tampa it seemed very similiar. We had one incident of intoxicated people in our hallway at 3am that woke us up but that was it for the week.

MDR Service- Very very good, prompt but courteous. Usually in and out with all courses in less than an hour and half, usually about 1:15.

Negatives

My Time Dining- The first night was absolute chaos at the check-in counters. We had made reservations earlier in the day and the reservations lines were 20-30 people long, yet people with no reservations were walking right up to their desk and getting in to eat, just not organized well at all. Carnival's system for flexible dining times just seemed better run, being able to choose a specific time is the reason why we chose this option. Being told it was 5:30-5:45 or 7:15 or later kind of defeated the purpose of the program in our opinion. The only thing it was nice for was on the later port departures we were able to stay off the boat later.

Drink Prices- This became our running joke for the week, we never did figure it out! Miami vices ranged from 9.50 at Sorrento's one night to $12 at the pool bar. Margarita bought at the Solarium pool bar was $2 more than than main pool bar. I understand there are drink of day specials, but publish your prices and what is actually available!! The only place I found an actual drink menu with prices was in On Air. Carnival has a basic drink menu with prices in every bar, its not that hard RCCL, unless you really are trying to confuse everyone.

Sports Entertainment- Being from Ohio, we're big Cleveland Cavalier fans and wanted to watch the game. How does a huge ship like this not have a sports bar or a place to watch? We literally got kicked out of On Air the one night for karaoke that had maybe 15 participants max. We asked if they could just keep it on the tv's above the bar and were told it was controlled remotely and we could watch it in the rooms. It got a bit awkward when the activities director happily said we could watch the games in our rooms and about a dozen of us walked right out. I understand the clientele may want it, but karaoke can be done anywhere.

Customs- I understand that this isn't directly Royal's fault, but customs was absolutely brutal. 40-45 minutes of standing in line when maybe two-thirds of the counters are manned, I guess that's our government at work! It's not like we magically came in a day early, it's sad because you've had a great vacation and the last taste in your mouth is standing in line forever to hand a CBP a card. If the RCCL employee wants to send you to the far right CBP counter, DON'T GO!!! We all joked that it was the line of death; RCCL lets all wheelchair bound passengers go into this line, ahead of you standing. You literally don't move. The parents were a good 100 people behind us, went to another line, and beat us by ten minutes.

Ports of Call and what we did

Labadee- beach day, the farther you get away from the boat the less the crowds, in the "market" area you will get haggled, just a fyi!

Falmouth- walked around and shopped, enjoyed a Red Stripe and went back to the pool

Grand Cayman- Royal Palms Beach Club- AWESOME! Definitely recommend!

Cozumel- Playa Mia beach break, expensive but beautiful and plentiful and strong drinks!

Conclusion

We overall truly enjoyed both the Freedom and RCCL and all would gladly do the same itinerary again. I would definitely rate this cruise a solid 8.5/10 where our previous ones with Carnival were slowly degrading into 5-6/10 range.

If you have any questions please just ask, hopefully this gives a Carnival customer a good comparison between the two companies and what to expect if you make the switch!