My First Carnival Cruise (review) Liberty 4/23

[Nezmo]

...Nezmo? Is that you and the Mrs?

 

 

 

Yes sir, you caught me, LOL.

 

I'm not one that thinks visiting Margaritaville on every port is really experiencing the island but we did go in there for lunch after our aborted stingray excursion. Had some conch fritters and a couple of margaritas that burned.

[crusinpsychRN]

I agree about the food. Used to be Carnival's was best. But it's gone downhill. I didn't like the wormy looking Mongolian Grill stuff. Salads in MDR were not cold, food only tepid. I really wish they'd "beef" up the chefs.

 

Great review, I like your writing style and great sense of humor!

[hlb76]

I was on Liberty once and loved the ship. Butch was our CD butnow he is gone on Dream. I also sailed w/ Jen once and cant wait to hear your thoughts on her. I know what I thought :eek:

[gail811]

Great review, and I love your attitude! Your line about the strawberries for your girlfriend was brilliant!

I agree about the service too. We just returned from the Freedom and I could do nothing but rave about the staff on the entire ship. They sure seem sincere to me and that means they are doing their job well! Glad you enjoyed the Tequila Factory! Did the tour once, then found a place in town that sells the stuff we fell in love with. And Senor Iguanas is a favorite watering hole for us on the east (wild) side of the island. Looking forward to the rest of your review because my next cruise is on the Liberty!

[Nezmo]

I was on Liberty once and loved the ship. Butch was our CD butnow he is gone on Dream. I also sailed w/ Jen once and cant wait to hear your thoughts on her. I know what I thought :eek:

Not to hijack Rott's thread but see my thoughts in my review of the same cruise. Link is below in my sig.

[Colorado Kat]

Wonderful review! Just today I booked the Liberty for early June. Can't wait! Any food where I don't have to cook it or clean up after it is good in my book. Remember, if you don't like something, you can always order something else.

[Nananoonie]

So, how did your girlfriend like the cruise? Is she hooked?

[Rottweiler Puppy]

So, how did your girlfriend like the cruise? Is she hooked?

 

She already wants to take one in December with the whole family. It might be possible. Debating VAlor, Glory, Liberty and NCL Star.

[deeron51]

Thanks so much for taking the time to write and post your review. Very much enjoying reading it - great job!

 

Will be celebrating my daughter's "sweet 16" on the Liberty in July with a group of 12 family and friends. I have cruised Legend before - this will be first time on Liberty. Also, we will have a few "first time cruisers" with us.

 

Glad to hear that you had a good time! I am always amazed by the constant complainers - it's VACATION people - it is what you make it!!!!

 

Thanks again.

 

Deena

[Kidsgoneletscruise]

Go hug your Freddie Funnel doll and go back to bed or something.

 

Funny! :D

 

ps.... great review. Very down to earth and realistic; the way things should be. :rolleyes:

[Dallen*]

Great review! Love the humor. :D

 

You and your GF can join us on the Valor Dec 11th!

We're considering Liberty in June 2012 for my daughter's 21st Bday, so thank you for taking the time to write the review and show a few pics.

[MyDogRudy]

Thank you for a great review. You're writing style is very engaging and entertaining. I will be cruising Liberty next January (although the Eastern itinerary) and am happy to hear you were so pleased with the service and the shows. I have cruised both the Glory and Valor and loved both of those ships, so either would be a good next choice IMHO.

[w8ing2cruz]

She already wants to take one in December with the whole family. It might be possible. Debating VAlor, Glory, Liberty and NCL Star.

 

Yup - she's hooked! I'd vote Liberty again - only do Eastern. You know the ship has GREAT staff and classy decor (at least to this cruiser's eyes). And, it's an awesome itinerary - lots of beach and a little history thrown in - something for everyone. Half Moon Cay is to die for, St. Thomas, San Juan and Grand Turk.

 

Your writing style is hilareous - LMAO about the 'lights out' situation in GC :D. Thanks for sharing your adventures - can't wait for the rest of the story!

[Rottweiler Puppy]

Sorry for the lack of updates. I still owe you guys another excursion. I will add in Ocho Rios soon. Just have been busy lately and only had time to post a couple of one sentence posts here and there.

 

I guess I can add in something while I am online. Some of you mentioned the Cruise Director and wanted my opinion so I will give it my best.

 

Jen Baxter was our Cruise Director for this sailing. While she is nowhere near as hot as Julie was from the Love Boat, she is certainly not an ugly woman. Then again I haven't found an ugly woman yet. Yeah I was hoping for Julie, but I would need to go to Fantasy Island for that to happen.

 

Truthfully I never really gave the Cruise Director much thought. Well I didn't think it would matter on my cruise, I mean just how much do you really have to hear and see them?

 

Whooboy. You DO hear Jen. And often. Please don't get me wrong, its not something that negatively affected my cruise overall, just one instance and I will get to that in a bit. For me the Cruise Director is just another person on the ship and wont matter to me. Now I have heard that Carnival likes to do announcements. A lot. Not to the point of insanity mind you but Jen wants to make people feel welcome and have fun and I feel she does a fine job at that for those interested in the things she offers.

 

Appearance wise I suspect she might be a Cindy Lauper fan. Thats what came to mind every-time I saw her.

 

Here is where I feel kind of bad. I don't meant to be negative but I need to be fair and relay my experience to keep things balanced as possible.

 

I have seen folks mention her announcements can be grating after a while. I agree. Not horrible, certainly could be worse but my only one negative experience with it was due to partly her voice and partly her timing. Both of which are beyond her control and I feel kind of bad for saying it was a negative at one point.

 

My girlfriend was at first ok with it as Jen speaks very clearly and thats a great thing given her role. I agreed with that point but there was just something about it. You know how some people have a unique voice? Cute and exotic at first, sort of a novelty? I will give examples but it might not be fair because many people are tired of the voices of the examples I will give. At first they were all a novelty and interesting at first as well. The likes Fran Drescher, Rosy Perez, umm Ethel Murman (sp?).

 

Basically you get my drift. Well Jen had a unique voice and way of speaking and to hear her often announcements the novelty wore off. For me anyway. Not something I loathed, I ended up chuckling most of the time. I know, bad bad RottPuppy.

 

Well it was all fun and games and cute until that one time. See, while in my opinion we had an awesome room, the speaker wasn't very far from our door. We were not to be spared any of Jens announcements. You might see where this is going. At times me and my girlfriend would "retire" to the cabin and spend some time together. While we are not married we have been together 9 years and we both have kids from previous marriages. 14-16-17-19. It was rare to get some adult alone time during the day. This cruise was time to make up for it.

 

Welllll one day we were , well you know. Getting all romantic and such and it was pretty quiet. Well up until the moment Jens announcement came on. I don't know what it was about but I can tell you she earned a new nickname with me. I don't know if I can say this here, if not can the Host remove the sentence? I really hate to speak so negatively but its a true story and true experience. All I can say is her voice mixed with the unfortunate timing earned her the name ..."b*ner killer" ....I substituted a letter with the * just in case its a no no word here. Well you get the idea.

 

Great woman, good at her job, just a unique voice you will love or hate.

 

I cant rate a human on the 1-5 scale. Sorry. Take from what I described and go with it. I think Nezmo described her much better than I did so please find his post here and click on his review. He was on the same cruise.

 

Anyway good night and hopefully I will get my Ocho Rios review up soon.

[Blasian]

I am loving your review so far. Great sense of humor.

---

We are sailing the Liberty in October but to the Eastern Carib. How were your days at sea? Where there a variety of activities or did you mostly chill by the pool?

[Rottweiler Puppy]

I am loving your review so far. Great sense of humor.

---

We are sailing the Liberty in October but to the Eastern Carib. How were your days at sea? Where there a variety of activities or did you mostly chill by the pool?

 

I spent my sea days mostly on the back top deck by the funnel getting some sun and or roaming the top decks with my binoculars looking for other ships. There were activities going on but I didn't pay much attention to them. I saw them later televised and it looked like everyone was having fun.

 

You will have a great time on a great ship.

[Rottweiler Puppy]

Sorry its been a while. I still owe you guys the rest of my review. Where was I? Oh yeah, Excursion #3. Ocho Rios.

 

Ocho Rios is the reason we chose this particular cruise and the reason we ended up on Carnival instead of other lines that a particular week. I told my girlfriend how cool it was to climb the falls in the past and she also has friends that go there and stay at all inclusive. Hedonism being one. Basically she was sold on Jamaica.

 

Now my experience was more than the falls. When I was there in the 80s with my brother and father, we got the rare opportunity to have a gang of about 100-200 armed thugs take over the part of Ocho Rios we were in while the cops did NOTHING. I cant blame them, they were outnumbered and out-gunned after all. Imagine drinking a beer at a nice bar outside and a double decker bus and a couple old Army truck pull up with 100+ armed dudes. All wearing a red bandanna and or sash, whooping it up and carrying on. Good thing our bartender was looking out for s and took is inside.

 

Anyway, besides the point really. That was the past and I didn't tell her about that. Me , bro and Dad were not the sharpest tools in the shed, we were always danger seekers and like life in the raw. Well used to. Yeah we left the tourist areas and went into town on our own. LOL.

 

Sorry, I kept talking about the past Ocho experience. So on to this one.

 

We got up bright and early to watch Jamaica come into view off the bow. Its a beautiful island for sure and my this is the best part of the trip. Watching my girlfriends face light up and glow with happiness as she was finally going to where she always wanted to. This cruise was her first time outside the US. I have been around the word, much in the military so it wasn't as exciting for me, but I really like to see folks enjoy new things. I really wish I got a pic of her face that AM.

 

Well we decided to eat in the Lido for some reason. I think it was because the previous day we ate in the Mdr for breakfast and the eggs Benedict were absolutely crap. Worst ever. Anyway, we ate on the lido inside and had a nice window seat to watch up dock. I must say, much of it looked the same. The same pier, the same factory dumpy looking building with the Ocho Rios mowed into the hillside. What was different though was they built a little shopping area at the end of the dock parking lot and there was also a big tent for the excursions.

 

--pic of port through the window while we ate

 

 

This is the only Carnival sponsored excursion I booked as well, Its OchoRios. The place is a bong hit away from being Port Au Prince Haiti ,IMHO , as far as the locals go anyway. Scratch that, Haitians take no for an answer.

 

Getting off the ship was easy. I don't remember any goofy photo op shenanigans while getting off, but there might have been. Maybe a pasty white guy in a faux deadlock wig to get pics with or something. I didn't pay too much attention as it wasn't as corny as the zombie pirate in Cozumel.

 

Since we had a Carnival tour we were directed to the tent to wait. Now we booked the Dolphin Cove Ultimate Beach Bash Somethingsomething. It was a climb at the falls, followed by a “private” beach with shopping and all you can eat food, rum punch and beer. Figured it was a good deal since it included food and I read reviews that there was lots of food. Please don't think I am a gluttonous pig. I just like the bargain of not worrying about going hungry or going into town to get food. No way in hell I was going into town with her. Not without a weapon, not after last time anyway.

 

Dolphin Cove Toursewhatevertheyarecallaed evidently offers different tours. They use different colored wristbands to denote what part you were. Some were falls only, some were falls and shopping only, some were both + the beach. Some were dolphin swim, some for the shark encounter, some were the bong scraping academy tour, splits rolling classes, etc.

 

We all got herded onto the shuttle bus and the driver explained we were going to the falls then shopping then back to the ship if we wanted. For a little bit I was thinking we were on the wrong bus but we weren't. All Dolphin Cove Tour folks ride the same shuttles. Once to the top I was told that my group with blue wrist bands were going to the beach club after the falls. Hurray, we weren't in the wrong tour after-all.

 

Our falls guide was Milton Shaw and a buddy of his. Great guys. While the herds were flailing on the left side of the falls (easy side) they took us up the right side. No crowds and backups. It was considerably steeper and harder but thats the best part. One due was following our group and filming it for purchase later. All were very helpful and even took pics with our camera for us. While it was definitely more crowded that it was when I was there in the 80s, going up the right side helped alleviate congestion.

 

--lookin down the falls---

 

 

As we climbed a nice woman from Trinidad had a death grip on me and told my girlfriend, “sorry lady, I am not letting him go today” She was a very funny person and her husband were very nice. We met up with them later at the beach.

 

Go got to the top, I tipped our guides as they totally deserved it. We then went to buy the video. What a pain in the arse. Well getting toe the place to buy it was. One vender was at first pushy but he was a damn good salesman. He should come to the States and sell cars. If I still worked that business, I would hire him in a heartbeat. Now I felt kind of bad, I didn't have much moment and really didn't want any of his useless junk but he cut through the BS with me. He said “How about this, I am juts a local man trying to earn by selling things I put time into.” I can dig that, problem is I only had $5 to spend at that point. I asked him if he had anything for $5 and he said no. I gave him a the $5 and told him to have a beer on me as he earned as least that. Dude was my best friend after that. He walked us past the other vendors so and told them to stay away, he got us to the buses. Cool guys. Stoned out of his mind but still very nice.

 

The next option with the tour was to go downtown shopping if we wanted, or go to the beach club. We opted for the beach club.

 

It was nice. No outside vendors allowed in, had a nice set up for the dolphins area, the stingray area and the shark area. All in one little bay. We weren't doing the others. If we want to see dolphins we go to Sanibel at home and have them play in the wake of our boat, sharks were nurse sharks (boring) and we already did stingrays at Grand Cayman.

 

We decided to grab a couple loungers halfway in the shade and on the waters edge. The water was OK. Not much to see under water except a few wild Red Stripe bottle rolling along the bottom of the little man made bay. A still refreshing to take a dip. I was putting my camera away when I saw a woman having a hard time getting out of the water. The sand kind of dips down like a ledge and she was fairly heavy and a bit more aged than I am. She remembered me from the Liberty as she ate at our table one night. At dinner she never seemed happy and was complaining about the food, the pools etc. Some here would call her a troll if she came here and posted her review I bet.

 

Well I remember her as well and I didn't want her to have a totally bummer of a trip, well that and I believe in chivalry. You women got the bad deal, I think the least we guys can do it give you some extra courtesy. I know I wouldn't want to go through what you guys do monthly. Well she made up up onto shore safely and asked if there was another part where there were less rocks and and easier way in. I walked he over and walked in with her and then left. She seemed dot be having a better time anyway.

 

The food was great and the jerk sauce was awesome. Got the eyebrows burning a bit and really tasted great. Now I don't drink beer often as I mentioned before. A 6 pack can last months in my refrigerator but since it was included, and I like Red Stripe, I had a couple. My girlfriend had a couple rum punches and we ate well.

 

--some slob pigging out, put a damn shirt on dude--

 

Activities were starting and the first contest was a drinking contest. They needed 5 men for the contest. OK here is where I am a little embarrassed. I entered. Everyone at home was shocked when we told them I entered the drinking contest. Al we had to do was down 2 cups of beer. Not a hard thing to do. While I don't drink often, I did pick up some skills in the Army. I drank for free back then because people would always challenge me and my fire team to drinking contests and folks bought the beers just to watch up slam them. I knew I would be a bit rusty and I was. But I was still confident I could win this.

 

My girlfriend was laughing her butt off when she saw me volunteer. She said “OK Mr. We Still Have Beer From Christmas in the Fridge”

 

Other romantic types try and win their girlfriends something by tossing rings onto a bottle at a fair, or popping gallons or knocking down milk jugs. Nope, not this romeo. I am gonna gulp down 2 beers like how a Paratrooper know best. I was up against a 3 Canadians and the guy from Trinidad. I had to represent the US in this glorious debut of skill and intelligence.

 

 

--idiotic skills on display-- video--

 

edited, ok I messed up the upload, will try again in a different post

 

 

Well that was fun. Not as fast as the old days but evidently enough to get my girl a prize t shirt anyway.

 

Next up was a booty shaking contest. Now get this. My girlfriend HATES being put on the spot abut for some unfortunate reason, anywhere we go, she always ends up being the target of unfortunate timing and over enthusiastic participants. The nice woman from Trinidad who we went up the falls with grabbed her by the arm and volunteered her as well. The contest was pretty fumy because my girl has no rhythm but she tried. The 3 Canadian women hardly tried it seemed but they at least did try.

 

I was evident Miss Trinidad was going to win but I had to cheer my lady. At the end it was up to the crowd to decide. I did cheer for all the women. I found it odd the Canadian womens husbands weren't sheering them on. What the heck guys? Being a former Canadian I cheered them on as well anyway. Someone had to. I lowered my cheers for my girl though. If she won and it it was because I cheered too loud, she would have been super embarrassed. Well Miss Trinidad won but my girl did get 2nd place price. Some green cloth shopping bag. LOL I do have video I can use for blackmail purposes. Her daughter ran out of the room when we showed the the video once we got home. They might need therapy I think. Scarred for life.

 

We walked around the “resort' a bit, samples a ton of rum. I actually got as little buzz from the beer and the multiple shots of rum I sampled. I did manage to get attacked by the local wildlife though.

 

-feeding the local wildlife--

 

Getting back on the ship was a breeze, they scanned our bag and we even told the there was a bottle of rum in it and were ready to turn in. I don't think he was paying attention as didn't care or even mention where to bring it. The let us on anyway and we took it to our room.

 

I sat up on the top deck with my trusty binoculars to watch the stragglers do the “oh sh*t” jog down the pier as they were late. Quite a few folks doing that. Love it when the whole ship is cheering on the runners as they make a dash for the ship.

 

Well that concludes my review I think. Well unless something comes to mind later that I feel may be of importance or possible helpful to someone in the future.

 

Thank you all for reading and bearing with me through this. Again sorry its spaced out and late. I do hope you found it helpful to some degree.

 

Please ask any questions you may have.

[Rottweiler Puppy]

oh what the heck, a couple more pics

 

 

The beach we stayed at in Ochio Rios. We were near the end of the blue chairs under the shade. Well my girlfriends chair was under the shade, me? not so much.

 

Shark at the beach club. Evidently you can do a thing where you get in the water with them. Harmless sharks unless you are a lobster or a crab. I did say boring but honestly, I kind of wanted to jump in with em.

 

End of day getting back to the ship.

[Nanaimobound]

Thanks for you review! I like your style.

[BettyPC]

Great review - very funny (strawberries). Thanks for sharing!

[Rottweiler Puppy]

Thanks for your kind comments.

 

 

Anyhow, now for the shameful video of a has been 42 yr old trying to act like he was young again.

 

View My Video

[CanWeGoYet?]

Thanks for your kind comments.

 

 

Anyhow, now for the shameful video of a has been 42 yr old trying to act like he was young again.

 

View My Video

 

 

LOL! Good job. :)

[Dallen*]

Thanks for your kind comments.

 

 

Anyhow, now for the shameful video of a has been 42 yr old trying to act like he was young again.

 

View My Video

 

DANG! You're good! :)

Thanks for representin' the USA ... AND all us 40 somethings!! :D

[alexieb]

:D

 

I agree, room service coffee was usually hideous.

 

Glad most of the cruise was good. I love the production shows too.

 

Nice review, I'm looking forward to the rest of it.

 

 

People on this site are always saying that Carnival reads these things (you especially see it on the booze smuggling threads). So, if that is the case and Carnival does read it, you'd think they'd do something about the coffee situation. SO many people complain about how bad the coffee is, and I totally agree.

[Buffalofirsttimer4]

Even though we are taking the Eastern on Liberty-this was a great read and I thank you for taking the time to give your funny and honest opinions!

 

Happy sailing :D