Carnival Freedom Review, It was Amazing !!!

[chipq]

Thanks for sharing your cruise with us. Was a great read.

 

http://luv2cruise.blogspot.com

[l8cruiser]

My husband and I are each other's second time around...and we will be on this ship November 3rd. You two make a cute pair! Subscribing to your review. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

 

Thank You, Teresa is my sweetheart from 30 years ago. I used to bag groceries in a grocery store in Georgian. Teresa would come in the store to buy one item at a time so she could see me. I tell her all the time, I should have married her.

 

I will continue my review tonight after work. Too much to type on tapatalk. Have a good day

 

Losing my cruiseginity Sept.16 ,2012 "Chuck"

[Ramrac]

So excited to read your review! We are taking the same cruise in 2 and a half weeks. This will be my 4th cruise but my 1st on the Freedom. Hope you guys had a good time!

[raytownlady]

Your's and Teresa's story is so sweet; Thanks for sharing with us!

[SMSACE6]

I8Cruiser, I hope you are just busy, and have not given up on the rest of your review. Looking forward to hearing more about your cruise. :)

[lazydayz]

Can't wait for the rest of your review. We are sailing on the Freedom on Sunday. Thanks.

[Doug910]

...Great writing style. I love to read about someone's first cruise and all the excitement in their "voice". Welcome..... to the addiction!

[madeleinedaichou]

I just had to post and say how cute y'all are!! I think it's so cool how you reconnected...seems like it was meant to be.

[GAMOM4]

Loving the review! We are going on this same cruise May 26th so I am really interested in the information you are typing! This will be our first time to Jamaica and I am kind of nervous about that......don't think the Dunn's River thing would be something I am interested in. Keep posting & post lots of pictures :)

[l8cruiser]

Well I have had some bad luck typing my review this week. The reason it has taken me so long is I accidentally erased an hours worth of review. I type slow with two fingers. After typing for an hour, I hit the backspace key and lost everything I had typed. I got discouraged and went to bed.

 

OK it's our first day and we have our whole week ahead of us. All of the planning and worrying has paid off. We head to the lido deck for lunch. We are carrying our bags with wine, champagne "mimosas" , cokes etc. We walk through the lido buffet in awe.There is food everywhere. We can't decide on what to eat first. Teresa gets fish and chips.The fish and chips is up the stairs beside the statue of liberty in lido buffet. I get a grilled Reuben sandwich from the grill. Both of our lunches were great. The fish has too much breading but still is good.

 

After lunch we go back to the lido pool and have a seat. Instead of the DOD, we ordered a Kiss On The Lips and a Miami Vice. I read that they both were very good. They were good for a frozen drink. Teresa liked them but I thought they were too sweet. After a week, my favorite drinks were Long Island Iced Tea, Margarita and Corona. We enjoyed our drinks while waiting on muster drill. We sat there people watching and excited like little kids waiting on the cruise to begin.

 

At 2:00 , we go to our cabin. Our cabin is ready. We drop off our bags and look around our cabin. We had cabin 7340 on the mid empress deck. We got a balcony cabin. We walked out on the balcony to check out our view. It was awesome. There is plenty of storage. There are drawers and shelves throughout the cabin. We had his and hers closets. Our luggage arrived early. We placed our clothes in the closet and drawers. We placed our empty luggage on the bed. We brought and over the door hanger, but did not need it. There are plenty of shelves in the bathroom to hold everything. One shelf for my personal items and 9 shelves for Teresa"s lol. On the back of the cabin door is a map and muster directions for muster. Now we have everything unpacked and are ready for muster and sail away.

 

It was now 3:30 and I was worrying that muster was going to run into sail away. Since this was my first cruise, I did not want to miss sail away. Finally at 3:50, they call for muster drill. We go to our station.

 

I will post and continue so I do not lose everything I have typed if I hit the wrong key.

[l8cruiser]

We make our way to muster drill. I hope this does not take long as we want to see sail away. We also are supposed to meet Roll Call friends after muster at the aft lido bar. Just like I read, we get packed in like sardines at muster drill. We are waiting on late comers and it is getting hot. They go through the safety procedures. Teresa is asking me if those little life boats are really going to hold all these people in the event of an emergency. I said sure but thinking the same thing myself. After standing there for a while, someone yells for help. An elderly woman faints because of the heat. They take her inside for some cooler air. Finally we are released and head for the aft lido bar for roll call meet and greet.

 

I ordered a margarita from the bar. I watch as the bartender places one overflowing shot of Tequila in the mixer and and then shocked as he adds another one :eek:. Wow, this was a great margarita. We meet our roll call friends. By this time, I have a permanent smile and a slight slur in my speech. I am feeling good and happy to be there lol. We met some nice people. I recommend joining a roll call. We got some great advice and discounts on excursions from our new found friends. It was good to know people as we passed them on the decks of Freedom.

 

I gotta stop for a minute. Teasa smells something burning in the house.:eek:

[mom22tinks]

Great review....can't wait to read more....what was burning??

[l8cruiser]

Ok I am back. It was just the vacuum cleaner burning. I also had to work on some of my honey do list.

We went up to the top deck and waited. At about 4:10, the big beautiful Freedom sounded it's horn. We could see the dock ropes being hauled in. Everybody was happy , singing, smiling and dancing. After my strong drinks, I had a permanent smile on my face. I watched as Freedoms side propulsion churned up the water. Slowly Freedom began inching away from the pier. We were off on our journey. The big ship backed up into the channel and then started out to sea. Our first day was off to a great start. All of our planning and worrying had paid off. Our vacation had started with no problems. We were on "cloud nine" because we had the whole week ahead of us.

After sail away, Teresa and I explored the ship. I could not believe how clean the Freedom is. There is someone always cleaning 24/7. The whole week, we did not even find one piece of paper on any restroom floor, on the entire ship. If someone sets down a couple anywhere, it is picked up within minutes.

I have heard mixed reviews on the color scheme of Freedom. It reminds me of a kaleidoscope. I don’t believe there are any matching colors anywhere on this ship. There are a zillion lights everywhere. Even though the colors are weird, I LIKE IT. We liked everything about Freedom except maybe the layout. After a week on Freedom, we still got turned around.

Well now it was about 5:00 on our first day. We had early dining at 6. We had to go back to our cabin to get ready for dinner. I got ready in 5 minutes. It took Teresa nearly an hour. After asking me which outfit and shoes , she settled on one. I told her the first outfit looked great, but she changed anyway lol.

We had to make our way down to Posh dining which is on the third and fourth deck aft. Our cabin is on the seventh deck. You would think that you just take the elevator down the third floor and walk to the rear, WRONG. You had to go down to deck five and walk through the casino to the aft of the ship. Once you arrived to the aft , you then had to go down to deck 3 to reach the Posh Dining.

We found our table. It was a table for four guest. After a couple of minutes our dining mates arrived. Their names were John and Carmen from Savannah , Ga. We lucked up with great dinner mates. We enjoyed have dinner with them on our cruise. Our head waiter Kris came over and introduced himself. He already had our names written down. I liked the way he pronounced Teresa as Terezza.

I ordered the tiger shrimp cocktail. I was expecting huge tiger shrimp. I was served six small pinky shrimp. I guess I could have ordered another serving but didn’t. For my main course, I had the flat iron steak with baked potato. It was tender and delicious. Teresa had the grilled tilapia. She said the fish was good. For dessert, I had the chocolate melting cake and Teresa had cheese cake. The chocolate melting cake was rich and delicious. The cheese cake was the jello type and was just ok.

Well gotta go for now. Teresa has dinner ready.

[SMSACE6]

Glad you are back! and looking forward to more of your great review! Yes I know how that is with the backspace and losing so much work:(. So I hope you have better luck from now on. I could never figure out how to describe the decor on the ship, but kaleidoscope works!:D I really did like that ship, and had an awesome cruise.:)

[l8cruiser]

During dinner, our hostess delivered our drink coupons. I placed the coupons in my shirt pocket. We said good night to our dinner mates. We decided to go up to the top deck to walk off dinner. There are some steps behind the aft bar that leads up to the top deck. At the top of the stairs, there is an enclosed glass enclosure that keeps wind and rain off the stairwell. When we stepped out of the glass enclosure and onto the open deck, we were hit with a blast of wind. The wind had to be blowing 30 to 35 mph. The wind caught my drink coupons and I watched in horror as a hundred dollar’s worth of drink coupons blew overboard. Teresa said what do we do now. We went down to the purser’s desk. We told them what happened. They said that they do not have anything to do with the drink coupons. They told me to go back and see the hostess in Posh dining. We made are way up, down, up and down back to Posh. We told the hostess what happened. She made a phone call. She then told us that the coupons would be replaced the next night. They could tell that we had not used any of the coupons because they are individually numbered. We were very thankful and headed back to our cabin.

We checked out the Carnival Fun Times to see what we could do that night. The shows and karaoke did not start for another couple of hours. We were very tired and had a long day. We decided to hang out on our balcony and call it an early night. We were enjoying the solitude of our balcony until we heard this disgusting sound coming from a couple balconies over. This guy was coughing, hacking and spitting over the railing. He was out there smoking. The smoking did not bother us. It was the constant coughing, hacking up and spitting that was disgusting. So we went back inside and shut the door. We had to turn up the volume to drown out Mr. Hacker.

We filled out the room service door card. We ordered coffee for two and a couple of Danishes. I requested 6:00 to 6:30 delivery. That night we could only feel a gentle rocking of the ship. We had a long day and slept well. At 5:45 we awake to a knocking on the door. I jumped up and through on some shorts. I answered the door. It was room service with our morning coffee. It was Monday morning and we were in the port of Key West. Our plan was to have coffee on the balcony and go to breakfast later.

We were enjoying coffee on the balcony and watching the sunrise. It was a great morning. The coffee was actually pretty good. Teresa is a coffee snob and she liked it to. All of a sudden, we here this sound again like someone is being choked to death. Mr. Hacker is back. There goes the neighborhood. Try enjoying a Danish with someone beside you coughing and hacking up lord knows what. We went back inside and left Mr. Hacker out on his balcony.

We were supposed to meet Matt and Kelley in the lobby for a tour of Key West. We met Matt and Kelley on our roll call meet and greet. Matt had reserved a four seater electric car. Another couple was also joining Matt and Kelley. I told Matt that we would rent a car also and follow them. Matt said that he would change the reservation to a six seater. We met up with Matt and Kelley. We walked off the ship and into Key West. We waited on the rental company van to pick us up and take us to the electric car rental store. They showed up and we all piled in. Well after Matt signed his life away we were off. Matt and Kelley gave us a great tour of Key West. It was nice of them to show us around. This is another reason to join your roll call. We met some nice people and had a great time.

We did the touristy things of Key West. Went to the most southern point for a photo opt. We drove by beautiful beaches, The Hemmingway House and even a iguana filled grave yard. We had lunch at Sloppy Joes. I had the conch fritters. Teresa and I also split a fish taco. We washed all this down with margaritas. Sloppy Joes was a good place for lunch. We walked down the street to Kermit’s Key lime Pie shop. We all got one of the frozen key lime pies on a stick. It was Deeeeelicious !!!!. After lunch we said goodbye to our gang. We checked out some of the shops on Duvall St before heading back to the ship. We wanted to hang out on the deck and look out for “pier runners”. We did not see any. I guess everybody behaved themselves in Key West and kept track of time.

We had to go back to our cabin to get ready for early dining. We were beginning to dislike early dining. We had to cut short our day to get ready for dinner. Well not me, it only takes me 5 minutes. It takes Teresa longer to try on different outfits. I sit there and be a judge while she models the different clothes lol. While Teresa finishes getting ready , I go out on the balcony to watch us leaving Key West behind. Luckily, Mr. Hacker is off hacking somewhere else

Well I will take a break from reviewing for now. I will upload a few Key West photos. Good Night, Chuck

[l8cruiser]

Teresa and Chuck in Key West.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[l8cruiser]

Our six seater electric car. We had a blast riding around K W .

[l8cruiser]

I dont know what this was. :D

[l8cruiser]

[l8cruiser]

[l8cruiser]

Freedom at Key West

[funinthesun1964]

Thanks for doing this review, we are less than a month away from our Freedom cruise and I am getting excited for it!

 

I'll be watching for more updates!

[MickCruiser]

I dont know what this was. :D

 

It's Key West!! :-) if you go there a week before Halloween (ie Fantasy Feast), you can see a lot more!

[ERNLYN]

Its nice to view the cruise experience thru the eyes of a first time cruiser. It makes me realize after a dozen of more cruises how much we take for granted and expect....

I get so charged up and want on the ship with them.... :)

[kcparrothead]

I hope you're just busy and didn't end your review here! Waiting to hear about the rest of your week!! :)