FOS Review - Eastern Caribbean, 9/9/2012

[erniebert]

I can't believe it's only a week and a half since we got off the ship - feels like it was a lifetime ago already! It was our first cruise, we had booked it as part of our honeymoon and we loved it! Already trying to figure out if we can do a TA or a B2B or something so we get longer onboard next time! Unfortunately (in terms of cruising) we live in Ireland so it's a bit of a trek over to the US for any itineraries over there, but I'm sure we'll manage something!!

 

Day 1 - Embarkation Day

 

We were collected from our hotel in Orlando by Belagio Limos. We had ordered a town car for both legs of the journey, and it worked out at $246 return, inclusive of tip. It may seem a little steep for some but it worked out great for us as we didn't want to hire a car, and because it was our honeymoon we wanted everything to be nice and relaxing and hassle-free. This way door to door we didn't have to worry about anything. Anyway we got a nice surprise when a stretch limo turned up in the town cars place - apparently they use the TCs for local jobs so if they're busy the limos get the port jobs. We ordered the car for 10, he was there about 9.50 and very quickly we were on our way! It was a wet morning in Orlando so we were glad to get going, and so looking forward to getting on Freedom!

 

We arrived at Port Canaveral just after 11am, porters quickly sorted our bags and we were in the terminal building before we had time to catch our breaths. We got through security very quickly, and there was no queue to check in. So with sea pass cards in hands we stepped onto Freedom at about 11.40, practically jumping up and down with excitement!

 

It was quiet on board so we had a good look around - wandered up and down the promenade, checked out the casino and the karaoke bar. Thanks to Cruise Critic we knew about the cabanas on Cococay and went to the Explorations desk to enquire about one. They had one standard sized one left so we got it! We stopped off at the guest relations desk to get our sea pass cards punched for our lanyards before settling down in the library to read our books for half an hour until the rooms were ready. The library is on Deck 7 and has nice views over the promenade from the row of seats in the front.

Deck 4

Casino entrance from The Promenade - funnily enough hubby found this straight away :D

The promenade nice and quiet

[zee909]

Love the pictures. Can't wait for the rest of your review. Thanks for posting.

[erniebert]

Just after 1pm the rooms were ready so we went to check it out, and to dump our carry on bags. We were in cabin 6552 - category E2 Deluxe oceanview stateroom with balcony. I have to say it was worth the extra for us, the room seemed huge in comparison to what we expected of a cruise cabin! We never had any issues with space at all, once we'd unpacked and left our cases under the bed. I would have no hesitation in recommending this room, and would book it again if (when) we return to Freedom. It was very near the forward elevators so was very convenient (if we remembered what elevators to take, which was rare!). It was also 83 paces to Sorrentos (we counted one night after a few too many Love Connection cocktails!) so very handy for filling up our soda cups and getting a sneaky slice or two of pizza if we were feeling a bit peckish!

 

The lonnnnnnnnnnng corridor we walked down countless times when we came up at the wrong end of deck 6 - we almost had it fully figured out by the end of the week. Thankfully some people had nicely decorated doors on the corridor so there was something to look at while trudging to our room

 

Our balcony - I loved it! I particularly enjoyed coming out here for sailaway from St Thomas and St Maarten, it was so nice and peaceful. When we met our lovely cabin steward Susan she was able to get us a lounger for the balcony, but just the one

 

[Familygoboston]

Following along!

First- congratulations on your marriage- second, I do recall reading questions here from the "Irish honeymooners", probably you folks- so it will be fun to see how it turned out:D

[Ren1216]

Funny... "Oh, goodie!" were my thoughts too! Very anxious to read the rest of your review. Great start! :)

[sheilb4]

Great review so far! I return to my lovely Freedom in just 10 days! Can't wait.

Btw, where in Ireland are you from.... Nearly all my family are over there!

Still my most favorite country in the world.... :)

[lemonade-sails]

Loving the review and the pictures. Please keep it coming!!

[erniebert]

So after we checked out our room we headed to the Windjammer for lunch - it was busy but not packed as a lot of people were finished their lunch and gone to explore. Oh my God - the amount of food!! I walked round in a daze for 10 minutes trying to decide what I wanted - then ended up with almost a bit of everything. Ok not quite, but it was a strange assortment of food on my plate that day! I was surprised by the quality of the food in the WJ - everything was tasty and hot. The only complaint I'd have is how hot some of the serving spoons etc got - it was difficult enough spooning linguini onto the plate without playing hot potato with the spoon! Anyway that's not a real complaint, more an observation. Even here the staff were great, very quick to clear tables, offer to get you more drinks etc.

 

Bellies full we headed up to the sports deck to have a look around. There were some people on the FlowRider already so stayed to watch for a few minutes. I had been toying with having a go before I saw it in action but once I saw it I quickly changed my mind - I prefer gentler activities and decided the hot tub would be more my kinda place.

 

The mini golf was nice and quiet so we decided to have a quick game - I lost miserably! It was great fun and such a novelty to be playing it on a boat!

 

Victorious!

 

We also played a game of table tennis - turns out we're both rubbish at it! It was quite windy so we decided to call it a day after himself had to run down to the deck below to get the ball I had sent bouncing down the stairs :o

 

Checked out the climbing wall and the sports court as well - this was as close as we got to them all week

 

[erniebert]

Following along!

First- congratulations on your marriage- second, I do recall reading questions here from the "Irish honeymooners", probably you folks- so it will be fun to see how it turned out:D

 

Thank you :) It probably was us - we got totally hooked on Cruise Critic before we went, and now are just as hooked on cruising!

 

Great review so far! I return to my lovely Freedom in just 10 days! Can't wait.

Btw, where in Ireland are you from.... Nearly all my family are over there!

Still my most favorite country in the world.... :)

 

We're from Maynooth - a small town in Kildare, about 35 minutes from Dublin :)

 

It's after midnight here so heading to bed, will pick up tomorrow. Don't worry the other days won't be as long, I got lazy at taking pictures!

[sheilb4]

Thank you :) It probably was us - we got totally hooked on Cruise Critic before we went, and now are just as hooked on cruising!

 

 

 

We're from Maynooth - a small town in Kildare, about 35 minutes from Dublin :)

 

It's after midnight here so heading to bed, will pick up tomorrow. Don't worry the other days won't be as long, I got lazy at taking pictures!

 

 

Look forward to the rest... All my gang are in Co Kerry...Tralee area... :)

Miss home.....

[vivavegas]

Really enjoying your review and photos! Thanks for sharing them with us!:)

[wolfganghowell]

Looking forward to more - glad you had fun and congratulations!

[erniebert]

So where were we...

 

It was soon time for the safety drill - my least favourite part of the cruise but thankfully it didn't take too long :) Funnily enough the person I was standing beside in the line was also Irish, what were the chances?! It only took about half an hour - was quite funny as the Disney ship that was also in port was having their drill too and it almost seemed as though the two ships were talking to each other with their horns! We all had a giggle which broke the boredom of standing in line and then it was over.

 

We went up onto the pool deck for sailaway and the party was good fun. I think it was Marvin, the activities director, was very good and the Dreamworks characters were a nice fun addition. I didn't like how pushy they were being at selling drinks before and during the sailaway party and was worried it would be like that the whole time but in fairness it was only that day. It was really exciting leaving port and waving to all the people on the shore, and then that was it - we were on our way to Cococay!

 

The ladies from the spa had been giving out raffle tickets for spa credit so I headed off to the gym for the draw while my husband went to have a look at some of the gaming classes in the casino. Unfortunately I didn't win but fortunately he didn't lose anything so we met back up in the cabin later no better or worse off!

 

We had chosen Mytime Dining and had a reservation for 7.30pm that evening so headed to the main dining room. We had a table for 2, although we had specified in our booking that we would prefer to be seated at a larger table. It was fine though as the tables were quite close together so we still got chatting to others seated in our areas. We had the good fortune to be seated with the fabulous wait team of Colleen and Josefino. I cannot recommend Colleen enough - she was superb. She would chat with us about the menu, showed an interest in what type of day we had had, where we were from, congratulated us on our wedding - just showed a real desire to give a great experience. What we also liked is she would give a little summary of what was happening the next day and any little tips she had etc. Josefino was so friendly, and very generous with the bread rolls :p ( I LOVED the sourdough ones, and he got to know that so would give me 2 at a time and then try to get me to sample some of the other ones!). Also myself and my husband had the soda package and our soft drink of choice was Coke with no ice - we wouldn't even have quite finished a glass and the next one was there, and right every time (used to have to specify no ice everytime/send back ones with ice everywhere else). Just small things but they make a difference!

 

We didn't go to the show that night, but heard mixed reports, so didn't feel like we had missed anything. Instead we just wandered around checking everywhere out and soaking up the atmosphere. There was a dreamworks parade that night too but we didn't go to that this time either (had to leave some things for next time haha). So we headed off to bed, and that was the end of day one!

[erniebert]

Day 2 - Cococay

 

So we woke up on our first morning on board, bounded out of bed and ran out onto the balcony to catch see our first Caribbean island - Cococay!

 

We went and had a quick breakfast in the Windjammer and headed down to deck 2 to get a tender over to Cococay about 8.30am. There wasn't much of a queue, and we were on the island by 9am. I was reassured to see the tenders are actually quite substantial, I wasn't sure what to expect and am a bit nervous of small boats!

 

We headed to our cabana - very much worth the $120 in our opinion - we're possibly the fairest people you could ever meet, burn in minutes in the sun and so needed plenty of shade. The loungers were really comfy, we got 4 bottles of water in a bucket of ice, there was a bar just for people in the cabanas so there were no queues (and Roger the barman was really good fun!), but even better was the upgraded buffet! It was only for people in the cabanas so again there were no queues, and the steak was amazing! There was plenty of choices and everything was cooked really well - it was delicious. There was a little bit of a walk to the beach but only 2/3 minutes so that wasn't really an issue. I was a bit freaked out by all the tiny fish in the shallow water but I just followed hubby out in his jetstream so he had to deal with them :o The water was gorgeous and so warm (very different from shivering in the Irish sea I can tell you that much!). We took a tender back at around 2 as the wind was building up and it was getting a bit annoying!

 

Cabana

 

View of the ship from the cabana

 

Arriving into Cococay

 

Back at the boat

 

Sailing away from Cococay

[Ren1216]

Great review and pics so far! Thanks for sharing this with us :)

[funfamilyof6]

Great review so far!!! :)

[jimbri]

Enjoying your review!

[LissyTx]

Thank you :) It probably was us - we got totally hooked on Cruise Critic before we went, and now are just as hooked on cruising!

 

 

 

We're from Maynooth - a small town in Kildare, about 35 minutes from Dublin :)

 

It's after midnight here so heading to bed, will pick up tomorrow. Don't worry the other days won't be as long, I got lazy at taking pictures!

 

 

We met you on the cruise! We saw each other several times in the casino and a few other places. (Check out my review to see a pic of the hubby and me - hopefully you remember us!) I didn't stumble upon the boards on Cruise Critic until a few days before the cruise - probably a good thing because I am hooked on reading them now!

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1710311

[chipq]

Congratulations and what a great way to have a honeymoon. Love the pictures. Thank you for sharing.

 

http://luv2cruise.blogspot.com

[Wriggler]

Loving this review - we're on FOS in 3 weeks (as is Ren who's already posted)

 

I've subscribed so I don't miss any more of these fabulous pictures. Also in 2 minds whether to book a cabana for Coco Cay...my family is Irish (from Waterford) and my only hope is too join up my freckles into some sort of tan...my boys on the other hand tan beautifully so it'll be in the cabana and the boys in the water...would you suggest it just for me to use? Very tempted by the upgraded buffet though - that would certainly appeal to the boys too...:)

[SlimChance]

Hi there!

 

Love the review and pics so far. We were on our first cruise on Freedom in November and are going again in January, like ye, we fell in love with it :).

We did western last year, it was so much fun so have booked Eastern for Jan so thanks a mill for the pics and info on the cabanas as we were thinking of doing the same, just hope we will be on board on time to book one! Cant wait to hear about what you did on the other islands!

 

Aoife.

[KirkNC]

Thanks for the review!