October 6, 2012 8 Day Carnival Freedom Review

[alreadypacked]

This was my 14th cruise on Carnival, my 21st cruise overall, and my 3rd time on the Freedom. I traveled with two other gals, making this the 10th year for our annual fall cruise. Feel free to ask any questions, and I will do my best to answer.

 

Embarkation

 

Arrived at Port Everglades at 11:00am. My husband dropped us off, as we are locals. This time they gave us our sail and sign card first, then we went through security. No line at either place—walked right up. Surprisingly, beyond the check-in counter and security checkpoint, the main terminal waiting area was already crowded at this time. We were directed to the VIP waiting area upstairs, which was also already pretty crowded (In Miami, arriving at this time usually means no crowds at all. Lots of VIFP’s and VIP’s on this sailing I think.). Wait wasn’t too long though, and we stepped foot on the ship at 11:40 am.

 

Two of us carried all our bags on with no problem. We each brought a bottle of wine. One brought a 1.5 liter (the other two were 750 ml) and no one batted an eye. Went to Lido for lunch. No line for Mongolian Wok, and it was delicious as always. At 12:55, I went down to see if our room was ready while the girls watched the bags, and it was.

 

Muster drill was quick and easy this time—only 10 minutes from the time we arrived until the time we were dismissed.

 

Food/Dining Room/Buffet

 

Had 8:15pm dining in the Posh, seated at a booth for just the 3 of us. Our servers Ratna and Gil were excellent and very nice. Maitre d made an announcement regarding acceptable dining room dress code & said he’d ask folks in beach attire, men in basketball shorts or sleeveless shirts to change. Don’t remember them ever making such an announcement before. Despite maitre d’s warning about dress code, we did see one young woman in shorts and flip flops on elegant night. All others we saw on elegant night were dressed appropriately. Unfortunately on the last night, we saw a guy wearing a T-shirt that said, “I may be fat but I have a big d*ck.” Luckily, these were aberrations. We even wondered if he may have been with the aforementioned shorts-wearing girl, as we saw them near each other this night. But like I said, an aberration.

 

I’ll preface by saying food is very subjective. Add to that the fact that I have seen quite a few changes in the food over the 10 years that I have been sailing Carnival, which may affect my opinion. But I’ll give you my honest take on it.

 

The first night I had the tomato soup with croutons which was very good. Caesar salad very good, as always. Had the dessert cheese platter as an appetizer—very good (thanks cc members for making me aware that this can be ordered as an appetizer!). Ordered the fried chicken tenders merely out curiosity, as I had seen from photos recently posted on cruise critic that they had not been up to the usual standard, as the breading was thickly caked on. This held true. They seemed like frozen chicken tenders instead of the tasty lightly breaded (hand-breaded?) ones they used to have. Had the Indian vegetarian entrée, which was very tasty.

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On night two, I had the dessert cheese platter for appetizer again, pumpkin soup, spaghetti carbonara appetizer, and prime rib—all good! One small observation was that the spaghetti carbonara had a slightly less robust flavor and less creamy texture than previously, but was still pretty good. From this point forward, our servers Ratna and Gil always had my cheese platter waiting for me, but my one complaint is that they brought out the subsequent courses a little fast. Sometimes, I was being handed another plate (or two) while I was still working on my current dish.

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October 8 dinner: Dessert cheese platter as appetizer (already on the table for me), had the French onion soup which was good. I ordered the chicken and black bean quesadilla, which was basically a black bean quesadilla, as I could barely find any chicken in it. I think I had something else but I forget what it was, and had the warm chocolate melting cake for dessert, which was very good.

 

October 9 dinner: Dessert cheese platter for my appetizer, the potato soup with croutons, smoked duck appetizer (delicious, should have ordered two!), Caesar salad, and seafood Newburgh. All good.

[allener58]

My friends and I were on that sailing and had a great time. Thanks for the review and keep it coming.

[alreadypacked]

October 10 we were in Curacao and ate there—more on that later.

 

October 11 dinner: Dessert cheese platter as appetizer, some type of Thai chicken tender appetizer (I remembered this dish as Thai chicken tenders in a peanut satay, but this was different and not as good as previous cruises), the vegetable and cheese pot pie (filling was just okay, but the crust was pretty good).

 

October 12 dinner: Escargots (very good), grilled eggplant & cheese appetizer (delicious, should have ordered two!), corn chowder (just meh, kind of watery), smoked salmon/seafood appetizer (good), eggplant penne pasta (surprisingly good with nice al dente pasta). Ratna also brought out the Indian entrée with paneer cheese for us to try since she’d heard us talking about the delicious paneer cheese on the Tandoor station earlier at lunch. Way too much food, but delicious! Again, Ratna and Gil anticipated our likes and desires!

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October 13 dinner: Crab cake appetizer (not nearly as good as in past, had a kind of unappealing spoiled fish taste—used to be able to see the lump crabmeat in it. No longer.), frogs legs provencal (had this last year and it was good. This year, literally no flavor and swimming in oil), prime rib again (not as good as a few nights before surprisingly. Tonight was super fatty and even saltier).

 

For breakfast, in a departure from my normal routine, I went to the buffet every day except one day in which I went to the main dining room. Normally, I don’t much care for the buffet breakfast due to the lines and the yucky shredded cheese they have for the omelettes (processed cheese? Or maybe coated with cellulose to prevent caking?), but then one of my travel companions showed me how she gets sliced cheddar or provolone off the buffet line first, then orders an omelette without cheese, and simply unfolds the omelette after it’s put on her plate, inserts the better quality sliced cheese, refolds, the heat of the omelette melting the cheese. Brilliant! Some days instead of an omelette, I ordered fried eggs over medium. Omelette station cooks make great fried eggs—better than I’ve had anywhere!

 

For lunch, believe it or not, I was able to have Mongolian Grill four times on this sailing! I like Mongolian grill because it is fresh ingredients cooked to order. It comes out piping hot the way I like my cooked food to be. Some days the Mongolian line was simply too long and I made a salad from the buffet line and got a scoop of tuna fish salad from the sandwich station. One day, we got paneer cheese in a tikka masala-type sauce and chicken and basmati rice from the Tandoor buffet station—delicious. One day I got food off the main buffet line, which didn’t look very appetizing, but tasted better than it looked. It was some type of lightly breaded fish in a light white sauce, corkscrew pasta (surprisingly al dente), and salad.

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Ports of Call

 

Grand Turk

 

I stayed on the ship, opting for the peace and quiet of reading my book on a lounger up on deck 10. My two companions went ashore to Margaritaville and had a great time.

 

La Romana

 

We got off the ship for just about 45 minutes--long enough to go to the duty free store there. We are beach people and I had done quite a bit of research about this port and concluded that staying on the ship was probably our best bet.

 

The Carnival sponsored "Bayahibe Beach Break" excursion was not rated very well and was quite expensive--$99.99pp with food and drinks included for 4.5 hours, one hour of which is travel time to and from; $69.99pp with drinks but no food. If we were to do this, we'd want the food and drinks but thought $100 for a few hours at the beach too expensive.

 

Some cruise critic members have gone on their own to the Dreams all-inclusive resort and paid $60pp and rated the experience excellent. But when you factor in taxi fares which aren't included in the Dreams price, we still thought it too expensive.

 

Here are the taxi rates in La Romana. This photo was taken and posted by cruise critic member Cuizer2 on this thread:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1360813

 

[KirkNC]

Thanks for the review!

[alreadypacked]

Thanks for the review!

 

You're welcome!:)

[alreadypacked]

My friends and I were on that sailing and had a great time. Thanks for the review and keep it coming.

 

My pleasure! Glad you had a great cruise also!:)

[alreadypacked]

Curacao

 

We liked this port a lot. We decided to take a taxi to Mambo/Seaquarium Beach. We got into a mini-van taxi with several other folks, and our driver was a very nice older gentleman named Irwin.

 

Note to those afraid of heights or with a fear of high bridges: We didn’t realize at first that the taxi ride to Mambo Beach would take us over the very high Queen Juliana bridge in Willemstad. If you want to go to Mambo/Seaquarium beach or downtown, you can actually walk to the right when you get off the ship, through the courtyard area outside of the Renaissance Curacao Resort and Carnaval Casino to the Queen Emma Pontoon Bridge (6-8 minute walk)—a flat pedestrian bridge. Walk across the bridge and you’re in downtown. From there you can take a taxi to the beach without ever having gone over the Queen Juliana bridge. For those who don’t mind heights or want to see the view, by all means take the taxi over the Queen Juliana.

 

Mambo/Seaquarium Beach has a small admission fee of $3.00. You can rent beach loungers for a very reasonable $3.00 each. It is quite popular, so is very crowded with tourists (as well as locals when we were there, as it was a national holiday). There is a restaurant/bar right there. The water was calm, but a bit murky. There is a kind of jetty/breakwater that separates the swimming area from the open ocean. It was nice, but I’d prefer less crowds and would probably look for a more secluded/less popular beach next time around.

[LOVECRUISING100%]

Thanks for posting .. I've never been to Curacao, looks really interesting ..

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Curacao Continued...

 

We had arranged with our taxi driver Irwin to pick us up at 5:30. We were waiting for him at the beach entrance where he dropped us off, but didn’t see him. At exactly 5:31, a woman taxi driver, who we had seen dropping people off earlier when we were in Irwin’s taxi, pulled up to us and asked if we were waiting for Irwin. We said yes. She then said that Irwin asked her to get us because he was still with another fare and realized he wouldn’t make it back to us at 5:30. Excellent service! It was nice to see that the drivers work together in this manner.

 

She dropped us off downtown at the pontoon bridge, which we got to see in action. This area is very nice, with quaint looking colorful buildings and sidewalk cafes. We walked across the bridge towards the port, where there were some sidewalk vendors. To get back to the ship, you walk through a courtyard area (the entrance of which looks like an old stone fort), which is lined with shops and restaurants. I suppose this area is actually part of the Renaissance Curacao Resort. We returned to the ship and freshened up, so we could return to this area for dinner.

 

We decided to eat at a Mexican place called Chihuahua Cantina. They had nice outdoor tables in the courtyard. Unfortunately, some of the food wasn’t what we expected. One in our party got chicken fajitas, which looked and tasted like chicken fajitas you’d get anywhere in the states. The other two of us got cheese enchiladas, which were, well…pretty disgusting. The best I can describe it was layers and layers of flour (not corn) tortillas with a hint of cheese smothered in a béchamel sauce and baked until it was basically a dish of baked mush with very little flavor. The other girl sent hers back immediately and they eventually took it off the bill, but she had to ask. Not wanting to be rude by sending back a second item (not to mention the fact that I was starving), I suffered through mine. It was really bad though. I’d go there again, but fajitas it is.

 

All in all, we had a great time in Curacao and would love to go back.

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More pictures from Curacao...

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Aruba

 

Also a very nice island. We got off the ship and walked to a nearby flea market, then down the street to the big pink shopping mall, which I believe is called Royal Plaza. It is quite nice, set up around a courtyard with several levels. From there we walked to Nikky Beach. Now the gentleman at the info desk in the port terminal told me that the walk to Nikky Beach if we didn’t do a lot of stopping (in stores or to sightsee and take pictures) was 15 minutes. He also gave me a flyer for Nikky Beach and wrote the names Alex and George on it, telling me to ask for them and give them the flyer and we would get free transportation back to the ship.

 

I started timing our walk when we set out from Royal Plaza (which is a couple blocks from the port in the direction of Nikky Beach). We only stopped briefly a couple times to take pictures. It took us exactly 30 minutes to get to Nikky Beach from Royal Plaza. Grant it, we are not fast walkers, but I’d say for the average 40-ish walker in slightly less-than-average shape, the walk to Nikky Beach without stopping would be more like 25 to 30 minutes. It’s a nice walk though, with interesting sights along the way. Some parts of the walk are along the water. There are sidewalks the entire way, so no worries there.

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What we got when we finally arrived at Nikky Beach made it all worth it!

[sjn911]

Thanks so much..this sounds like an absolutely fabulous cruise.

[oncruisecontrol]

More pictures from Curacao...

I was on the same sailing as you. It was a wonderful cruise. I am intrigued by the last photo in the above series. There looks to be a pool of sorts along the path (by the casino) that leads back to the ship from downtown Willemstad. I don't recall seeing this when I was there.

[oncruisecontrol]

Okay, so the thumbnails didn't post in my reply. In my earlier post, I was referring to the last photo (in the series of thumbnails) in post #14 of your review.

[alreadypacked]

Thanks so much..this sounds like an absolutely fabulous cruise.

 

You're welcome!:) Yes, it was a great cruise. We absolutely love Aruba and Curacao. In fact today we just put a deposit on another cruise there next year (on Princess, though).

[alreadypacked]

I was on the same sailing as you. It was a wonderful cruise. I am intrigued by the last photo in the above series. There looks to be a pool of sorts along the path (by the casino) that leads back to the ship from downtown Willemstad. I don't recall seeing this when I was there.

 

Okay, so the thumbnails didn't post in my reply. In my earlier post, I was referring to the last photo (in the series of thumbnails) in post #14 of your review.

 

 

From what I read on tripadvisor, it is a sort of man-made salt water pool that I believe has a natural sand bottom. Looked beautiful. I might look into a land vacation there at some point.

[NS-Cruiser]

I am glad to read such a positive review:)

 

We are booked for this itinerary April 6 2013 and are really lookign forward to it...

 

We are still "up in the air" about what to do in La Romana, and will probably just stay on the ship...

 

Grand Turk will most likely be a beach day, and I really liked your ideas for Curocau, and Arube...

 

Thanks for posting this review.

[alreadypacked]

I am glad to read such a positive review:)

 

We are booked for this itinerary April 6 2013 and are really lookign forward to it...

 

We are still "up in the air" about what to do in La Romana, and will probably just stay on the ship...

 

Grand Turk will most likely be a beach day, and I really liked your ideas for Curocau, and Arube...

 

Thanks for posting this review.

 

You're very welcome.:) I had been out of town for a couple days but will try to finish the review this weekend.

[alreadypacked]

Aruba continued...

 

Things we really liked about Nikky Beach:

 

Lounge chairs had cushions

 

Chairs were only $6pp and they didn't charge for the umbrella

 

They had a full bar/restaurant menu, and the food (quesadilla, mozzarella sticks, and jalepeno poppers) came out piping hot, nicely plated and garnished on real china, and was served to us at our lounge chairs.

 

Restrooms were spotless.

 

It was quiet and not crowded (I almost hesitated posting about Nikky Beach because the selfish side of me hopes it stays that way). But I also hope George (which we found out is the new owner) and his son, Alejandro (Alex) do well and that other cruisers get to experience this relaxing day at the beach.

 

When we were ready to leave, Alejandro drove us back to the ship in the Nikki Beach Van for free. We, of course tipped him.

 

Nikky Beach, as the Freedom is sailing away from Aruba:

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Entertainment...

 

Welcome Aboard Show

 

The same as always. Cruise Director Brad Calabrese was upbeat and energetic, despite a few cheesy jokes. I'm almost embarrassed to admit, but as corny as the Welcome Aboard Show is, we actually enjoy it in a funny sort of way. We know the songs and routines so well (gives you an idea of how long it's been since there's been any changes to the show) we could probably be in the show (well... probably not, but you get my meaning).

 

 

The Big Easy

 

Excellent show! I’ve seen it several times before and it never disappoints. Especially love the “voodoo” number, the Whitney Houston “Queen of the Damned” number, the gospel/church number near the end, and the Carnivale/”When the Saints Come Marching In” finale!

 

 

Jump, Jive, and Wail

 

Showtime is before dinner, the timing of which we do not care for. With 3 of us sharing a cabin, going to the show before dinner forces us to cut our pool deck time short in order to be ready for a 7pm show instead of just 8:15pm dinner. The show itself was very good, though.

 

Marcus Anthony

A Motown singer. We have seen him before and he is very good and energetic. He really gets the crowd involved. Good singing voice and all around great show.

 

 

Piano Bar singer Martin Aucoin

 

Sadly, I must report that Martin Aucoin is quite obviously is not a singer. While he plays piano well, my guess is that his experience is as a band/orchestra pianist, not vocals. Perhaps he’s sung back-up vocals before, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is one of his first gigs where he actually had to sing solo.

 

 

While he does not have a good singing voice, he is at least personable and takes requests. Sadly, he fails to bring in the crowd. When we arrived, there were about 5 or 6 people already there. Shortly thereafter, several left because the comedy show was starting, leaving 4 people total (one of which was me).

 

 

I requested a song or two, which he strruggled through. One passenger started requesting church hymns (Amazing Grace and How Great Thou Art), which really put the kibosh on any fun (nothing against church hymns, just the wrong venue imho).

 

 

While I’m not a smoker, I feel Carnival made a mistake making the piano bars non-smoking. Back when folks could smoke, it was packed—we struggled to find a seat. I always had a sore throat the next day from all the smoke, but at least we had fun!

 

 

The second night, we gave piano bar another try. It was dead, with only two people in there—a 50ish couple. My two companions did not want to stay & headed to the disco. I stayed and chatted with the couple and Martin, the piano player, and requested a few songs. At 1:00, the piano bar closed down & I joined my companions in the disco. I never went back to the piano bar after that.

 

 

Pool Deck

 

Unfortunately, as many already know, there was only a DJ blaring hip hop music. I like some hip hop, but definately NOT on the pool deck. As such, we sit on deck 10 near the back away from the noise.

 

 

Karaoke

 

Unfortunately, we never got to see any Superstar Karaoke, which is our favorite. It always seemed to be scheduled when we were at dinner or at the show or something. We did see some of the regular karaoke, which actually had some pretty decent singers.