Picture Heavy Review - Freedom Western 10/13/2013

[jmak315]

After much planning and anticipation, my family enjoyed a week on Freedom of the Seas. Wow – it is a beautiful ship! I have never written a review here before but after reading so many and enjoying the pictures of so many while in the planning (read: obsessing) stages of our cruise, I thought I would give back a little. This review is going to be some observations from our family of six that is made up of myself, my husband and our two kids and my parents. For my parents, this was their first Royal Caribbean cruise as they have only ever sailed Carnival before this.

 

Aaaaand.....We're on!

 

 

 

From my mom's balcony, we had a nice view of the Disney in port that day as well

 

 

Where I will start is the ship itself…my oh my, what a ship. I knew from all of my research that the ship was going to be big and she did not disappoint. This really is a beautiful ship. We had an interior cabin that had two Pullman beds and it was comfortable. The only other cruise we have ever sailed on was on the Sovereign of the Seas and we could hear everything going on in the neighboring cabins. This cabin was very quiet and our family was very comfortable in this room (1553) for the week. We loved that it was right next to the elevators and never heard any noise at all from the traffic.

[jmak315]

I have to take this opportunity to recognize our most amazing room steward, Hilario. He was simply fantastic. He was kind, friendly, efficient and caring towards our family. When we arrived to our room, we were greeted with the dreaded (well, dreaded for me) letter letting us know the towel animals had the week off. I was looking forward to my children experiencing this aspect of cruising since this was their first cruise and I have to admit, I was disappointed. The letter explained that they currently upgrading the laundry facility to accommodate the “animal” towels. I left Hilario a little note on night one asking if he would be willing to make one animal for the children and we would use it as a bath towel the next day if the towel shortage was a problem. Well, I will let the pictures do the talking…

 

[jmak315]

 

He didn't do just one towel animal…he did several. He even came to the room one night and asked if he could come in a do a towel animal demonstration for the kids. He showed how to make all of these! SO SWEET!

 

 

Pools aplenty - always a place to get soaked!

 

 

 

 

And my favorite place to sit at night...

 

[jmak315]

The ship is just gorgeous:

 

 

Next up...food!

[jmak315]

My next observation is going to focus on food. Some things were outstanding, some things not so much. One of the things I read about was the “homemade bread” aboard the ship. I am a lover of all things bread so this is something I paid attention to and in seven days we never encountered a piece of bread that seemed as fresh as I expected for it to be made in house daily. The exception to this (for me) was the pumpkin seed roll they offered in the main dining room for dinner. I really did like that. For all of you that talk about the Escargots appetizer (which on our sailing was substituted with scallops), those in my family who tried them, LOVED them. They come highly recommended, and again, did not disappoint. The one standout dessert that everyone in my family flipped over was flourless chocolate cake that is only offered one night, only in the main dining room and only on a sampler plate of desserts. The other two desserts on that plate (cheesecake and elderberry mousse) just paled in comparison and when we asked if we could just get more of the chocolate cake, our marvelous waiter (Ronald) delivered  I am now on a mission to find a recipe to recreate this wonderful cake. A review I read before mentioned the fries in the Windjammer – she was spot on about those – they really were some of the best fries! My kids loved the burgers and their favorite meal in the main dining room was the cheese pasta. All in all, you will find something you like to eat because the menu is ever changing and if you don’t like what is offered up, wait an hour…there’ll be a new offering LOL. Three of the people in my crew loved the sushi and met at the Windjammer nightly even after the main dining room.

 

[jmak315]

 

The aforementioned pasta that was awesome...

 

[jmak315]

 

Escargots

 

This mushroom dish was great

 

 

[jmak315]

[jmak315]

 

I've got to be honest here - I do not see what all the fuss is about when it comes to this:

 

 

The shrimp Ravoli

 

[jmak315]

 

 

 

 

[jmak315]

Johnny Rockets was great - $4.99 and it included anything you wanted and all you wanted of it on the menu with the exception of drinks (unless you have soda package) and milkshakes.

 

[jmak315]

Myself, my children and mother all had the soda package and it was worth every penny. The Freestyle machines are nice and the soda tastes like soda on land which is more than I can say for the soda they are spraying out of those guns behind the bars. Yuck. For anyone recently on this cruise or going soon, I would be interested in knowing if you noticed the Freestyle machine in the arcade working sporadically. Over the course of seven days I know we told several staff members about this (cup not found error) and it was never resolved. I made a trip to guest services and reported it there as well to no avail. That was the only Freestyle machine on that end of the ship so it was a little inconvenient for it to not work 75% of the time we approached it.

 

Next observation – service, or the lack thereof. They talk about this WOW service. We were WOW’d but not in a good way. Granted we are from South Carolina and I know they don’t call it “southern hospitality” for nothing but good gracious…some of the people we encountered were just down.right.rude. Most of the people in the Park Café seem disinterested in being there at all and the crew at Sorento’s was not much better. Half way through the cruise we started to ponder if the food quality and lackluster service could be explained by the size of the ship. For those of you who have done the smaller ships and the bigger ships, do you find that food quality and service suffer on the bigger ships? I would be interested in hearing what you think as this could be a deciding factor when planning our next vacation on a cruise ship.

 

Ports of call – Grand Cayman was spectacular. We reserved a trip with Captain Marvin’s and could not have asked for more. It was simply amazing. Cozumel was beautiful as well. We book the dolphin swim and that was unforgettable. Falmouth, well, ummm, I am not sure why they go here. Anyone I talk to who has been here even once before does not even get off of the ship when they return. In fact, we were not supposed to leave that port until 7:00 pm and while we were at diner with a 5:30 seating, we were pulling away. My guess was everyone was back on board so we headed to Grand Cayman. No sense in burning daylight just sitting if all are back on board, right?

 

Overall we had a marvelous time and I would do it again in a minute. That being said, we would like to try other lines and other ships even in the Royal Caribbean fleet and see how they all compare. Cruising certainly can be addicting. My family created memories on this trip that we will cherish for a lifetime and that really makes me happy :)

[jmak315]

 

I also have all of the cruise compasses scanned if anyone would like to see those as well as pictures of the entire bar menu.

[reallyitsmema]

Thanks for sharing your review. Your pictures are great.

 

There is no Park Cafe on Freedom though, do you mean Cafe Promenade?

[jmak315]

Yes, Cafe Promenade LOL

[BleednBlu]

Great review, thanks for the info and pics.

[LisaGoeke]

We were on this cruise too. I see our family in your picture of the dining room, we were just to the right of the Captains Table. We also had the soda package, didn't spend much time in/around the arcade but we also had trouble getting soda there so we usually ended up down at the Promenade getting the soda. Great pictures and we also had a great time and made great family memories. Great review!

[familycruiser01]

I think I just gained 10 pounds from looking at your review!! :D LOL Cannot wait to experience some of that great food in 60 days when we board Freedom of the Seas!! (First cruise in 5 years - it's been too long!!)

[1ParticularHbr]

Great review...love all of the food pictures! We were on this sailing as well and I have to say how lucky you were to get towel animals. We asked our cabin steward to do exactly as you proposed...just a an animal or two and we promised to use the towels for our next shower vs. saving the animals. We didn't get any :( I know it's a small thing but it's a cruise tradition. It was really our only disappointment. We had no issues what so ever about service anywhere on the ship.

[bigque]

As you probably know from the review I just did that we were on the same cruise! Good to see another review to see how others like it as well! Love your food pictures. I didn't take the time to take pictures of the food! It was a great cruise and it was a beautiful ship!

And oh wow....you had towel animals...we missed those! :cool::cool::cool:

[Hobbsey]

"For those of you who have done the smaller ships and the bigger ships, do you find that food quality and service suffer on the bigger ships? I would be interested in hearing what you think as this could be a deciding factor when planning our next vacation on a cruise ship."

 

It is my opinion that in general it is true that the bigger these ships get, and the more competetive they have to be on price to fill the ship, the more this part of the experience (food and service) experiences mis-steps. The idea of classless cruising has gone by the way for the most part. If you pay more, you get more, sure, but when it comes to ship services it had always been classless. Now there are multiple level of "service" offering in priority boarding, priority reservation, exclusive dinning rooms and lounges, etc.

 

I do prefer smaller ships and, in the past, those providers who ran smaller craft could boast a better product in some aspects of the experience. I remember budget priced Premier has some of the best dinning room service and the food was great too. But these days you'll find the same issues on majety and enchantment that you find on freedom. In fact you tend to get sharper staff moving to the new builds. The tremendous growth of the cruise lines (and the size of ships) means more and more challenges in staffing.

[BillOh]

I would be interested in hearing what you think as this could be a deciding factor when planning our next vacation on a cruise ship.

 

When I went on Freedom, it was just short of 2 years old and was still the biggest and newest ship in RC's fleet, But it was in place that people had their routines down pat and the early problems had been resolved. I would say top to bottom, I got the best service ever on that 2008 Freedom cruise. We went on Allure in 2011 and people were reporting problems because it was new and it seemed that waiters and cabin attendants had more people to take care of in other ships. We had good service there. I had excellent service on Jewel in 2012. I had pretty good and not good service on Majesty 3 years apart. Some of it might be luck of the draw. I had great service on one cruise and I saw another cruiser report bad service and they justified their opinions.

[kbset]

Great review!! Thanks for taking the time out to post all those great pictures and your thoughts :D:D:D My hubby and I are going on the Independence of the Seas in a couple months and were thinking of getting a fountain soda package, but then we found out that our ship doesn't have the Freestyle Machines :(

[laedw]

My next observation is going to focus on food. Some things were outstanding, some things not so much. One of the things I read about was the “homemade bread” aboard the ship. I am a lover of all things bread so this is something I paid attention to and in seven days we never encountered a piece of bread that seemed as fresh as I expected for it to be made in house daily. The exception to this (for me) was the pumpkin seed roll they offered in the main dining room for dinner. I really did like that. For all of you that talk about the Escargots appetizer (which on our sailing was substituted with scallops), those in my family who tried them, LOVED them. They come highly recommended, and again, did not disappoint. The one standout dessert that everyone in my family flipped over was flourless chocolate cake that is only offered one night, only in the main dining room and only on a sampler plate of desserts. The other two desserts on that plate (cheesecake and elderberry mousse) just paled in comparison and when we asked if we could just get more of the chocolate cake, our marvelous waiter (Ronald) delivered  I am now on a mission to find a recipe to recreate this wonderful cake. A review I read before mentioned the fries in the Windjammer – she was spot on about those – they really were some of the best fries! My kids loved the burgers and their favorite meal in the main dining room was the cheese pasta. All in all, you will find something you like to eat because the menu is ever changing and if you don’t like what is offered up, wait an hour…there’ll be a new offering LOL. Three of the people in my crew loved the sushi and met at the Windjammer nightly even after the main dining room.

 

 

I should not have viewed this before lunch! Have to eat lunch NOW and finish review later! :D

[LBumb]

great photos