Almost B2B Western Caribbean on the Glory and Southern Caribbean on the Liberty

[letiha]

Welcome to my very first review – and I am going to start it all the way from Brisbane, Australia where we live. We are going on 2 cruises as part of our month long trip as well as a week in an all inclusive resort in Mexico plus a few days in Las Vegas. My review will basically cover leaving from Brisbane till the end of our cruise. We leave in 5 days so I thought I'd get the introduction up and I could update as I went.

 

About us:

 

So there is my husband and I, he just turned 30 and I’m 35, the trip was originally scheduled for his birthday but we got some great flight deals so we pushed it back a few weeks, just means he can drag out his birthday a few more weeks.

 

 

We are travelling with the kids who are 16 months, 10 and 12. We were originally only taking the baby but my husband won $5000 on the slots back in September so we decided to drag them along…originally it was meant to be a secret but I’m the worst secret keeper ever.

 

 

 

We also have my husband’s brother, who we jokingly call Brother Husband because he does just about everything with us…can’t actually remember the last time I went out for dinner with just my husband. And travelling with him is live long friend of my BIL and husband who we are sure will be left at port somewhere, they are 31 and 32. They both ended up getting their own cabins, our friend thinks that its for privacy in case they hit it off with the ladies (cough cough)…but the truth is that our friend will drive my BIL crazy.

 

 

 

My husband and I are the only ones who have cruised, we went on the Destiny to Jamaica and Cayman Islands in November 2012 as part of our Honeymoon and loved it.

 

So what to expect for the rest of the review:

 

LOTS of food porn!!!!!

 

Reviews of the following pre-crusie excursions, ports and shore excursions:

 

Glory Cruise

Miami – Everglades Tour and Food Tour

Grand Cayman - Wave runner tour to Stingray City and Rum Point for the boys and for Me and the Kids our only shore tour through Carnival as I will be on my own with the kids which will be Stingray City Sandbar & Rum Point Beach Safari.

Mahogany Bay - Little French Key including lunch and 2 drinks

Belieze – Cave tubing

Cozumel - Private Jeep Tour

 

Liberty Cruise

San Juan - El Yunque Rain forest tour

St. Thomas - Shopping, Sightseeing and Beach Tour with Godfrey’s tours

Barbados - Catermaran sailing and snorkeling with turtles with Calabaza Sailing

St. Lucia – Land and Sea Tour with Spencer Ambrose Tours

St. Kitts – Tour of St. Kitts with some beach time

St. Marteen – Tour with Captain Bob Soualiga

San Juan – Tour of old San Juan and the Bacardi tour

 

 

 

We are also stopping at Disneyland during our stop over on our way through L.A and Mexico and vegas after the cruise, happy to add those to my review if you like!

 

So basically I have 3 more days left of work and have to finish packing for 5 of us.

[MariaLynn]

I'm subscribing to your review- my husband and I will be on the Liberty cruise with you (you and I have communicated in the Facebook group).

 

You must be SO excited! Can't wait to read your review and to meet you on the ship!

 

Maria

[PurdueChefAmber]

Subscribing! Have a blast!!!

[mrpayroll]

Will be on Liberty at the same time. Can't wait to see Curacao. The pictures make it look beautiful, especially at night.

[letiha]

And we are off!

 

The good news we got bulkhead and exit rows for our 14 hour flight.

 

The bad news... I smashed my iPhone getting our bags in the car.

 

Any way here is the first picture. Miss Chloe loves the planes.

[letiha]

So after an fairly uneventful 13 hour flight we arrived in LAX, and as all sensible people do the plan was to head straight to the Disney resort.

 

One of the main problems we had when arranging our trip was car seat drama's. Our plan was to get picked up by a shuttle and then buy one for the rest of the trip.

 

We ended up using Payless airport shuttles who were great and supplied a car seat. The ride was $120 and I would highly recommend them to anyone cruising on the west coast.

 

 

We stayed at the Castle Inn & Suites which was within walking distance to the park, which was great for our afternoon nap. Rate was only $100 and the room was huge.

 

A few more pictures for all you Disney lovers!! we did California adventure park the first day.

 

 

 

 

 

[letiha]

So after a good nights sleep we are up and full of energy for our second and final day at Disneyland, no jet lag which is great. We had an awesome day at the park, the only disappointing thing is 2 of the bigger rides, Indiana Jones and the Matterhorn were both closed.

 

 

We left Disneyland at 6:00pm and walked back to our hotel for our shuttle pick up. We had a problem free transfer and check in and ate what I thought was the worlds most expensive Burger King at terminal 3 of LAX.

 

And now the fun began... Flying the redeye is never fun, but we had hundreds of high school kids waiting at the gate next to us for flights, and I thought my kids were noisy.

 

So we are waiting for our flight and we hear that the flight had been delay by 30 minutes.... That's fine, but that comes and goes and there are people milling around waiting to board. It's 11:30pm and still no updates and people were starting to act like idiots.

 

Normally we would get priority boarding travelling with the baby but it was just not work the effort, in the end we ended up leaving about 60+ minutes late. Now Chloe seems to have a special talent for taking a number 2 as we are taking off and they took a long time to turn off the seatbelt sign, all I can say to my fellow passengers was sorry....unless they were one of the idiots when we were boarding, sweet revenge!!!

 

The flight was uneventful and I slept waking up just before we landed at FLL, however my husband didn't sleep and said it was a bumpy flight.

 

Stay tuned for our day on Miami

[letiha]

So originally we had big plans for our one day in Miami. The plan originally involved an Everglades Airboat tour, lunch and some shopping at Walmart and then a food tour in South Beach.

 

But basically after the delay in the flight and the traffic when we got to FLL airport that went straight out the window. So we drove straight to our hotel, which in hindsight with our change of plans was not a great choice as it was a bit of a drive. If we would have decided to do our plan B to start with we would have just stayed in South Beach.

 

So we arrived at our hotel, the Cambria Suites at Miami Airport , which was a lovely modern property at a great price. It was only 9am, well before any decent check in time and i was sent in with the baby for "operation Chloe", which is basically tired mum with baby after long flight enquiring if there is any chance if our room was available. BINGO it was, (not this also worked in Anahiem), so we all went up to our room and slept till our rude alarm woke us at 2pm telling us we needed to get up for our pre-booked food tour, so much for the rest of our plans.

 

So we drove or rental car to South Beach and parked in a garage and as you do before a food tour after not eating all day and had something to eat, it was only meant to be small, but so was our drinks, my drink was the size of my head. It was a 2 for 1 special and I'm glad I was sharing my 2 for 1, as i would not be walking after drink 2 of these babies.

 

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So after feeling fat and drunk we decided to walk a bit of our "snack" off with some obligatory shot on the beach.

 

 

 

We were also lucky enough to see a stunning girl twerking...yes twerking in the front seat of an SUV in her thong, causing the 30 people crossing the street to stop and cheer, as well as some tourists crash their mopeds, luckily no injuries, my husband still lists the twerking as the highlight of his trip. So no Pics :p

[Momofthreeprincesses]

Following along on your adventure😃. Headed out on the Glory in December

[kelkel2]

I'm already hooked. Following along! Loving what you have done so far!

[PamJack]

Loving these posts! Keep them coming,

[cruisexlife]

Really excited for this review! I've enjoyed my travels to Australia, and I cannot wait to get back to that wonderful country, especially Brisbane. I just got off the Liberty a few months ago, and same goes for Glory, so this will be a great review. Thanks for taking the time to do it!

[Sparky2]

We're doing our 4th in a row B2B (5th overall) on Glory next January. Enjoying reading your review so far.

 

Somebody on CC called your type of B2B a "side by side" since it's on 2 different ships. Kind of a cute way to describe it!

[letiha]

We are big foodies and have done food tours in other places so we decided to book a South Beach Food Tour with Miami Culinary Tours. The tour was really fun and not only did we get to try some great food but we also learnt a lot of the history of South Beach.

 

We tried a variety of food and a few drinks as well. Some our stops included Bolivar, a Columbian restaurant. Manolo where we had some amazing churros, The Tides Hotel which had gorgeous decor and we had a Moroccan curry. We also had a walk by the Versace mansion, and a stop a Gloria Estefan's restaurant.

 

Towards the end we were stuffed but still had a stop a a pizza type place and a stop for gelato.

 

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[letiha]

So the morning of our cruise arrives, because of how cheap our car rental was we had to drive all the way back to FLL to drop off our rental car which was a bit of a pain.

 

We arrived transfers with South Florida Shuttles, they had a nice new van but there were some mix ups with communication on where we were to be picked up and then we were asked to go to a different terminal which is difficult with 7 bags and 3 kids.

 

We ended up arriving at the Port of Miami at around 11:30 and wow was it busy, I am just glad we got FTTF which for us was well worth the money (for a number of reasons which I will get to later). Once we were checked in we only had to wait about 10 minutes before we boarded and our first priority was the Cheers package and bottlemless bubbles for the kids (the verdict on that later).

 

The our last cruise was the Destiny with no Guys Burgers, so my plan was to see what the hype was about and they did not disappoint. While overall I think the food is better in Australia, hand down American's do the world's best burgers, and the burgers on board where some of the best that we had while on our 4 week trip.

 

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[letiha]

As promised I'm big on food porn and looking at menu's. Pre-cruise I saw requests for the menu's but nothing concrete. Well I have the full weeks menu for the first cruise and pictures of what we ordered, plus I will let you know our favorites! Overall most of our favorites came from the "port of call" section of our menu and our least favorite nights were the elegant nights with the American Feast menu.

 

So here we go Menu's for Day 1.

 

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(sorry about the formatting)

 

[boaterette]

I am enjoying your review. I look forward to the rest.

[tawaik]

Your a story teller. Love your writing style. Beautiful Family :)

[AimeeAndJoel]

How cool to see a New Zealand sav blanc on the menu! I'm a Kiwi living in Sydney and I'm always telling people that we do the best sav. Hopefully they're on the Liberty soon and I can indulge when I sail June 1st!

[letiha]

Appetizers

 

The 1 millionth picture of a shrimp cocktail on cruise critic - My 10 year old loves shrimp/prawns but she did not order it again after the first night.

 

 

Good, but nothing special fried calamari

 

 

Mains

 

Fried Shrimp with fried rice - OK..nothing special

 

Vegetable Lasanga- my dish, enjoyable would order again

 

 

Flat Iron Steak - Ok Nothing special

 

 

 

New York Strip Loin - My fiend Julian said well worth the $20 extra, much better than the flat iron.

 

[letiha]

This dish needs no intro - my kids seem to have this every second night, they did notice that the quality differed each night.

 

 

Warm Fig and Date Pudding with a Passionfruit Custard, This was mine, it was enjoyable and not overly sweet.

 

 

Nutella Tiramasu - yummy but not sure where the Nutella was hiding

 

 

Fruit and Cheese Plates

 

 

[letiha]

So after dinner we enjoyed some time in the spa and the boys drank and excessive amount of peach and strawberry daquari's which would come back to haunt them later one.

 

 

 

 

And we indulged in some late night pizza, which was up there with guys burgers, I just love the thin crust.

 

 

 

And eventually we retired to the room with our first towel animal

 

[letiha]

Day 2 did not end up as we had planned and it started a lot earlier than I expected with Miss 12 waking up several times during the night throwing up, and sadly my husband joined her as the sun was coming up.

 

Luckily the baby and Miss 10 were Ok, I was feeling a bit yuck as were the other people in our group and being polite we were having frequent trips to the loo. We thought it was food poisoning but we couldn't quiet identify something that we had all eaten. So all of us except Miss 10 stayed in the cabin - Miss 10 went to Camp C....at least for a while.

 

However by the end of the cruise we ended up working out some of the symptoms. We worked out that my husband and miss 12 had clearly eaten something bad and it wasn't contagious as no one else vomiting. The night before we had all had quiet a bit to drink - with daiquiri's and virgin daiquirs and other fruity drinks, after a week of running to the loo we realized that it was those fruity drinks. In Australia our cocktails are way less sugary and syrupy, our bodies just couldn't handle all the artificial syrup, so once the boys went back to beer and I went back to less sweet cocktails miracle!!!

 

So Miss 10, has an interesting story that didn't come out for a few days. Basically Camp C wasn't her style and she left, she managed to go to one of the shopping presentations and "buy" herself one of the discount books as she somehow thought it was free and she would get a free diamond pendant!!!!

 

Now Miss 10 does not have charging privileges and her writing her first name and a surname which is the same as her stepdad not the same as her name on the SS card plus her cabin number managed to get a charge 'for $25 on the SS card for my husband who was in a totally different cabin to her!!!

 

All I can say is I was glad we had FTTF as we needed to go to guest services a number of times to get this resolved.

 

This wasn't the only mess up on the SS çard during the first cruise. We had the Cheers package and we managed to get charged for the Funship drink on embarkion day that was not in the fancy cup...and we had 4 of these!! We also got charged for a 32oz souvenir hurricane glass when it was a cocktail hurricane that we ordered.

 

Anyway day 2 wasn't that bad and by dinner everyone had recovered enough for formal night.

 

So we got all dressed up and had some cocktails in the lobby bar while the kids had a dance.

 

 

Apple Martini

 

[letiha]

Dinner was the American Feast menu, out of the 2 formal nights I think the first one had more items on the menu that I enjoyed.

 

I've tried to get the best shots of the menu that I could, sorry if they are a bit wonky! I had to break the menu into 3 to make it easier to see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[letiha]

The Tart with Braised Kale and Blackened Pork Tenderloin - On of my favorite dishes I could have ordered two of these!!

 

 

 

Mushroom Cream Soup - My husband said it was nice, not the best not the worst mushroom soup he has had.

 

 

 

Spaghetti from the Children's Menu - big enough for 3 kids!!!