Notes from my stay on the Carnival Liberty, 10/18-10/24

[Honolulu Blue]

1. I was booked on this cruise almost from the very start. I was attracted to the fact that it had Dominica as a stop and that there were no sea days. I booked it last September on one of my other cruises. The cruise credit was applied flawlessly.

 

2. This was the first time I’ve had a buddy. The brief story: she asked on the roll call for someone to dine and go on excursions with and I volunteered. Some posts and a flurry of e-mails followed and we first met on the ship. She’s a cool lady, well-traveled (even more so than me), interesting conversationalist, and generally fun to be around. You’ll have to ask her what she thinks of me.

 

3. My buddy and I dined in the Golden Olympian (our MDR) for dinner every night. I thought the meals were very good overall. I didn’t mind the American Table with its lack of tablecloths (except on the elegant evening). The service… well… the front staff was fine, our lead server Milka was great, the second server was good, and the third server was new. My buddy has her own stories about them, which perhaps she will share with you all. We ate around 6 each day and there was never more than a minimal wait.

 

4. My buddy and I had tickets for the same excursions each day. This mostly worked well – except for the day we hit St. Lucia. OK, here’s my side of the story. We got to St. Lucia on Thursday morning. Monday night I got a memo that the times on the ticket were wrong and needed to be adjusted to be half an hour earlier. I failed to inform her of this because I assumed she already knew. That was a bad decision – she had changed cabins (long story) and didn’t get the memo and thus reached the meeting point late. She did get a refund for that excursion and got space on another excursion, which she didn’t like very much. I missed her and wished she was with me. That didn’t stop me from enjoying the tour.

 

5. Of the other excursions, three of them I had been on before. Two of them (St. Thomas and St. Maarten) had the same guide I had before. What are the odds? Apparently very good. The excursions were all general island tours, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but suited us fine. I had a good time across the board, learned a lot, and took plenty of photos.

 

6. That dock in Dominica is teeny tiny. It’s 300 feet for our 950-foot ship. But somehow we made it work. I've attached pictures; apologies for the small size.

 

7. My cabin in the forward section of steerage was, IMHO, the best I’ve ever had. The layout of the bed was new for me – instead of being flush against the windowsill, it was along the wall, by the couch, perpendicular to the back wall and the porthole. I liked it. The light by the bed threw off just enough light for me to read by. There was a chair for an additional place to sit by the porthole when I wanted to do that. I had no issues with the temperature control for either the cabin or the shower. The TV was a 22” flat screen. The customer menus (where you could check the MDR/steakhouse menus and balances, among other things) didn’t work the whole cruise. Some of the cable channels were out some of the time, but that was a DirecTV issue.

 

8. There was just one elegant evening, on Tuesday. Fine with me, though I’m sure some of you would have been annoyed by not having a second one.

 

9. The safety drill was a bit of a mess. Where I was asked to stand was so far forward that the ship (or the floor itself) was tilting down. My left foot was two inches above my right foot. That was surprisingly tiring. And we had to wait to start for some reason that I couldn’t figure out and was never explained to us. It took about 35 minutes from start to finish – and I was on the lucky side that was dismissed first.

 

10. Felipe story #1: He complimented me on my St. Croix shirt as we were heading out toward Dominica. He said it was one of his favorite destinations. I mumbled a thank you, thinking he was entertainment staff when he was THE MAN himself. I was moving quickly, so I didn’t have a chance to kiss up to him, not that that was my style anyway.

 

11. Felipe story #2: I’ve cruised with him twice before and never saw him. This time I saw him in the encounter mentioned above and also on the recording on the Welcome Aboard show (which was on Monday night, as is normal for a Sunday night San Juan departure). Now I know what he looks like.

 

12. Felipe story #3: He seemed to have mellowed out a bit from when I cruised with him before (last year). He was less generous with the “woo hoo”s for some reason.

 

13. Felipe story #4: He didn’t make many announcements; usually one around 5 or 6 PM, and one around 8 PM. He didn’t announce our arrival into port any day except the day we got to Dominica; he explicitly warned us before then to wait for his announcement that we had arrived and were ready to disembark.

 

14. Something I had never seen before on a Carnival ship was passenger-accessible computers outside the lab. But this one had them; I don’t know how long they’ve been there. There were two just past the Shore Excursions desk and four on Promenade Deck just aft of the casino. Two of the ones on Promenade had printers. The prices were standard for the new plan - $5/day or $25 for the cruise for the Social plan, $16/day or $60 for the cruise for the Value plan, and $25/day or $99 for the cruise for the Premium plan. I didn’t try them, so someone else will have to report on how well they worked.

 

15. In addition to the usual (for me) 20-25% of passengers that I estimate were from Puerto Rico, my best guess is that a third of the passengers were African American. That’s far higher than I’ve had for any other cruise. I wonder what attracted them to this particular cruise.

 

16. The comedy setup was interesting. We had only two comedians for the cruise and they only worked Tuesday and Friday. There were a total of 10 shows – 5 each day. The shows were almost hourly. I didn’t attend any.

 

17. I tried something I had heard about on this board. After the gratuities, I still had some OBC to get. I didn’t actually spend any money on the ship, so there was a pile waiting for me. I went to the casino on the last night and loaded up an amount equal to a bit more than the non-refundable OBC I had. I played it through once and neither won nor lost. I cashed out at the cashier. There were no problems on the statement, so I have to say it worked like a charm. Thanks.

 

18. Overall I had a wonderful trip and my buddy did her part to make it better for me. So thanks, BJ! And thank you to the thousands of people who worked to help make my trip smooth and fun-filled. Oh, and thank you to the other passengers too; sometimes you guys did very interesting things. :)

 

[SkyMaster]

Thanks for posting. I've always enjoyed my "Liberty" cruises, and am not surprised at anything you've said. I agree 100% with your statements. ;) I too, have found that my cruises from San Juan are at least 50% Puerto Ricans, and probably 35% blacks. No big deal! Also, I've noted that most cruises from there, are VERY port intensive, and not very relaxing if you try to do something at each, and every port.

Glad you enjoyed your cruise, and once again, THANKS for posting.

 

"SKY"

[Krissica]

There is a social travel group called Paradise Island Cruise that travels in large groups to different destinations. This year the destination was this particular sailing. It is a mixture of demographics but yes the group is primarily African American which is why it probably seemed like more than normal.