Just When I Thought I Was Out...Liberty Review March 27, 2016

[mil76]

I know there have been quite a few Liberty reviews recently, but bear with me and I’ll give my perspective on the Liberty March 27th cruise, and try to shed some light on some of the questions that have popped up about Liberty recently. The review will be photo-light, but hopefully heavy with answers to questions floating around the board.

 

Background

We travelled with 6 of us: myself, the FW (Flowrider Widow), two boys (13 & 17), and the parent in-laws. This was our third year in a row sailing the last week in March out of Galveston on RCCL. The last two years we opted for Navigator out of Galveston rather than going to FL, since we were able to get really cheap deals after final payment (including the in-laws getting a grand suite for just a bit more than a balcony). We had a disastrous disembarking experience last year and swore off Galveston, but we had never sailed Liberty or the Roatan/Belize route before, and that combined with the new toys being installed in dry-dock convinced us to give Galveston another try. We should have known something was different when we booked early and saw the rates continue to rise rather than fall as the sailing date approached like they did for Navigator...

[nealstuber]

Anxious to hear more!

[mil76]

Pre-Cruise travels

We started off by flying from Denver into Hobby airport Saturday. If you are flying in for a Galveston cruise, you must fly through Hobby if at all possible. It’s so easy to navigate, and the bonus is you are on the Galveston side of metro Houston when you step off the plane vs. IAH on the other side of town.

 

We always stay by Hobby vs. going to Galveston, since it’s much cheaper and there are no minimum stay requirements. The FW and I grew up going to the beaches in NJ/DE/MD, so there’s no burning desire to spend extra time in Galveston. The last two years for Navigator we stayed at La Quinta since it has a rate which includes round-trip transfers for 4 to the port and back to Hobby after the cruise. We couldn’t do that this time since we booked a 10:40am flight back, and the timing wouldn’t work (more on that later), so we looked at other options.

 

Our first choice for hotel was Drury Inn since that gets great reviews, but they didn’t have any king suites left so we ended up at Springhill Suites next door. I wasn’t expecting much based on the $71 rate we got, but the hotel was in good shape and was fine for a one-night stay. Breakfast was even included, and they had the required-in-every-hotel-in-the-state Texas-shaped Belgian waffle maker (I never realized that I have been using a Colorado-shaped waffle maker all along until I stayed in these Texas hotels) so we had enough to tide us over until we got on the ship.

Edited April 7, 2016 by mil76

[jwth2005]

Following! Will be on Liberty in just 3 days!

[Clarea]

Nice photos so far, following.:)

[mil76]

Cruise Day

 

The staff at Springhill Suites was very helpful, They reminded me of the staff on the ship since the same guy who checked us in and was taking our drink orders at 10:00pm the night before was there in the morning taking care of breakfast. He even drove us in the hotel shuttle to a nearby gas station to pick up a case of water.

 

We had planned to take UberXL to the port for the six of us, but the front desk asked us if we needed transportation. They recommended a company who could get the 6 of us to Galveston for about the same price as UberXL ($120), so we went with it. If we cruise from Galveston again we’d have no qualms about staying there.

 

We had gotten a note from Royal saying that they were doing a once a year inspection, so boarding would not begin until 11:30 at the earliest, so we left a little after 10:00 and were at the port before 11. Easter was on our disembarking day last year and embarking day this year, and I remembered seeing the traffic jam extending from the bridge getting into Galveston back towards Texas City as we were leaving last year, so I was a little worried about getting stuck in that, but we had no traffic whatsoever. The driver said she expected it to get worse later in the day.

 

Check In/Boarding

 

We pulled up and got a porter to take the luggage. We had just taped a luggage tag to the water, and the porter told us it wasn’t allowed, but we told him to send it through anyway and if they wanted to confiscate it we were fine with that. The water didn’t show up with the first wave of luggage, but it did make it to the room.

 

Check-in was a breeze. We stood outside only for a few minutes until they let us into the terminal. There was no line for Diamond check-in and we were sitting in the staging tent within 10 minutes. The staging tent was a bit cramped with lots of confusion, but they had staff there to tell people where they should sit, and by 11:45 we were on-board and headed for the Windjammer.

 

Edited April 7, 2016 by mil76

[sftnslky]

Will be sailing on Liberty in Sept.. Can't wait for your full review.

[mil76]

For the actual cruise, I won’t do a timeline since it would be something like Flowrider, eat, tour island/Go to Beach/do something on ship, Flowrider, drink, eat, drink, sleep, repeat, so I’ll break things into highlight sections rather than a timeline.

 

Dry-Dock Revitalization

 

It was disappointing that some of the things we were hoping would come about during the dry-dock were not yet there this far past the dry-dock.

 

First was internet. When we booked this cruise I thought they would have VOOM installed, and after having it on Oasis in October, it’s a huge step back not having it. I know many will talk about how great it is to disconnect while on a cruise, but that’s not the world I live in. I’m able to disconnect from work either way, but there’s so much more that being connected on a ship entails now. After following A&L Ont’s Periscopes from allure the previous two weeks I was hoping to show some of the new things live on Liberty, but I couldn’t get it to work due to lack of bandwidth. I even have an international data plan on my phone but there wasn’t enough bandwidth on the local mobile networks in Roatan or Belize to Periscope, and it didn't start to work until I got LTE in Cozumel, and Andrew had already covered that the week before. We did manage to watch a friend’s Periscope via the ship’s wifi while sailing away from Cozumel, but broadcasting was not happening.

 

The next letdown was the lack of Freestyle machines. When I got on-board and they did the beverage package sell job I asked them if they had the Freestyle machines, and she was clueless what I was talking about. I understood Navigator not getting them two years ago since it was a semi-new concept then, but not having them two years later when every restaurant on land seems to have them now was another fail in my book. Since the soda only package doesn’t have too much of a gratuity built into it, I like being able to serve myself and not have to bug the bartenders every time I want a refill. So for my first cruise ever I didn’t buy the soda package and relegated myself to a week of tea (Iced and Field+Selects).

 

As for people hoping/thinking the Freestyle machines’ installation is imminent, I was on Allure right before they started offering it, and the machines were in place, but they just weren’t working. I saw no signs of any machines on Liberty.

[wolfganghowell]

Ready for more. One correction though - there have NOT been quite a few Liberty reviews. We need A LOT more. Thanks for all the intel.

[internetwhiz]

I tried to Periscope on Liberty for the two weeks we were on, Feb 21 - March 6. I did get some the two Sunday's we were in port. I posted them on a social media liberty of the Seas page.

 

Was a bummer about Internet.

[mil76]

The Crowd

 

One thing I can say about this cruise was it was the most crowded I’ve ever felt on a ship, and I’ve sailed Freedom twice before the last dry-dock and Oasis/Allure 5 times pre and post Dry-dock. On Navigator the same week the previous two years, the crowds were nothing like this week. There were 1250 kids on the cruise, and they were everywhere. Most were pretty well behaved, but there were packs of them running around all the time and we did get onto elevators with every floor pushed a few times. Went into the pool during the afternoon on Belize port day and couldn’t move around without knocking into someone. I can’t comment too much on chair hogging since I don’t spend much time hanging out at the pool and therefore don’t need a chair, but as I walked around I didn’t see empty chairs with the trademark chair hog towel/single flip-flop. I think I counted the queue for the ice cream machine on the pool deck at 30 deep at one point. We had our own Teens with us so we can't complain too much, but boy there was a lot of people.

 

You couldn’t do anything on the sea days without a crowd, capped off by the last sea day when they closed the outside decks due to high winds. This was compounded by the sprinklers going off by accident in the Teen Club, so they had to close that for a few hours and send them out into the public areas as well. There was always a wait for elevators from Deck 6, and when they did get there they were always packed, so I got a good workout taking the stairs. I came to appreciate my usual deck 14 Boardwalk room on Oasis/Allure, where I was never more than 2 decks away from 90% of my daytime activities. It wasn't fun getting into an empty elevator on deck 13 in a wet bathing suit with up to 3 still-damp flowboards/boogie boards and then have people jam their way on for 7 floors.

[BecciBoo]

Yeah you were on the tail end of Spring Break, hoping our April 24th will be close enough to end of year testing and well after Spring Break that there won't be such a bustle of kids.

 

Now if we can side step the Quinceañeras it'll be great!

[happymanitee]

Thanks for the review! I am so excited for my Liberty cruise this June!

[melski]

The Crowd

 

I think I counted the queue for the ice cream machine on the pool deck at 30 deep at one point. We had our own Teens with us so we can't complain too much, but boy there was a lot of people.

 

 

We were on the week before. We were set up in chairs by the kids pool and watching the Sprinkles line was an amusement in itself. I felt sorry for the guy in charge of it. He worked his tail off that week.

[mil76]

Water Slides

 

The water slides were OK for me. The green slide is faster, but by faster I mean that you usually don’t come to a complete stop halfway down the slide like the orange slide. If you wear rashguards or worse yet wetsuits on the slides you will probably get stuck. My youngest son did enjoy them though, and he's more of the target demographic for them. He was able to get down to below 20 second runs by going down with his back arched and just his forearms and heels touching the slide. I tried this once for about 20 feet until I took a chunk out of my elbow on one of the joints between the slide sections. The slides were open 9:00am to 9:00pm and my son made a point to go up after dark most nights since he said it’s much cooler to do at night with all the lights. The whole area looks really cool when lit up at night. The view from the staircase and top of the slide is great, but since you are going up to ride the slide they don't let you take cameras. Maybe they can make the Tidal Wave stairs useful by letting people walk up with cameras to take pictures.

 

I have seen questions about the stairway up to the slides getting hot from the sun, and I can say that the stairway is definitely air-conditioned. The shaft in the middle of the spiral staircase is hollow and also serves as a ventilation system pumping AC. I found it very comfortable while waiting. Another good thing about the slides is they provide great shade to the Flowrider, so you’re not as exposed to the sun as you are on Oasis/Allure.

 

As for Tidal Wave, they still have a crew from the manufacturer on-board working on the slide, but I didn’t see much of a sense of urgency. When I asked the Sports Deck staff when it would open they would just shrug their shoulders. They have to be so sick of getting that question from every guest. It was pretty comical watching the manufacturer’s crew while waiting in line for the Flowrider. You would see them come up the stairs from deck 12 by the Flowrider in their orange or red worksuits in a pack of about 10 people, head up to their work area, and then about 30 minutes later they would all walk back down together again. This went on over and over the whole cruise. I never saw them actually working on the slide itself. They had the balcony behind the Diamond Club closed off as this was their work area. The only time I heard noises that sounded like actual work going on was during port days.

[A&L_Ont]

For the actual cruise, I won’t do a timeline since it would be something like Flowrider, eat, tour island/Go to Beach/do something on ship, Flowrider, drink, eat, drink, sleep, repeat, so I’ll break things into highlight sections rather than a timeline.

 

Please tell me all about the riding.

 

 

First was internet. When we booked this cruise I thought they would have VOOM installed, and after having it on Oasis in October, it’s a huge step back not having it. I know many will talk about how great it is to disconnect while on a cruise, but that’s not the world I live in. I’m able to disconnect from work either way, but there’s so much more that being connected on a ship entails now. After following A&L Ont’s Periscopes from allure the previous two weeks I was hoping to show some of the new things live on Liberty, but I couldn’t get it to work due to lack of bandwidth. I even have an international data plan on my phone but there wasn’t enough bandwidth on the local mobile networks in Roatan or Belize to Periscope, and it didn't start to work until I got LTE in Cozumel, and Andrew had already covered that the week before. We did manage to watch a friend’s Periscope via the ship’s wifi while sailing away from Cozumel, but broadcasting was not happening.

 

The next letdown was the lack of Freestyle machines. When I got on-board and they did the beverage package sell job I asked them if they had the Freestyle machines, and she was clueless what I was talking about. I understood Navigator not getting them two years ago since it was a semi-new concept then, but not having them two years later when every restaurant on land seems to have them now was another fail in my book. Since the soda only package doesn’t have too much of a gratuity built into it, I like being able to serve myself and not have to bug the bartenders every time I want a refill. So for my first cruise ever I didn’t buy the soda package and relegated myself to a week of tea (Iced and Field+Selects).

 

As for people hoping/thinking the Freestyle machines’ installation is imminent, I was on Allure right before they started offering it, and the machines were in place, but they just weren’t working. I saw no signs of any machines on Liberty.

 

 

I really missed the freestyle machines on Indy, as the make such a better pour over the fountain gun. I too would rather grab a tumbler full prior to riding than bug a bar tender for one.

 

As for the data plans I actually could not get any 3G in St Thomas the entire day but in Labadee I had 3G as soon as I turned on my cellular. I ended up using the beach club's wifi.

[mil76]

Please tell me all about the riding.

 

Right on queue :D

 

Flowrider

 

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a card-carrying Flowrider addict, so this is always a central activity on our cruises. We don’t have a Flowrider in Denver and the closest one is 6 hours away in Albuquerque, so cruising is our best bet for getting our fix. My 17 YO was probably the best Stand Up boarder on the cruise, but he decided on day 2 that he was retiring from Flowriding (oh, to be 17 again) and never did it again, and my 13 YO is very good at Boogie Board, and is picking up Stand-Up since he passed the 58” cut-off in October. On RCCL he’s not allowed to do 95% of the Boogie Board tricks he’s able to do, so he usually would do just one BB ride per session, spin 360’s in every imaginable way until he was dizzy (since 360’s are the only tricks you can do) and then headed to the waterslides.

 

I spoke to one of the staff about Boogie Boarding being so restricted, and he said Royal has a zero tolerance policy for staff who allow guests to do forbidden tricks, and they can be fired immediately. I’m thinking it’s because so many younger kids do BB, and they don’t want them emulating people who can do harder/more dangerous tricks.

 

Only having one Flowrider has the benefit (to the FW) of moderating my amount of time spent on it since I have little desire to do Boogie Board (100% of the tricks I can do are now banned), unlike Oasis/Allure where there’s stand-up going on all day. The big drawback is with one Flowrider you get people who would be doing Boogie Boarding if available doing stand-up, and vice-versa, which adds to the crowding.

 

On Day 1 Liberty only has two Boogie Boarding sessions before and after Muster Drill, rather than one Boogie and one Stand-Up as we had on previous single-Flowrider cruises. Unlike Navigator the previous two years, Liberty does have advanced stand-up, but only for the first 30 minutes on Days 2-7, and then a 90 minute Stand-Up session with another 2 hour session in the afternoon.

 

So on day 2 we headed up to the Advanced session at 9:00am and were promptly joined by FIFTEEN other advanced riders.:eek: After the advanced we got even more people, and the line went at least the length of the side and at one point as far as halfway across the back of the Flowrider. So for the 2-hour sessions on sea days I never got more than 4 rides in. My theory that the waterslides would help reduce the Flowrider crowd was completely disproven.

 

Things did get better on port days. In Roatan my son and I had the wave to ourselves for the first 30 minutes until we were joined by one or two others. Belize had a few more and Cozumel was crowded again.

 

For Teens, they had three teen-only Flowrider sessions: Teen Standup during the day in Roatan, then separate 12-14 Boogie Board and 15-17 Boogie Board hours at night. Shows how popular the Flowrider is with the Teens (except for my oldest), as they used to only have one session for all the teens.

 

Due to the crowding (and our giving them a hard time about not having a separate session for the old farts), the Sports Deck manager made up for it by adding an extra Advanced Stand-Up session Cozumel night from 7-8pm. For that night we skipped the open session and had an early dinner, and then 5 of us showed up for the late session and had a great hour after dark with the slides and everything else lit up around us.

 

The final sea day in the morning was extremely windy, but luckily we had packed our wetsuit tops. In the afternoon the temp only reached the mid-60s F along with the apparent winds kicking up to 50 knots, so they closed the outside decks and I never bothered to go see if they reopened for the afternoon stand-up session.

 

Even though they had all those advanced riders and more than enough could do Best of the Best-worthy tricks, they said they were not going to do a Best of the Best, but the weather would probably have pre-empted it anyway. They told us they gave us the additional advanced hour to compensate for not doing BOTB, so it seemed like a fair trade. The most important aspect of the cruise was that I had been diligently working out before the cruise, so I didn't need to take a single Advil the entire cruise for Flowrider soreness. All in all it was a great Flowriding cruise.

[A&L_Ont]

I liked our cruise on Indy but a one wave ship, unless it is for Alaska or somewhere special, will unlikely be in my future again. For Indy there was also no standup on day one either. As for the extra hour of advanced riding the one night, that was great of the sports team to do that.

 

It's unfortunate that your DS stopped riding as you could have spent more time together, but it does make one less person in line. ;)

[Paul65]

I was with you on this sailing, and it's quite interesting to hear someone else's perspective. I can agree with you on the ship, in general, feeling more crowded, but we had very good luck with the soft-serve (never waited behind more than 3 or 4 people), and also with lunch at Windjammer. Even though the ship seemed a little more crowded than past cruises, the WJ seemed almost less so. There always were tables available, when we were there.

 

The kids were abundant, though, and several Quinceañera groups were on board.

[mslaabs]

We will be on Liberty in a couple of weeks and I'm trying to determine what day the second formal night is on. Do you recall if it was Thursday or Friday? I'm planning a surprise dinner at Chops for my Mom's birthday, but she won't want to miss lobster night in the MDR. One review from Feb. indicated it was Thursday, but Royal's response to my inquiry was "typically falls on night 6 (which would be Friday) but varies from ship to ship" :confused:

Edited April 8, 2016 by mslaabs

[Paul65]

We will be on Liberty in a couple of weeks and I'm trying to determine what day the second formal night is on. Do you recall if it was Thursday or Friday? I'm planning a surprise dinner at Chops for my Mom's birthday, but she won't want to miss lobster night in the MDR. One review from Feb. indicated it was Thursday, but Royal's response to my inquiry was "typically falls on night 6 (which would be Friday) but varies from ship to ship" :confused:

 

For us, it was on Thursday (Day 5), but I'm not sure if it's the same for the other itinerary. Are you doing the itinerary that goes to Roatan or the one that goes to Grand Cayman?

[mil76]

I liked our cruise on Indy but a one wave ship, unless it is for Alaska or somewhere special, will unlikely be in my future again. For Indy there was also no standup on day one either. As for the extra hour of advanced riding the one night, that was great of the sports team to do that.

 

It's unfortunate that your DS stopped riding as you could have spent more time together, but it does make one less person in line. ;)

 

That's probably the case for us now as well. As much as I like the dual Flowrider ships, the FW prefers the big ships as well. We're back on Allure for our Fall break in October, but we wished Harmony would have gotten to FL a few weeks earlier. I have been telling the FW I wasn't interested in Alaska for years now (no Flow, no go), but she knew something was up when I told her I'd be happy to do Alaska on Explorer.

[mil76]

Mini Golf

 

The new mini golf is really nice. It was much more like a normal mini-golf course on land with more of the gimmicks, unlike the putting green aspect of the other ships’ courses. There wasn’t much fanfare about the mini-golf upgrade during the dry-dock, so this was an unexpected surprise. But just like everything else, it was packed during the day and had lots of unaccompanied kids who didn’t have a clue about etiquette. The DS and I had to use toddler-size putters since there was not nearly enough equipment for the amount of people.

 

Teen Club

The Teen Club was divided into 12-14 and 15-17 groups. Both of my boys went the first night, since that sets the tone for their cruise based on who they meet that night. My oldest, who on many occasions (including Navigator the previous two years) will not meet people he likes and will bail on the Teen Activities, met a bunch of friends and spent almost all of his free time, including every night until the 1:00am curfew, hanging out with them. My 13 YO, who until this cruise always found something to do in Adventure Ocean and now Teen Club, didn’t want to do Teen Club at all after the 2nd night. He told us the 12-14 year olds were too busy trying to hang out with the 15-17 year olds, who wanted nothing to do with them. So he ended up making his own activities such as the water slides at night.

[mil76]

Dining

This was our first time doing MTD, but they were offering the Specialty dining packages so we went for the 4 dinners for $85 package. We also had a free dinner from our travel agent, so we only did MTD twice.

MDR

We went to MTD the first night right at 5:30 when it opened, and the service was excellent. We tried to get the same table and waiters for the 2nd formal night, but our reservation was for 7:00pm and the place was bedlam. We waited about 20 minutes for the table to clear, but then gave up and said seat us anywhere. We got to our table and they informed us that they were out of prime rib, which the FW wanted since she doesn’t do lobster. So those of us who wanted lobster got our measly lobster tails, and the FW got some terrible piece of meat that they offered in place of the prime rib, so we decided to forgo the rest of the meal and headed for the Windjammer. It was interesting to go from MTD, which seemed like chaos, to the WJ, which was completely laid-back and quiet. I looked over and saw one family sitting in the Windjammer with a bottle of wine on the table having a nice quiet dinner. I always like the vibe the WJ has at night.

 

We did lunch in the MDR on every sea day. The items from the menu were pretty bad. I tried the steak sandwich one day, which was like a McRib sandwich without the BBQ sauce, and the beefburger another, which might as well have come out in an aluminum foil tray as a TV dinner. The salad bar was great, and they even had a sushi bar one of the days and a pasta bar another. In my mind the MDR is now just focusing on being the salad-based buffet at lunch, and they are making the menu so bad that nobody will even want anything from it.

 

As for the Specialties, we did Giovanni’s and Chops twice, and Sabor once. One slight annoyance was that they no longer put out the dinner reminders in your stateroom when you are booked for specialties. When you have multiple reservations it’s hard to keep track of them.

Giovanni’s

Giovanni’s on Liberty had a new menu since Oasis in October. The new menu was good, but they no longer offered items we liked, such as the scallops appetizer (which was my favorite dish offered anywhere on RCCL), crab ravioli and lasagna. When we asked what was going on the manager did get scallops for our second night there and they tried to prepare them Giovanni’s style, but it just wasn’t the same. Giovanni’s is our favorite on Oasis/Allure, but it just seems like something is missing in the converted Portofinos.

Chops

The whole Chops argument has been beaten to death, so to bottom line it from my perspective, it isn’t Morton’s or Ruth's Chris, and it’s not really worth $35 when you consider you already are paying for a meal as part of your cruise fare, but when you do it twice in a 4 meal package for $85, you can’t really complain. Everyone did 9 ounce filets both times, and they cooked it perfectly rare, just as I like it. Service was great, although you have to all but beg to get proper sides portions. Six people at a table and they bring out a small flat plate with a little bit of creamed corn splashed on it. C’mon…

Sabor

We did Sabor on Navigator and Oasis already, and we prefer the Navigator/Liberty more formal restaurant rather than the taqueria setup on Oasis. Not sure why they had to brand them both Sabor since the atmosphere is so different. As for the food, I thought it was great. They made me a separate spicy guacamole from the rest of the table, and I had the mole, which was excellent. The FW thought the food was too spicy, but the rest of our party enjoyed it. Needless to say, the FW won out in the end and that was the restaurant that got the single visit out of the five.

Johnny Rockets:

We tried to go there twice with no luck. We got back on the ship from Belize at about 1:00pm and wanted to have a burger, but they didn’t open until 2:00pm. On the last sea day we tried again, but because the outside decks were closed you had to enter through the arcade, and the back third of the arcade was jammed with people with the same intentions as us. With the teen club being closed at the time the rest of the arcade was jammed with kids, so that idea was short-lived.

Ben and Jerry’s

To give you an idea how crowded it was the last sea day, Ben and Jerry’s had a line out onto the Promenade, and they couldn’t keep up with demand for waffle cones so you had to wait as they could only make one at a time and wait for it to cool. I had never seen more than 2 people in Ben and Jerry’s on any other cruises, but it looked like a Dairy Queen on a summer evening after little league.

[Ethelfleda]

Loving this review! I'm also a flowrider addict, and am going solo on the Liberty in June just to get more time in. I love my fellow riders, but I hope we have a few less than you did on your cruise! :eek:

 

My fear is that the slides are going to bring EXTRA people up to look at and then they will decide to try the flowrider, and the lines will be even longer than they have been in the past. Eeek - stay away!! :p

 

Keep the rest of the review coming - I especially want to hear if disembarkation has improved from when I was on the Liberty's repositioning tour from NJ to Galeveston in November. That was a horror story! (especially the LONG taxi line - I've lined up a shuttle from Galveston Express this time because no way am I chancing that again).