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

[Keith1010]

Very nice review.

 

Keith

[Paul65]

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).

 

If I recall correctly from our Roll Call thread, the OP, like myself, did early disembarkation with our luggage and got off the ship very quickly. Someone else mentioned it getting pretty backed up later in the morning, though.

[A&L_Ont]

I am hoping that the Abyss and water slides on Harmony will draw people from stand up riding. On your sailing it sounds as though it didn't work. The best plan is to sail when there are less kids who will try it.

 

I too noticed Explorer going to Alaska this and next year. DW, just rolls her eyes and states "it won't be open if it is too cold".

[nativetexan]

Thanks for taking the time to provide great info. Sounds like you all had a great time. Love the FW designation. I know her pain and the struggle is real.

[mil76]

Ok, found some more pictures from the FW's phone.

 

This is what we had in Denver a few days before the cruise. The kids got 2 snow days off from school and then a week of Spring Break.

 

DS learning the heelside stall during the special evening session. I give it another cruise or two and he'll be better than all of us.

 

Watersides at night.

 

The old man showing everyone how to ride the top of the wave (no hip injuries this cruise!).

[mil76]

If I recall correctly from our Roll Call thread, the OP, like myself, did early disembarkation with our luggage and got off the ship very quickly. Someone else mentioned it getting pretty backed up later in the morning, though.

 

I'll get to that...

[A&L_Ont]

Thanks for the pictures, I need a distraction from the snow we have here too. That is a great heel side stall. I have a feeling if we ever sail together our boys will be ripping it up and we will just pray for no injuries.:)

[mil76]

This morning as I was looking through the cabinets for a tea bag for my morning cuppa, I found THIS:

 

 

The FW actually stole some of these from the ship! And to make things worse, she only drinks decaffeinated! Can you imagine drinking this stuff and not even getting the benefit of a caffeine fix? The decaffeinated is harder to find onboard (for good reason). I remember her asking the staff for decaffeinated, and instead of them replying “Are you serious?”, they happily went off and found some in a secret stash somewhere.

Edited April 8, 2016 by mil76

[mil76]

Love the FW designation. I know her pain and the struggle is real.

 

That's why we cruise with the In-Laws!:D The only problem is the casino is always calling her when I'm Flowriding. I think she broke even or came out slightly ahead this cruise...at least that's what she tells me! :eek:

[mil76]

The Stateroom

 

We had three balcony rooms in a row on deck six (6680, 6682, 6684), with our room connected to the kids’ room. When they did the dry-dock, I don’t think they did anything to the rooms other than install concrete slabs where the beds used to be. After reading all the complaints about the new mattresses I thought everyone was over-reacting, but after 7 nights of it, I’m now a believer in asking for a mattress topper. With that said, the FW said the beds were fine. A minor annoyance was the curtain had holes in the blackout part of the curtain, so since we were on the port side heading south the first two days, the sunlight woke us bright and early both days. And this was after I purposely brought clips to make sure the curtains were completely closed and no light would get in. We mentioned it to our stateroom attendant and it was fixed that day.

 

Not sure if the TVs were new in dry-dock, but the software was a bit screwy. [sarcasm on]I know, I know, this is impossible to believe from an IT leader like RCCL, but even the best run IT departments can have a glitch occasionally [/sarcasm off]. One day as the FW was looking at the Seapass charges on the TV, she saw a whole bunch of bar charges. For me, I don’t drink during the day since drinking and Flowriding don’t mix, so I’ll usually have the free drinks my Diamond status gets me 4-8pm, and maybe buy one or two later in the evening. I got an accusatory look from the FW for a few seconds, until we realized the TV was showing us someone else’s Seapass charges. A call to Guest Services got us the normal "yeah, we know" answer we heard so much this trip.

 

The main issue we had with the room was that we noticed the carpet by the door was wet. At first we thought someone had just dropped a wet bathing suit or towel, but after the second day we realized it was the shower leaking underneath and coming through the wall. Long story short, the leak only happened when someone was in the shower, so when maintenance came and ran the shower they couldn’t recreate the issue, but even though they couldn’t/wouldn’t get to the bottom of it, someone still came every day with a carpet cleaner to suck up the water. We were heading out the door to the tender in Belize and they showed up and when we told them the issue only happens when someone was in the shower, they asked us if one of us would take a shower! So it took until Day 6 and having both the head of maintenance and the head of housekeeping in the room telling us we didn’t know what we were talking about before they actually fixed it. We thought we were doing them a favor by telling them they had a leak, and where it was located was more of an annoyance to us (other than the smell after a couple of days), since we only walked there when leaving or entering the room. But next time instead of having a constant stream of people coming into the room from 7:30am until 10:00pm telling us there isn’t a problem, I’ll just ignore it and let the people from a deck below say there’s an issue when it starts leaking into their room.

 

I do prefer the placement of the doors connecting the rooms on Freedom class vs. Oasis. It’s nice to have the door right in the main living area of the room rather than by the bathroom. You can actually have conversations between the rooms, and it gives more of a feeling of one big room.

 

The balcony separator doors were nicer compared to Navigator. They are pocket doors rather than the swinging doors like on Navigator, and after having it open last year I understand why they don’t like to have them open on Voyager class ships, since it swings freely and becomes a nuisance as you try to go around it to get to the other balcony. No problem like that on Liberty though, and we had both doors between the three rooms opened for one huge balcony. Only drawback was due to the wind the doors rattled loudly all day and night, but this was a design issue rather than a function of having them open, since the closed doors actually made more noise. A couple of well-jammed washcloths helped a little, but on the really windy days we heard a symphony of rattling doors from everywhere on the ship.

[mil76]

The Staff

 

Other than the leaking shower saga, we found the staff to be wonderful. I can’t believe how much they stretch these people, especially during a week like this with all the kids, and they always try to be as cheerful as possible. I didn’t get many WOW experiences like other cruises, but I think they were mainly in survival mode until after Spring Break season.

 

My mother in law did get the WOW treatment though. The second day of the cruise was her birthday, and without us requesting it her stateroom attendant decked out the room with those normally overpriced Happy Birthday room decorations and gave her a bottle of champagne. She was about the nicest room attendant I have ever come across on all of our cruises.

 

We had a different attendant in the other two rooms, and she had just gotten back from a break. She had to do some sort of training that week so was extremely busy, but we felt she did a great job all things considered. She also had to deal with the mess of the boys’ room so she earned her extra tip we gave her.

 

I'll just remind everyone that it's usually not much more to get 2 connected D2 balcony rooms rather than one D1 with four people crammed into it. We went the D1 route for many years before we realized this and started going with 2 rooms last year. I was thankful every time I set foot in the boys' room.

 

One day during lunch we met an assistant waiter from the US (Mississippi) in the Windjammer. This cruise gave us our first American captain, and now our first American wait staff! I thought there was a “no Americans working outside the Sports Deck or Adventure Ocean since they can’t hack it” rule, but I guess not. She was very nice and since it was a slow port day she spent a couple minutes sharing her story. Sounded like she didn’t really know what she was getting into (well, duh!). She also told us the story of a guy from New York who was also working as an assistant waiter and basically wanted out and was rude to the captain so he could get fired.

[mil76]

Diamond Lounge

 

The Diamond Lounge staff was great, except for one small issue, which I’ll cover later. The stack of ones, pay as you go tipping method had my beer being replaced with perfect timing every time. We took advantage of breakfast in the Diamond Lounge a couple mornings before hitting the Flowrider. Not quite as nice as omelettes at Wipeout Cafe on the way to the Flowrider, but much less crowded. I mentioned that the balcony behind the Diamond Lounge is being used as a work area for the Tidal Wave efforts, so the whole glass wall between the lounge and the balcony is covered over with brown paper. It will probably be nice like Navigator was if/when they get the slide working. Due to eating in the specialties most nights we were able to take advantage of the 4-8pm Happy Hour during times between the MDR waves, so we usually were able to find seats for the four of us (just the adults) together in the lounge.

 

I have seen questions about access to the Suite Lounge and whether D+ has access or not. Well, I can say that unlike the Diamond Lounge, anyone can get into the Suites Lounge since there is no access control on the door. My 13 YO, who never met a door he didn’t try to open, verified this. Of course you would have to be able to bluff the concierge once you got inside that you belong there, but anyone can get in. From the time we peeked into the Suite lounge, it looked like a mirror image of the Diamond lounge on the opposite side of the deck.

 

An unexpected event on this cruise was when we came back from dinner one night and found a crystal block of the Liberty on the bed with a letter congratulating us for reaching 140 C&A points.

 

 

I have read posts about these blocks in the past, and sort of chalked it up to something we will never get and never thought about it again, sort of like Pinnacle status, but lo and behold here we are. We also came to realize that D+ isn’t really that far off anymore (not that it matters since they let anyone in the Suite lounge):p.

 

The FW then called down to remind them that we had two rooms with guests reaching 140 points this cruise, so they dropped off another one. My youngest has a collection of the ships they sell in the shop, so this makes a nice addition to that.

Edited April 8, 2016 by mil76
Sorry for the horrible picture

[caseythegr]

Keep posting! We sail her in just about 2 weeks.

Laurie

[mil76]

Entertainment

 

Didn’t do as much with the entertainment as we normally do, but here’s the recap:

 

Saturday Night Fever- Excellent. I’m not a theater guy, and usually my indicator of whether a play is decent or not is if I’m able to stay awake for the whole play (I never made it through Chicago on Allure), but I really enjoyed this one. I thought the props they used, such as the movie screen, dance floor and the mirror were ingenious, and the cast gave an excellent performance. It was also interesting to watch the story of how they brought SNF to the Liberty played on the TV during the week. You definitely want to get there early, as the seats fill up fast, but for this cruise that seemed to be the rule for just about everything.

 

The only other show we saw live was the Blackstreet Boys. Thought they were funny, and the member of the audience they pulled up to do the show was a great sport. Caught the recording of the juggler’s performance on the stateroom TV and thought he was pretty good as well. Never bothered with the ice shows, since seating for those shows is a bloodsport even on cruises that aren’t super crowded. Quest and Love and Marriage are in “been there, done that” territory for us now so we passed on them, although you couldn’t miss the Love and Marriage 24 hour channel on the TV the rest of the cruise. When the choice is watching Big Bang Theory in German/French/Spanish/Swahili, The Donald Trump Television Network….I mean CNN, or Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage won out.

 

Derek Lewis- After reading all the reviews of Derek I was looking forward to spending many nights in the pub this cruise, but I was let down on this one. My idea of a pub singer is the pub singer sings, and the audience sings along, rather than the other way around. Pub singers have always been hit or miss for us since the great one we had on Adventure years ago on our first cruise set the bar very high. We had quite a few duds over the years, but Jimmy Blakemore on Oasis in October had us thinking the singers were getting back to that level, and that combined with the great reviews of Derek Lewis had us looking forward to seeing his act. Well, what ended up happening was we went on the 2nd night, and basically got karaoke with drunker participants than what you would get in the karaoke in On Air. One or two audience member karaokes is OK, but almost every song? We really wanted to like this, but left after about an hour and never returned the rest of the week.

[mil76]

Ports

 

We don’t really do excursions on Caribbean cruises anymore since we haven’t been to a new port of call in years, so getting two ports we’ve never been to before (Roatan and Belize) was one of the reasons we opted for this cruise. Usually we’ll stay onboard until they kick us off the Flowrider, then catch a cab to the beach or just walk around the port.

 

Roatan

We stayed on the ship until the Teen Flowrider session ended at 11:00am, which was later than we planned. This one caught us by surprise since they usually do Teen Flowrider at night, and it wasn’t on the Teen Compass someone posted from a few weeks ago. We had pre-booked Rony’s Tours for the day, and since we didn’t give a deposit I was afraid the driver would leave us high and dry. So the evening before we arrived I fired up the flamethrower internet and emailed Rony’s telling them we would be late, and 10 minutes later the email was on its way (only a slight exaggeration). I got a reply early the next morning saying they would be waiting for us, and sure enough at 11:30 they were standing where they told us with a sign, and we were quickly on our way. Our driver (Hollander/Jolander, not sure about the spelling) was excellent. His Ford Explorer easily fit the 6 of us, and most importantly the AC was cranking since it was about 86F. We were told that they would take us somewhere for a free drink, which usually is accompanied by a hard-sell for something, but we asked since we had gotten off late if we could pass on this, and he skipped it with no questions asked. We had a great tour of the island, and we ended up at West End where my son did some snorkeling. We enjoyed the shaded beach, which kept us cool while the DS was in the water. Jolander said West Bay isn’t as shaded so we decided to skip West Bay and let the DS have more time in the water while we sat in the shade, but now we have a reason to go back. The charge for the tour was $25 a person, which seemed reasonable to us.

 

View of the ship from the hill

 

Coxen Hole

 

West End

[mil76]

Belize

We struggled to figure out something to do in Belize. My father in law isn’t as mobile as he used to be, so that ruled out cave tubing, and we didn’t want a long drive to the Mayan ruins. The tendering process was bedlam in the morning, so we just stayed onboard until all the numbers were called by 11:30am and then quickly boarded the tender and headed into the port. We walked around the port area looking at all the tourist garbage and cheap ****** signs for about 20 minutes, then decided to head back for our first ill-fated Johnny Rockets lunch. Where the ships docks is way out from the port, so we ended up spending about an hour on the tenders back and forth for 20 minutes in port, but we missed the queuing on both ends, and can now say that we’ve been to Belize…

 

Leaving on the tender

 

Belize City

 

Those specks on the horizon are the ships

Edited April 8, 2016 by mil76

[SF BAY]

Wow, We were on the same sailing and I felt the same way about Derek.We usually spend many nights in the Pub but felt so intimitdated that he may call on you (Sling, Sling) to go up and sing we avoided it the rest of the week. J.R. in the Schooner was fantastic as was Saturday Night Fever. We took our GD who is 7 and had a great time. The new waterslides in the Aqua park were a hit.When we pulled up next to Freedom in Cozumel I noticed they did not have any.

The Bad, IMHO. Galveston. Whats up Texas, only 4 types of beer, no top shelf liqour or champagne on sail away.I wanted a Mudslide with Belvedere and was told no. OK how about a shot of Patron, sorry. Well just give us a glass of champagne, nope. Texas law requires only products made in Texas be offered until your 12 miles out to sea. Went down to MTD and made reservation for 7. We were seated at 7:20 and received our first taste of food past 8:15. The prime rib was good,but not worth the wait. Only went back once to dining room.

Night 3 get a letter to our room. CC is rejected. We owe 82 dollars, Go to guest services and wait one hour and 17 minutes in line due to so many people booking shore excursions their. We call bank only to find out the agent at the pier entered wrong exp. date. Prob corrected.Night 5 another letter,CC rejected again. Back down,another long wait and apology. Why did they not fix this the first time ?

They had no evening Ice Show. I believe it was day 2 when they had an afternoon show and the last sea they had shows at 2 & 4 but both were canceled.

We have spent many days on Liberty having done the Med on her and a couple of TA's but the addition of the new rooms and the removal of the common areas makes the ship seem much more crowded. The internet was worse than dialup

[mil76]

Cozumel

We have a Cozumel routine now. Stay on-board until the Flowrider closes, then hop in a taxi for Paradise Beach. Because we get off late, Paradise Beach is a good option for us since it’s just $3 to get a chair, with the expectation we will buy something. We usually will buy a bucket of beers and some food, and two or three of us will do the water activities for $18, and it still ends up being much cheaper than an all-inclusive. There has only been one time where we got there late and couldn’t find chairs for all of us, but that was one of those 7 ship days. Two of us sprung for the water activities, but due to the high winds they didn’t have some of the things we wanted to do put out, like stand-up paddleboarding. The water was very choppy and full of debris, (not that they have pristine blue water there anyway), so in hindsight I wish we had passed on the water activities this time.

 

It’s amazing seeing how Paradise Beach has grown over the years. We started going there when it was a bar, some chairs, a changing room, and an inflatable iceberg on the water. Now it’s a whole complex with a pool and a whole bunch of water activities. We were there in October and since then they have added a Taco Truck between the pool and the beach and a hammock hut.

 

We were docked across the pier from Liberty's older sister Freedom. We got to see their waterslide envy the whole day:p. Sail away was great as we pulled out of port first and we all waved goodbye.

 

Something's missing

Edited April 8, 2016 by mil76

[wolfganghowell]

Loved your pug pic. Hope he/she got lots tummy rubs when you got back.

 

Derek does do some songs but yes, he is very audience inclusive. Sorry yours was drunk laden - we've seen him many times over the years and sure, there's always going to be a few but most of the time it's not that way.

[klass2]

I am enjoying hearing your thoughts. I was also on this cruise with my 9YO son.

 

We also stayed at the SpringHill Suites by Hobby and went to Cozumel in Mexico.

 

We had a pretty good cruise. Some minor mixups with our Sea Pass cards, dinner reservations and getting stuff sent to our cabin on multiple occasions for other people (perhaps b/c we booked a guarantee room and didn't get an assignment until 2 days before the cruise).

 

My biggest 3 complaints would be the lack of Freestyle Machines, the overpriced and unreliable internet (like you it's hard to go back to crappy internet after you cruise with VOOM) and the disembarking process was AWFUL. Flippin awful. It literally took 2 hours (1hr57min, yes I timed it) of standing in line after our group was called. And we were group 2 with RCCL transfers.

 

The best? The waterslides and Adventure Ocean. My kid was happy, so I was happy and able to just chill out and relax. :)

[Paul65]

I am enjoying hearing your thoughts. I was also on this cruise with my 9YO son.

 

We also stayed at the SpringHill Suites by Hobby and went to Cozumel in Mexico.

 

We had a pretty good cruise. Some minor mixups with our Sea Pass cards, dinner reservations and getting stuff sent to our cabin on multiple occasions for other people (perhaps b/c we booked a guarantee room and didn't get an assignment until 2 days before the cruise).

 

My biggest 3 complaints would be the lack of Freestyle Machines, the overpriced and unreliable internet (like you it's hard to go back to crappy internet after you cruise with VOOM) and the disembarking process was AWFUL. Flippin awful. It literally took 2 hours (1hr57min, yes I timed it) of standing in line after our group was called. And we were group 2 with RCCL transfers.

 

The best? The waterslides and Adventure Ocean. My kid was happy, so I was happy and able to just chill out and relax. :)

 

I guess it's fortunate for me that I don't care about internet or soda. Seems like we had fewer complaints that some others. About the worst thing for us was my wife not getting her suitcase until late on the first night. We had 8:00 seating for dinner, and when it was still not there after dinner, we went down to Guest Services. We were standing in line there, when they started bringing up some bags that were apparently in the "naughty" area, and her bag was among them. Most of them had some sort of note on them indicating was was suspected to be inside, but nothing on her bag, and we had received no notification that it was held for any reason. So, a bit of poor communication there, but we had everything at that point, so all was good.

[mil76]

Disembarking

 

This was our true test for the vacation. Contrary to all the warnings, and our own experience the previous 2 years being some of the last people off the ship, only to walk into 2+ hour waits to get through customs, to the point where we swore "never again" to Galveston, we booked the 10:40am Denver flight on Southwest out of Hobby.

 

We have been so spoiled by all of the pre-9:00am flights out of Fort Lauderdale the past few years that we thought we could do 10:40am out of Hobby. After reading the Gulf Coast departures board we started to get a bit nervous, so we had to make sure we were ready to go at the first opportunity, and had scoped out contingencies if we were to miss the flight. We know we are pressing our luck and will get bit one of these times, but we accept that as the price to pay to (hopefully) make it back to Denver by lunchtime on Sunday.

 

The big difference is that the Allure/Oasis terminal in Port Everglades lets you get off much earlier than Galveston. I have been sitting at the gate at FLL as early as 6:50am in the past, but there’s no getting off the ship in Galveston until 7:30am. We were planning to get in the Self-Assist line very early to get off first, but when we asked Jorge in the Diamond Lounge what we needed to do, he said he would meet us in the morning and walk us off first. Well, the next morning came and instead of queuing up early we had breakfast in the WJ and were waiting for him where he told us at 7:30am when they started letting everyone off the ship. With Jorge nowhere to be found, we saw the Suites concierge walking back from getting the Gold cards off the ship and we told him what we were doing and he got us off immediately (and got the tip I had ready for Jorge). We were able to walk straight to customs, and we cleared immigration and were out the door by 7:45am.

 

Since time was of the essence, we had already decided we were going to take two taxis to Hobby for the six of us rather than try a pre-arranged option, since we were afraid that we would have to wait for them to get to the port after we called them, or worse yet not show up at all (I had read some of those horror stories on the Gulf Coast board). Fortunately for us there was a minivan taxi waiting, and he was able to take all 6 of us and our luggage with no issues, and didn’t even charge us for the extra passengers. One little caveat though is there is not a line of taxis waiting outside the terminal, and there was just one taxi behind ours. Only taxis licensed for Galveston can pick up at the terminal, so when things get busy I’m assuming there will be a wait involved.

 

The taxi driver was originally from Brooklyn, just like the in-laws, so they shared NY stories all the way to Hobby. Taxi fare was about $110, which compared to everything else we had priced out ended up being the cheapest, except for the La Quinta option which due to timing wouldn’t have worked this week anyway. We pulled up to Hobby at 8:20am and were checked in and at the gate by 8:45am. I never thought we would be at the airport two-plus hours before our flight, but we did it. Flight went without a hitch, and we were back in Denver before lunch.:cool:

[mil76]

Post-Mortem

 

So to wrap this up, from my perspective there has been a demographics shift from Navigator to Liberty. This year during the same week there were far more families and kids than had been on Navigator the same week the previous two years. So the waterslides seem to have served their purpose for RCCL and they now are even more attractive to families.

 

I met a lot more non-Texans than the previous two years, so people who would have opted to go out of FL before may be looking twice at Liberty/Galveston. For transportation and customs, we had no issues and it was similar to getting from Orlando to Port Canaveral and back, although I’d take Hobby over MCO any day of the week. People who waited to leave ended up in the two-hour customs lines we experienced in the past, so I will always go with the early option if I cruise from Galveston again.

 

I think once they get all the pieces in place that everyone expected/hoped from the dry-dock (all slides functioning/VOOM/same amenities as other ships that have recently been dry-docked) this will be a good cruise when it’s not a peak cruising week, but we won’t be going on Liberty for Spring Break next year.

[atnolan94]

For those doing the belize/roatan route on the liberty...

 

We did it on March 13th thru the 20th

 

We did the Starfish Island shore excursion in Belize. It was absolutely incredible. Included lunch, they had a little bar and a guy who would chop up a coconut and make you a coco loco in a coconut right in front of you using the fresh coconut water. They had kayaks and lots of aquatic life. They had many different types of seating as well as little cabanas with hammocks. All is first come first serve, but the island was not crowded in the slightest. They just pick you up at the ship, so you don't have to tender to the shore first, they just take you straight in.

 

Highly Highly recommended! We considered canceling our plans on the allure for our honeymoon just to do the Liberty and go back to Starfish Island. Plus its like $30 a person which includes lunch....hard to beat.

 

In Roatan we did the extreme zipline which was amazing, and worth it if you enjoy zip lines.

 

In Cozumel we did the sea turtle swimming tour which definitely was not worth the cost or the time. And it was very scary how far you swam out from the shore. The water was choppy and it was very overcrowded. My fiancee almost had a panic attack. And they got mad at us for wearing sunscreen which was a little rude. If I could do it again I'd take the water taxi over to Playa and hang out at the shops there. and there were plenty of restraints and beachfront we could have accessed. Our Honeymoon on the allure stops in Cozumel and that is what we plan to do.

 

If theres a huge demand for reviews I may slap something together. Just let me know. I had an amazing experience and would definitely do it again. I've always kind of "looked down" on Galveston Cruises (and I'm from Dallas so not far at all) and I no longer do that. The Liberty out of Galveston is a great fit. I would do it again. Great family cruise too. My fiancee and I are 21 yrs so no kids yet :) But maybe in a few years, it will be a great option for us.

Edited April 8, 2016 by atnolan94

[wolfganghowell]

March spring break cruises get a lot of drive in states. Once, it was Arkansas spring break and almost everyone we met was from there.

 

Thanks again for the review - lots of great info. Glad to see that the suite concierge does the walk down for disembarkation. EXTRA glad you made your flight - you are a brave soul! :)