Carnival Liberty - 12/8/07 - Eastern

[Charming01]

Great review!:D

[Icantdrv55]

So I promised a little more and here it is. It's my view on the ship maybe later I'll do a write up about the food.

 

The Ship

We really liked this ship. From top to bottom I found the design of it to be beautiful. Our cabin was the atypical balcony cabin design. Cabin 7217 is almost all the way forward and your view from the balcony is slightly obstructed by the bridge. We still like the balcony and if we go on another cruise we will book a balcony cabin again. One word of note about the decks. If you go all the way forward on the seventh deck or any of the ones below it(down to probably 4 or so) there is an accessible deck at the front of the ship. The one on the seventh deck had some benches to sit on.

The third deck had the main entrances to both of the dining rooms. We were seated in the Gold dining room and found it easily accessible from the main elevators which were the closest ones to our cabin. I can see how getting to the Silver could be annoying but we’ll discuss that in a little bit. The Gold dining room was beautiful and I thought very well designed. Our table was in the back of the dining room and we actually found it was easier to access our table from the back entrance to the dining room using the 2nd set of elevators away from our cabin. It saved us from having to traverse the entire dining room to get to our table. The Silver dining room was equally nice. I realized I don’t really care for the aft dining room setup all that much as there seems to be more movement in that part of the ship than midship. As far as the accessibility goes, we found it easy to get to the Silver dining room once we knew that we had to walk all the way aft to get there. I would say by day 2 I had the ship layout down. For the Silver dining room we just walked to last bank of elevators aft on the deck our cabin was on and took those elevators down to 3 to the entrance of the dining room. Now I could see that this area probably gets congested when they first open for dinner and that probably presents a problem. It’s just as easy to walk down the couple of flights from deck 5 to get to the dining room.

All the way forward on deck 3 was the Venetian Palace. I liked the design that they used for this room. Right down to the mask tables to the jesters holding the curtains everything was done with much detail. The light fixture in this room was cool. The seats were actually quite comfortable. This room also presented a problem with congestion. The problem is that only one bank of elevators (including the glass ones that were in operation) is available on the third deck between the Venetian Palace and the Gold dining room. With no thoroughfare on the third floor to the other elevators you had a choice. Either wait for those elevators with a bunch of other people or climb the steps up to floor 5 to cross to the other sets of elevators. We would often use the steps in the atrium area to go up to 4 and sometimes continue on to 5.

The fourth deck had some common rooms on it. I believe including the internet café and maybe one of the lounges. I don’t remember them all to well because we didn’t use them. The accessibility on the fourth floor was not from forward to aft either. Again the midship dining room presented the same issue as on the third floor. Also on the fourth floor was the photo gallery. I found this area to be nice in the fact that they used plenty of room to display the pictures that they took throughout the cruise. It made it somewhat easier to find the pictures.

The fifth deck was nicely done and made a lot of sense. All the way forward was the Venetian Palace’s third floor. There are very few seats on this floor and we found it easier to get seats for shows on the 3rd or 4th deck. Going towards the aft end of the ship you next had the shops and the sports bar. The sports bar is kinda tucked in with the shops and the casino making it a little tough to find, but it is nice and I liked the theme. The shops are what they are and seemed to be the norm for the shops on the ship. The casino is next and it is quite spacious. I can’t really handle the smoke but it seems to stay well contained in this area. I did play a little hold ‘em poker which was quite easy to pick up and play even with the electronic system. Headed a little further aft at the end of the casino was a bar. It was near this bar where they did the ice fountain martinis. Adjacent to the entire casino is a long walkway so you don’t have to walk through the casino to go towards the aft end of the ship. It is in this location and at either end of the stairs in the atrium area where the do formal pictures. After you pass through the casino area you come upon the desk for the ship shopper. He seemed nice enough when we went and talked to him about shopping in Nassau. Across the way from him was the bakery. I could imagine ordering specialty coffee drinks from here but I can’t imagine ordering dessert. I more than had my fill of desserts in the dining room during the cruise. That being said the desserts do look great and I did think about trying them. Beyond that was the Sushi bar, Origami. The sushi that I had was good.

Once you pass the sushi bar you get into the entertainment portion of the deck. Basically all of the music clubs are located in the aft end of the ship. We used the piano bar and the disco club on this ship. We didn’t use the other ones but I took a look at them and they seemed nice. The room where they do the Captain’s cocktail party is also located at the aft end of the ship on this deck. It was a nicely sized room and I liked them having this event here over the showroom like they did on our last cruise.

Overall I liked the fifth deck of this ship. Everything seemed compact and easy to get to. Several evenings we’d take the elevator from the rear of the Golden dining room up to the fifth floor to continue our evening.

The Lido deck was fairly nice on this ship. We typically used the aft pool as it seemed to be a little less traveled than the others. Most of the kids on board (which there wasn’t many) stuck to the midship pools. In between the midship pools and the aft pool were the buffet areas. We used the buffet a few times and found some the selections to be good. I’ll go over the food a little more in a food section. I just suggest exploring to find the different selections. The tricky one being the fish and chips. We were going to try out the fish and chips but never did get around to it. One deck up from the Lido mid ship to aft ship(Panorama deck) is a little bit of an observation deck outside and the fish and chips inside. There are stairs in the buffet area to get to the fish and chips. I’d mention the other decks but we didn’t get a huge amount of use out of them. I did take a walk along the Sun and Sky deck and took the water slide from the Sky deck but that’s about it. They are more about observation or if you have children the Camp Carnival is on the Sun Deck.

[deborahjo]

What fond memories. It has only been 3 months and I miss her so much. Loved your pictures.

 

How did you feel about having 3000 passengers on board. I thought it would bother me but I hardly realized there were that many people.

 

Great Review.

[shargurl]

I am loving your review, can't wait to hear about the FOOD!!!

[Icantdrv55]

What fond memories. It has only been 3 months and I miss her so much. Loved your pictures.

 

How did you feel about having 3000 passengers on board. I thought it would bother me but I hardly realized there were that many people.

 

Great Review.

 

It really didn't seem that bad. I was a little afraid of the size of the ship but it did not seem congested at all with a few exceptions. I found that when leaving the showroom it would get a little congested just due to traffic flow. The lido buffet area also seemed to get bogged down on occasion. We did find the aft end of the Lido deck to be a nice recluse from that though. I think the time of the year that we sailed was good also. There were not a lot of kids on board that week.

[dommer573]

Excellent review. Reading it brought back memory's of my past cruises. It made me sad when you talked about the last few day of the cruise.:( I always feel alittle melancholy the day before and I feel it all over the ship, from the other passengers. Thanks again, and great job!!

[Icantdrv55]

So someone asked about the food so I figured I'd write up a quick review of the food.

 

Dining Room - The dining room food was most excellent. I pretty much liked every single thing that I had. There was maybe one excpetion to this and it was on the last night of the cruise. On the last night they had a seafood platter thing on the menu. I can't recall the exact name of it, but what it amounted to was a bunch of fried seafood. It was good, but I was slightly disappointed and there were some other selections on the menu that I wish I would have chosen. If I had the menus in front of me I could give you an idea of what I ordered but I do not so I am only doing this from memory.

 

The appetizers and soups that we had this week were good. Of note both my wife and I enjoyed the chilled soups. I particularly liked the mango cream soup. Our waiter also brought out the shrimp cocktail to everyone at our table every night after the first night. He planned ahead for the rest of the week as he knew that everyone at the table enjoyed it. I did try the escargots this time around. They weren't bad but were very buttery so that was most of what I got out of them.

 

The entrees were also quite good. On the first formal night they of course serve the lobster tail. My wife added a steak to hers and I just elected to have two of the tails. They were delicious and not too rubbery or anything. My favorite entree of the cruise had to be the Chateaubriand. It was so delicious and everyone who didn't order it at the table became instantly jealous of it. One guy at the table actually stopped eating what he had initially ordered and decided he wanted to try it too. Overall the entrees were great, I can't remember all of the specifics but the foodie in the both of us was satisfied.

 

Desserts were also done quite well. I was disappointed by the melting cake the first night, but for the rest of the cruise(I had it 3 or 4 of the other nights) it was perfect. I was not above sampling multiple desserts though. Many of the other options were delicious and I often enjoyed 2 desserts if I had any room left. The Creme Brulee was quite delicious as were some of the others.

 

Dining Room lunch/breakfast - The dining room lunch experience was quite good. We actually used the dining room for lunch multiple times. The only lunch item I didn't care for was a baguette sandwich that I had on the first at sea day. Other than that everything else was quite good. Breakfast was slightly disappointing. The eggs benedict was not at all good and left a lot to be desired.

 

Buffet - I'm not really a fan of the buffet. Not because of the food, but because of the number of people there. I am really not one for crowds and such so trying the buffet was a limited experience. I had breakfast a few times. I found the omelets to be pretty good and everything else to be okay. Lunch was alright when I had it. I liked the pizza and the grill food and stuck with that. I did try some of the other stuff and it was good. I also liked the deli station and really enjoyed the reubens.

 

Room Service breakfast - We did do the room service breakfast a few times and found it to be decent. It was always on time and they brought everything that we ordered. It was fairly basic though and was on par with a continental breakfast at any hotel.

 

Sushi - I had the sushi one of the days at sea. It was good but was ruined by my sake experience.

 

I really liked the food on this cruise and it is one of the reasons why we have cruised. The dining room food is quite good and is probably one of the things that we look forward to the most while cruising. I can live with the buffet food and take it for what it is worth. I know this is not too specific, but I think the food is one thing that Carnival does right.