We recently returned from a 7-night Western Caribbean cruise on Freedom of the Seas (June 22 - 29, 2014). This was our second RCI cruise, having sailed on Liberty of the Seas 4 years ago to the Eastern Caribbean. We are a family of 6 from outside Chicago - 4 boys ranging in ages from 15-26 , my wife and myself who are in our early 50s. Here is a fairly long and detailed summary of our trip - sans pictures. I used Cruise Critic and to a lesser extent, Trip Advisor to help with my planning, so this is my effort to pay forward our experience for future cruisers.

We booked the cruise back in Oct for a June 22nd sailing. We booked two cabins - a outside balcony stateroom (D1) for my wife and I and an inside cabin for the boys - both on deck 9. More on the staterooms below. RCI had a few mishaps with their website a month or so prior to our departure so in additional to the onboard credit of $100 we had for booking a balcony stateroom, after some negotiation for my time/troubles to get this fixed, were given an additional $300 in onboard credits, a bottle of wine for us and non-alcoholic sparkling juice for our kids. It was also the week after our 29th Anniversary and RCI gave us a nice package of another bottle of champagne, chocolate covered strawberries and some appetizers for our room - all gratis. A very nice gesture.

Pre-Embarkation: Read more