We'd been here before and knew to go further away from the drop-off point this time. We grabbed chairs and enjoyed relaxing on the beach. We had packed spring floats and used these instead of renting anything. We used them on all 3 beaches. The buffet was typical hotdog/hamburger buffet, but was filling.

Perfect Day at CocoCay

We'd booked a special catamaran tour, the one with the red carpet (we booked it to hopefully minimize children and to get a better beach location). I learned when talking to our replacement guide that we would not have a better beach location. When we got back to our room we learned that it had cancelled due to lack of participation. We booked the Catamaran Mirabella. We had never taken this type of excursion before and enjoyed it. It did have 2 bathrooms which were nice for a boat. Most of the main area was shaded, which was something that I didn't think about when booking. The crew took care of us - served us drinks and lunch. We went to the snorkeling area, which was OK. They'd dumped old stuff (helicopter, etc) for people to look at. That wasn't that impressive, but they did feed the fish and that was cool. Then we headed to the beach. That was a long, slow ride. At one point we stopped and turned, started up, and then stopped and turned again. That's when we realized they were fishing - on our time!! They were going very slowly. This resulted in us having only 50 minutes to be at the beach, which was one of the main reasons we booked the tour. The beach was public. Chairs were $15 for the full day, so we didn't have many options. We mainly used our spring floats in the water. We headed back and got back a LOT faster. I did complain to RC. The nice thing was that if we didn’t want to go back to the ship, the catamaran would drop us in town, saving us $5 per person.

St. Maarten

We'd been to St Thomas as well (note that since this is US, you could use your cell phones). We'd heard that the island had beautiful beaches and wanted to enjoy one. Since we were leaving the island, we chose to book through Royal Caribbean. We called RC and asked if there was a beach near the drop-off point and were told yes. We booked the excursion that includes a 30 minute tour of the coastline. Most of the people were dropped off and then we were taken on the coastline tour. This wasn't worth it - it did give us an idea of which beach to go to, but that's it. The boat operator did tell us that there was a beach within a 20 minute walk over a hill, but it was hot and we didn't want to do that. We set out to find the beach near the harbor. Basically there wasn't one. We found a beach area between the marina and restaurants, but no one was on it and it didn't seem to be for bathers. We talked to an expat who said that we shouldn't swim there due what the boaters dump there. She advised us to go to Trunk Bay, so we walked back to find a cab. At that point we had 2 problems: 1. When we docked, there was a cab waiting to take us to where we wanted to go. There were cabs between where we docked and where we were, but our driver was waiting for the other tourist boat that just docked, trying to get more business, so we waited awhile before leaving. 2. We'd only brought $40 in cash, which seemed plenty at the time since a beach was nearby and we would only buy drinks and maybe postcards. It's $6 pp one way plus $4 pp to get into the national park. We did have enough money, but not much. Fortunately, I'd packed water and trail mix so we were good. There was an excursion that includes the entrance fee - I'd consider that one next time. The beach was a national park - it had showers and decent bathrooms. There was also a shop that we didn't check out. The beach was beautiful, but that's all here was - no chairs or umbrellas and not much shade. There is vegetation that bumps up against the beach - several people were camped out in openings in the vegetation. We walked all the way to the end and found an area that was shady. We used our spring floats and got in the water. We were there for a short amount of time since we wanted to make sure we got back on time. We couldn't have stayed much later, as the park was closing as we were leaving.

We would watch shows on the 3rd floor and our dining room was on 3, but you can't go from one end of the ship to the other on 3.We had to go from one end of the ship to the other to get something to eat when we were poolside.

Freedom of the Seas Review

Eighth cruise

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Large Oceanview Stateroom

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