Freedom of the Seas Review
Royal Caribbean Freedom of the Seas review
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Royal Caribbean Freedom of the Seas review. 11/23/2014 sailing 4,358 passengers.
We’re 48 years old, married almost 20 years. For cuisine, I eat everything and my wife is a vegetarian. This was our fifth overall cruise and the first on Royal Caribbean. This was our third time cruising the Caribbean with the other two trips having been on the Caribbean Princess (14 days) and Holland America Nieuw Amsterdam (7 days) and our second cruise for the Thanksgiving holiday. There was a lot to like about Freedom and some things that just didn’t live up to the hype and expectations. For the first time since we’ve been cruising, we had a captain decide to leave a port 2 1/2 hours EARLY. Even the excursion operators said they’d never heard of that. It was more “Good” than RC’s slogan of “Wow.”
I’ve been writing technical and product reviews for over 20 years and I also write a lot of reviews for a website that gives trip advice so what I write tends to be long and pretty in depth. As you read through this you might think some areas quite negative, but you’re paying money to go on your cruise so I like to give a true sense of what everything was like for us. Honestly it’s very VERY difficult to have a “bad cruise” because after all, you’re on a cruise ship being pampered day and night by the crew. The main difference between cruises is the customer service and the quality of the food as you compare ships.
Cabin Review
Superior Oceanview Stateroom with Balcony
Our cabin was 9662, a D2 Superior Ocean View Stateroom on the Port side behind the bump out near the aft which we booked through a big box discount warehouse website. We always book through this site as we’ve had good luck with them and get some really good shipboard credits. In this case we had $380 worth of shipboard credits.Cabin was clean and functional and the balcony was plenty big. One thing we did like was that the bed was right next to the balcony so we could just lay in bed and look out at the sea in the morning. Another small thing that was nice, the shower featured solid doors instead of a shower curtain. On the ships with shower curtains, they always have a tendency to get sucked into the shower and basically stick to you while you’re showering. We always prefer to see some sort of solid doors. There was plenty of hot water and easy controls.One thing missing from other ships was a direct way to contact our cabin steward. On other ships there was a card in the cabin with a direct phone extension to reach the steward. On Freedom there was no way to connect to the steward other than to call housekeeping I guess. We were never actually told, but this is my guess. When the ship arrived in Jamaica our steward was changed out and the new steward completely missed the turn down service and delivering the Cruise Compass that evening. Minor thing I know, but still something we’ve not experienced on other ships with a steward changeover. He did get it right the rest of the trip.One really nice thing on RC was the ability to keep tabs on our account via the television. This is the first ship we’ve been on with that feature and it’s much preferable than having to go to Guest Relations to check the current balance on your account. It was remarkable how quickly it was updated with charges showing up minutes after we made them.