My wife Deanna and I took this cruise just the two of us as a little short getaway. Carnival had two days to fill in between Liberty's transatlantic voyage and her normal Caribbean schedule. We thought it would be exciting to be on a new ship so we booked a balcony cabin on deck six. This was our second cruise on Carnival together, with the first being on Imagination a year ago. We both like Carnival and with Liberty being so new we expected good things on this short teaser of a cruise.
We arrived in Fort Lauderdale early and immediately noticed that things were still not functioning as normal around town following Hurricane Wilma. This also effected things at Port Everglades, which is really beyond Carnival's control. As we arrived at the port about 11:00 Liberty was just pulling in from her short movement from Miami. Things at the Port were the most disorganized that we have ever encountered on any cruise. It seemed that most of the passengers, and this ship carries a lot of people, were already at the port and the Carnival people seemed unprepared for the onslaught. They stateroom keys were not available so they put everyone in a large room with no air conditioning until the keys could be taken off the ship. Imagine 3000 people in an ugly unair conditioned room and you might get a little idea of what it was like. At last the keys arrived and Carnival boarded us through a door in deck two, which we thought was odd. On every other cruise we've ever been on we always entered into the main entrance and our first impression of the ship was of the grand atrium area, but our first impression of Liberty was a cramped hallway next to the elevators. The theme of being late would actually follow us throughout the cruise as we left Port Everglades almost two hours late, Nassau over an hour late and were very late disembarking in Port Everglades. I know Liberty is a big ship with lots of passengers but Carnival has to work with the Port people to streamline things a bit or they're in for a long Caribbean season.
The ship is absolutely beautiful. The tasteful use of warm wood tones and classy decorating throughout the ship is stunning. We were pleased to notice the absence of the usual chrome and neon that invades so many cruise ships. The only design item we didn't like was the fiber optic light signs over the doorways. They change color continuously and can be very difficult to read. Our favorite part of the ship was the Venetian Palace. The longer you sit and take in the subtle design elements the more pops out at you. We especially liked the court jesters on each side of the stage and the Venetian masks throughout the ceiling area. This ship is somewhat challenging to find your way around in as there are few outside passageways (typical of newer ships in their effort to build more balcony cabins) and there are almost no passages that go all the way from the from of the ship to the rear. It took us two days to figure out how to get to the Silver Olympian dining room which was fortunate we were eating in the Golden Olympian!