We sailed on this ship last September and were happy to be on her again. Freedom is a very stable ship and even though rough sea conditions prevented us from tendering in to Cocoa Cay, the high winds were not noticeable on the ship itself. Our stops at St. Thomas and St. Martin went off as scheduled, except we had additional time in St. Thomas due to skipping Cocoa Cay. We have been to these islands many times before, but we enjoyed taking a locally operated tour around the island in St. Thomas and doing some window shopping in Charlotte Amalie. In St. Martin we took the local mini-bus to Maho Beach to watch the airplanes take off and land. It rained a bit at this point but did not affect us as we were under cover at a cafe next to the beach. The rain stopped by the time we returned to Philipsburg, where we walked around before returning to the ship. We were lucky with the weather in both ports as the heavy rain only started at both places after we were back on the ship. Weather was mostly good for our three sea days.

We ate all of our dinners at the main dining room and found the quality and selection to be very good, as were our servers.We had some breakfasts in the MDR but on sea days they have a "Breakfast With Shrek" for the children in a section of the dining room. It is not closed off and the loud music and PA made it difficult to hold a conversation or relax. So, we got into the habit of going to the buffet, which was not our first choice. Oddly, the buffet had no grapefruit, fresh or canned. We had to go to the MDR to get one and then bring it up to the buffet! I don't recall this being the case on our previous cruise on the Freedom, or on any other ship I have ever been on.

The production shows, guest artists and ice show were all very good, as usual on RCI. We are Diamond level Crown and Anchor Society members and we attended the Diamond Lounge reception every night. This is the best loyalty club benefit offered by any cruise line and is certainly a major reason for such a large number of loyal repeat cruisers on this cruise. Read more