Carnival Freedom Review

4.5 / 5.0
1,366 reviews

Not bad but it could have been better

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Carnival Freedom
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LewCrew
2-5 Cruises • Age 50s

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Sail Date: Nov 2014
Cabin: Ocean View

Just returned from our 6 day Western Caribbean cruise on the Freedom. I will start with the positives, the embarkation was easy. The food was some of the best, the buffet was very good, Guy's burgers were fantastic, the Blue Iguana tortillas were made fresh to order. We had early dining in the Posh dining room where both the food and the service were excellent. Overall the staff were very friendly and Jaya our room steward was top notch. We attended the punchliner comedy shows which were Hilarious. The downsides was the lack of organization in a few key areas. At the ports it was a free for all getting off the ship. People were lined up and no priority was given to people on early excursions. Some people were also very rude, getting off the elevator and then butting into line, instead of going to the back of the line. There were almost no staff present controlling the crowd until you were almost off the ship. In Grand Cayman we were tendered and were worried we would not make our excursion. Once we got to the dock, it was again disorganized and you had to search for your excursion group. On our previous three cruises the groups were gathered before leaving the ship and those on excursions had priority. The disembarkation was similar with an exceedingly long line up to get through customs and immigration. Another issue we had was that there was not a lot of explanations given in the daily newsletter and as a result you had to ask for more information. Although the food was great the opening and closing hours of some of the food stations meant there were times where the choices were limited. An example was that Guys closed at 6 PM and the fish and chips and Mongolian Wok were only open from 1145 to 3 PM. I had organized our Cruise Critic Meet and Greet and we had 65 people who had signed up, about 21 showed up. On other cruise lines we had snacks, coffee, tea and juice provided. On Carnival they provided us with the Swing Time Bar as a meeting location, but the did not put the event in the daily newsletter and the cruise director and event planner only showed up for the last 15 minutes. We did have fun, however, and ran into several of the CC members on excursions, in the ports and on the ship during the remainder of the cruise. To sum it up we had a very good cruise and would cruise with Carnival again. With a few minor organizational changes it could have been our best cruise so far.

Cabin Review

Ocean View

Cabin 6A

We found the cabin to be very spacious and the view was spectacular. We found the shower to be small, but otherwise the bathroom was good. The steward Jaya was very good and always called us by name and asked about our day.

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