I decided to write my 1st crusie review after returning from our 5 night Western Carribean cruise on the Liberty of the Seas (Jan 12th-17th, 2015). I never understood how some people could criticize a vacation where you didn't have to worry about cooking, cleaning or what to do next but I always found the reviews helpful in deciding which cruise to choose. This was our 10th or 11th cruise, previously sailing on Carninval, Royal Carribean, Norweigen, Celebrity and DIsney.We had a total of 10 traveling with us, (ages ranging from 7-69)

Embarkation was ok. We were assigned times to board based on our deck #s. We all arrived at about 11:30am. We found the lines for those told to come at 11:30 were very long and the ones told to come at 1pm had no lines and were on before us. Our family of 4 brought our Nexus cards since the RCCL website says that they are a valid form of identification. The representative checking us in told us that they are not accepted and asked if we had any other ID. Luckily, I also had our birth certificates but I decided to pull up the information on my phone while she was processing us and showed her. She then walked away and came back with our room keys and apologized after asking a superior. I appreciated her apology but felt like this is basic training knowledge to know the types of ID needed. We boarded about 12:30pm and our room was ready by 12:50pm. We had a superior balcony room on floor 10 (room 1692) that we found to be nice and our room steward was very informative. My sister did not have as much luck with cabin 1532 (balcony) with her toilet overflowing 3x and maintenance having to come to their room several times.

DINING: We decided to go to speak to the dining room maitre'D when we boarded since our group of 10 had different dining times and wanted to be together. He was very nice and seemed to accomodate our request quickly and even wrote our new time and table number on our cards. An hour later, we all received notes to our rooms with a different table #. 2 rooms had the same table and 2 had another (different dining rooms). So before dinner, we waited in line to find out which table was the correct one. We were initially told to sit at the 2 seperate tables for the 1st night but then one of the maitre D's came and moved us to be together. By the 2nd night, we had our own assigned table. Our assistant waiter Kiran Chummun was extra special and catered to our 7 and 8 year old children. Food in the dining room was good, nothing stood out to rave about. Service was somewhat slow but it was not due to our waiters. Food seemed to come out slow for everyone. We did not eat at any of the specialty restaurants and the Windjammer was not to bad for breakfast but my biggest complaint was the juice was always warm. I solved that by asking for a cup of ice but it was a but strange to be served warm apple and orange juice. We ate at Sorrento's pizza on several occasions for a snack and I found on every occasion, the servers in Sorrentos seemed unhappy and a bit miserable. I mentioned it to my husband the last day and he agreed. We didnt eat at Johnny Rockets because the extra $5.95 was not worth it to us with the abundance of food available and Johnny Rockets in our hometown. We also did not try any cupcakes from the Cupcake Cupboard due to the available excessive desserts and additional cost and rarely saw anyone purchasing cupcakes. We did splurge on Ben and Jerry's for the kids on 2 evenings since the ice cream machine is only available during the day on the pool deck. Read more