Freedom of the Seas Review
Rating by category
Additional details
I’m writing a review of the Freedom of the Seas Western Caribbean cruise for May 24th – May 31st. This review will be different than most other reviews because it’s not going to be a travelogue or an opinion based review. I’m going to try to keep it mostly facts. I know that everyone has different opinions regarding different situations so I’m just going to report the facts and let you decide for yourself if you’d like or not like some aspect of this trip. (Except when talking about food because I don’t think there’s any way to talk about food without having an opinion!) I’m also going to organize it into different topics. That way if you’ve been on the Freedom thousands of times, you can skip the section about the ship. If you aren’t visiting the same ports, you can skip the sections about the ports. You get the idea! I’m hoping that my report will help new cruisers and maybe give some experienced cruisers some new ideas. Hope you enjoy reading!
Background
This section will give you an idea of who we are and how we ended up on this particular cruise. This is a big year for us because my husband and I both turned 40 and we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. We’ve been saving up for the last few years to do a really big vacation with the kids. We have three boys ages 15, 12, and 10. We’re outdoorsy, adventurous people and a cruise was not something we’d really ever considered before. BUT my best friend’s family went on a Royal Caribbean Dreamworks cruise and her boys came back gushing about it to my boys. After that, our kids wouldn’t consider any other suggestions. Eventually my husband and I caved and decided we’d book a cruise. Since we don’t drink, don’t gamble, and have never spent any time sitting beside a pool, we needed a ship with LOTS of on-board activities and plenty of exotic ports. After looking at prices, we knew that we could either fly and take a shorter cruise or drive and take a longer cruise. A family vote decided that we would drive and take the longer cruise. We decided we wanted the 7-day Western Caribbean on the Navigator leaving from Galveston, TX. In September Royal Caribbean offered a special where Kids Sail Free. I called and got the pricing and that night the family decided that this was in fact what we wanted to do. So the next day I called again to book our cruise. To get the Kids Sail Free option, everyone had to be in the same cabin. The Navigator and Freedom only have two interior cabins that house up to 6 people. When I called to book it, ALL of the interior cabins on the Navigator were booked for the entire summer. On the Freedom, the May 24th sailing was the only week available. School ended on May 21st so we decided to go with that cruise. Everything was going smoothly until February. In February, it started snowing and snowing and snowing. School was cancelled over and over again. We used all our snow days and it still kept snowing!! We had 4 extra days that had to be made up at the end of the school year. With a high schooler who had to take final exams, skipping out of the last few days wasn’t going to be an option. In addition to worrying about the school days, I started having issues with our final payment. The high school marching band has a program called Scrip. You buy gift cards online and the participating companies donates a percentage of the gift card to the marching band. Royal Caribbean is one of the participating companies. After emailing them to confirm that I could use the Scrip gift card to pay, I purchased $2200 worth of gift cards and paid my final balance. When the deadline came, I started receiving phone calls and emails saying I hadn’t paid. I called customer service and they told me that it takes up to 30 days to process the gift cards. The representative said I might have to pay an additional $2200 and then once the gift cards were processed, they’d refund my money. I wasn’t interested in loaning Royal Caribbean my money, so I declined that option. They extended the deadline by a week and told me to wait and see if it would get processed in time. That week went by and still nothing happened with the gift cards. I called customer service again and spoke with a supervisor. He assured me that whatever was happening with the gift cards had nothing to do with me. It was between the Scrip company and Royal Caribbean. He put a note on my account stating the balance had been paid in full and assured me the trip wouldn’t be cancelled. It ended up taking 37 days for the gift cards to be credited to my account. A few days later the school announced that they were only adding one day to the end of the year and the remaining three days would be made up by adding time to the beginning and end of the school day. Now I could stop stressing and start actually planning our vacation!
Cabin Review
Family Interior Stateroom
This is only one of two interior cabins on the ship that house more than four people. I could not find much information about this cabin anywhere, so I’m going to give great detail about it for future cruisers who book this cabin. This room is the size of two rooms combined. It was much larger than I expected and had tons of storage space. We didn’t get anywhere close to using all the storage space. There are beds for 6 people. You can either have two twin beds or have them pushed together to make one king bed. We had them pushed together and this is where my husband and I slept. They put a pad over the bed so you can’t tell that it’s two different beds at all. There is a pull out couch where two more people can sleep. One of the boys slept here each night and they fought over who got it because it was so comfortable. Then there is a small room that houses a set of twin bunk beds. The top bunk is pretty close to the ceiling so a small, agile person needs to sleep here. The bunks are separated from the rest of the room by a curtain. There is another curtain that separates the king bed from the rest of the cabin. As you enter the room, to your left is a closet with shelves. It contains the safe and life vests. It was great place to throw your wet, sandy water shoes after excursions. Straight ahead is a huge walk-in closet with hangers and a lower rack. In the bunk bed room there is another closet with hangers and couple of shelves. On each end of the cabin there are two desks with mirrors, chairs, and 6 drawers. On the end near the king bed the entire wall is storage. There are shelves with doors, drawers, and open shelves. The TV is on this end next to the couch. The bathroom is tiny. We are short, thin people and I can’t imagine being a large person trying to take a shower! I packed a small air freshener and that helped because there isn’t an exhaust fan in the bathroom. We were one of the cabins on the cabin crawl and everyone was very impressed with the cabin. Especially when they found out we had 5 people for the price of 2! We packed a small nightlight because it was an inside cabin and that was very helpful. It is pitch black otherwise. We used our phones to set alarms to get us up in the morning because otherwise you have no idea what time it is! Since we were seldom in the cabin, I don’t think I would pay for an outside room if we went again. I would highly recommend this cabin to anyone with 3-4 children!
Port Reviews
Labadee
Nice place to relax on a beach and swim in the ocean, but overpriced and vendors are aggressive. You need to have a firm "no" and be willing to ignore them if you want to shop here.
Port Canaveral (Orlando)
We arrived too late to do much here except eat at Fishlips. I'd recommend it if you are looking for somewhere to eat the night before your cruise! And when we returned we headed straight home.