This was our second cruise with Royal Caribbean and were pleasantly surprised at the size, beauty and cleanliness of the ship Freedom of the Seas.
We had a few minor issues that impacted the trip and kept it from being excellent and they should be mentioned.
The Q&A's offered on the web site were excellent and they educated us regarding many issues. They were inadequate as far as carrying personal wine and champagne in your bag. Apparently security will not deliver the bag to the room even if a legal bottle of wine is in the bag. Late in the evening we had no bags and finally called security and they said I had to go down, open the bag show them the small bottle of wine. I suggest that they improve the Q&A's to say that personal wine that can be legally bought on the ship should be hand carried in order to prevent the checked bag from being delayed.
Janel Hamblet was our cabin attendant and she was excellent. We were in an Owners Suite and it was kept spotless. The size of the suite and the balcony was well above what we expected. The Concierge was outstanding, sometimes a little crowded but we learned to deal with that.
The stateroom was beautiful so we wanted to make use of the stateroom. The lighting is complex and we finally figured it out by the end of the trip. For such a big stateroom electrical receptacles were in short supply. The television reception was OK but the channel selection was inadequate. Most of the channels were Royal Caribbean infomercials. Other channels offered were one news channel CNN in English and CNN International. If you wanted to see a movie you had to download and purchase. You could bring your own DVD's and play them in the stateroom but all of the parts to run the DVD were not in the stateroom. The controller had to be obtained from the concierge the next day but that was not mentioned anywhere. There were 4 channels available such as TNT, TBS etc. but they were broadcast in 4 different languages. There was one English speaking program channel and it seldom had a program to watch. They did offer ESPN so the football games were broadcast in the stateroom.
We did our own shopping at the port and took a cab downtown to have lunch and see the sights. We enjoyed the area.