Our family decided to take a pre-Christmas cruise as a Christmas gift to the family. There were the 3 of us and my MIL who has never traveled anywhere. My hubby and I had been on previous cruises with Carnival, so we chose them due to some past guest discounts we received. We decided on the Liberty because we liked the itinerary, and it appeared that there would be few if any other cruise ships in port the same day we were.

We flew from Colorado on a redeye to Ft. Lauderdale on Friday/Saturday (12/16-17). Our flight was late departing Phoenix, so we didn't get into Ft. Lauderdale until after 7AM Saturday morning. We had scheduled a transfer with SAS Transportation, so we called them after we arrived and told them about the large delay in our flight. They already knew about it, so we told them we wanted to eat at the airport before we headed to the cruise ship, and they delayed our pickup until we were ready to go. Another group was in the same situation, so we shared a van with them to the Port of Miami. We were dropped off at our ship and then proceeded through embarkation which went very quickly since it was only 10AM at the time. I didn't check the time, but we were up on the Lido deck enjoying lunch before we knew it! We took naps by the pool while we waited for our room and proceeded to get our first round of color. When our room was ready, we went and unpacked everything before taking another nap! It was a very LONG redeye flight with a crying baby. 'Nuff said... We slept through the CC meet and greet unfortunately, as we woke up in time to do the muster drill.

After muster drill, we proceeded to check out the ship. The 2.0 upgrades are nice. My family loved the Guy's Burgers. They don't look pretty, but they tasted wonderful. Especially enjoyed the chipotle sauce on both the burgers and the fries. Even my finicky son loved the burgers! We had the late dinner seating, so we sat out on our balcony and watched the ship leave Miami. Read more