Just back from the march 31-April 7th sailing of the carnival liberty's exotic eastern cruise. I was traveling alone with my 10 year old as my husband who has cruised before was unable to get away. In general it was a lot of fun and my daughter in particular had a good time but there are definitely a few things I would do differently the next time.

As I mentioned in some other postings we used fly away which landed us in ft lauderdale at 2 pm. When we got our flight information I had significant concerns but carnival was absolutely unyielding when it came to adjusting the flights. The only choice we had was to hope for the best. Fortunately we had a good pilot in so much as there were major thunderstorms in Southern Miami when we landed. The plane literally dropped through one small opening in the clouds and we landed only 5 minutes late. The ft lauderdale airport was packed so my daughter and I ran to a bathroom and hurried downstairs. We had prepaid carnivals transfer service and I was expecting to meet a group of professional competent people who would know where we should go. Instead sadly there are about 10 of the most incompetent and least organized carnival employees we met all week. On getting to the desk I told them who we were what ship we were on and the port. The guy with the clipboard told us to get our luggage and come back which we did then he told us to sit. It is 215 at this point we have a 45 minute ride to Miami and the ship sales at 4pm. The first guy I had spoken with seemed to have forgotten the conversation in the short interval it took to get the bags because he stared blankly when I returned. The main takeaway I have of this service is no one is in charge, no one wants to actually talk to customers and none of them are taking responsibility to get people to the right place. After talking to 3 more people and getting lined up twice we finally went to a bus. 2 things to note, carnival despite charging a lot for this service does not have a roster of passengers and is not looking for anyone. I had to show them my receipt which I had printed but I was surprised they had no record. The clipboards are apparently for crossword puzzles. Of course the lack of urgency by the airport Carnival staff meant the poor driver had to make up for it. He loaded our bags in the bus like a crazy man and broke the wheel off one of our bigger suitcases. There were actually two ships of passengers on our bus both ships sailing at 4 pm. And it was pouring. There was lots of traffic. The driver got delayed and was calling it in but he said we may miss the ships. Lucky for us he stopped at the liberty first and about 5 families got off the bus to get in the terminal building, he raced off with the rest of the passengers with the other ship, but I think part of the urgency was to avoid discussing my broken luggage. I paid the luggage handlers $20 and asked that they make sure our bags made it on board ( they did) and went in the terminal. In 5 minutes we were on the ship but needed to go right away to a muster drill. The muster drill was okay. If I had to gripe it had to be the people who are prompt and show up on time are the most crushed and wait the longest to leave. That said it was fine. I liked that kids under 12 have to wear a bracelet so parents can find them in an evacuation emergency.

Finally we made it to our room which was a beautiful balcony room on the lido deck. We loved it. Benny our room steward greeted us right away. It was great to finally peel off the wet clothes we traveled in and put on some shorts. At that point we had been traveling for 7 hours and it was 2pm our time. My daughter was starving so we ran through the rain still coming down on the lido deck I know my daughter was hungry because the first food we came to she was willing to eat and it was guys burgers. I had read a lot about the burgers and was eager to try them. They were good. They had lots of tasty toppings and great fries. The one thing that may upset foodies is they are all well done. I think if you go into thinking you are going to have a pretty good meal you will. It is not however a gourmet meal. We were able also to sit and watch us pull out of port. I had big ideas of taking lots of pictures but the rain did not cooperate. After lunch we decided to explore the inside areas of the ship and buy our bottomless bubbles cards. A word about bottomless bubbles, they were a great value for us. It was easy to get a soda anywhere and the cups were quite large. Also my daughter was able to get Shirley temples with the card. I found the bar staff at the red frog and blue iguana to be great at getting us taken care off, in the dining room it was a bit more sporadic. Read more