Carnival Freedom Review
Carnival, whats fun about a warm room and treadmills pounding above us
Rating by category
Additional details
Let me pre-address this by saying I have been on 8 cruises now and this was my 2nd (and prob last) with carnival, I have been mainly on RCCL on both their older and newer ships. This cruise was a very very mixed bag when it came to what "fun" and "satisfied" is by carnival standards. I am a 28 year old male traveling with 2 other 20 year old males to get away for a vacation, we are all FL natives. We had a few issues which you will see in my review.
Embarkation:
Embarkation day went extremely well with one caveat that was my own fault. I had booked a offsite parking for $5.99 a day with premier parking usa's port everglades lot, and when we arrived we waited for 15 minutes in line to have someone in a "Premier parking" T shirt approach us and say that the they were shut down by the police and to call customer service and get out money back and park at the port. So we ended up driving into port everglades and parking at the garage right up against the terminal where freedom was. We arrived at about 1Pm and we waited all of 5 minutes in any line, we were on board in under 20 minutes and every one was warm and kind. Once we got on we went to the buffet which was pretty decent, we grabbed burgers and the like and it was pretty good, they had a very big selection of "burger joint" sides, like nachos and cheese, and chili, and sour cream and hot dogs and fries that where crisp and fresh, as where the burgers. We ate and then went to see our cabin and settle in that. Our cabin was room 1002 it is an interior category handicapped 4 person sleeper room, however it is on deck 10 with a front facing window with a view of the bow and the open deck just outside (we called it our personal huge balcony as its not frequented by many people) that wrapped around the ship above the bridge. This room was 240Sqft easily and it was great to have plenty of room to spread out, I did a full review of the room in “Cabin reviews” its deck 10 room 1002.
Cabin Review
Room 1002 is a Interior category rated room, however it is a picture window room on the bow looking forward on the ship on deck 10 all the way forward. 1002 is also handicapped accessible making it a huge room, it also has 1 pull out bed and a drop down pullman above the couch. The only nice things I can say about this room is that is its very big and for three 20-30 year old adults it had tons of room, more than I ever expected. It could easily fit 3 twins wide plus some and it was at least 12 feet wide and easily 20 feet deep, it was much more then then 180 of a regular carnival cabin for sure (I’m guessing around 240sqft). The bathroom is also large being made for wheel chairs, so you have a full size vanity and a full size shower (just no tub) and plenty of shelving mounted to the big mirror on the vanity. The issue with this room is, it is directly below the gym and more specifically below the treadmills. At all times of day all you will hear is thump thump thump thump thump thump thump, throughout the day when someone chooses to run on the treadmill since they can’t seem to find the outside running track (above no passenger cabins) or simply don't want to. This got annoying as when I wanted to relax I couldn't in my own stateroom and the staff apparently can use the gym when its closed (10PM to 7AM) and we had to call almost every night sometimes twice to tell them to get off the treadmills above us as none of us could sleep with the loud thumping noise. Also the worst thing to me in this cabin was it was very warm, and no one could do anything about it. In the elevator lobbies and almost all the public rooms it is cold (my thermometer said 67) and as you walked on deck 10 forward toward the front of the ship and our room it got hotter as you went. We called and complained and the room was 76 on their thermometer which mine registered 78 and it felt like my home at 80. The room felt “stuffy” being that warm and they tried to adjust it multiple times to no real avail. The engineer even stated the similar sized room next to us had 2 air vents, and we had 1 and tried to adjust the flow more to ours. What we ended up doing is popping off the diffuser that covered it so the air would pour straight down. That finally got the cabin to be more comfortable, however it was not nearly as cold as any public area or any one else’s cabin we entered on the ship. I heard many say “the ship is so cold” but our cabin was not. I am a cover sleeper and it never got fully cold enough (I sleep at 74 at home) to comfortable sleep. The temp and the noise from the treadmills made this a very bad cabin to me. I was pretty upset about it, and I am taking it up with carnival, as that we aren’t handy capped but they need to note this room is below a gym and either discount it more or warn people beforehand. I personally have been on only 2 Carnival cruises both on conquest class ships and this one was nothing like the Valor its sister, in which I had cabin 1008 a handicapped room as well, but it was a normal cool temp and had no thumping treadmills above it.