This review is a little belated as we sailed on Freedom of the Seas on Super Bowl Sunday February 4, 2007 from Miami when the Colts defeated the Bears. We had actually made reservations over a year in advance for the cruise scheduled to leave the week before but we were bumped because the ship was bought out for a GLBT cruise. Royal Caribbean didn't happen to mention that we would now be leaving on the day the Super Bowl was going to be in town making it impossible to find a hotel room for 150 miles. However, RCCL did give us a credit for the inconvenience of being bumped so it all kind of evened out.

First off, I want to say that we loved Freedom of the Seas. Everything was first class. Although I will mention some things about the cruise, my critique is mainly aimed at Royal Romance (also known as The Wedding Experience and a few other names), which is the wedding planner under contract to Royal Caribbean. Our cruise was originally booked as a way for my family and my fiance's family to vacation together and get to know each other. When we found out that my mother had terminal lung cancer in 2006, my fiance suggested moving up our wedding to the cruise since most of our family was going to be gathered here for the trip anyway. For this reason, we chose to not only make FOS our honeymoon cruise but also the location of our wedding. We thought it would be simpler and less stressful to use Royal Romance and have the wedding on the ship instead of arranging something at the house before we left. WRONG!!

We were told by Royal Romance that we would be assigned our own personal wedding planner who would handle all of the details of our wedding professionally. Instead we got a boiler-room operation where we never spoke to the same person twice. Half the time if I could get someone on the phone they did not understand English. Many of the extras promised in their brochure were unavailable. Everything was disorganized and unprofessional. A week after signing the contract, I received a call that I had to have all of my guests info including birth dates, maiden names and social security numbers by noon the next day or no one could attend the wedding. What?! Seriously?! I spent hours making calls like crazy and got the info faxed in by the deadline. Then RR loses the fax. I have until 5:00 pm to re-fax the info, but I don't have it with me. So my fiance has to take off work to go get the list and re-fax it to them and our guests are finally approved. So we send RR the wedding details, menu and music list. They lose the fax. And on and on and on. Every day it was some new level of ineptitude. Read more