Carnival Freedom Review
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Review: Carnival Freedom 5/2/10 A little background information on us - this is my 18th cruise, we live in Columbia, SC, married for 3 ½ years and this is our 7th cruise together. My very first cruise was on the Carnival Mardi Gras in 1989 and I swore I would never go on a Carnival cruise again, however Suzi changed my mind (as she says, that was with an ex-wife and Suzi is much better!). When she brought this idea up, she said it had a few things going for it. I would be with her on vacation for a week; we were staying in a suite; there would be a Margaritaville at each stop and the ship had a cigar bar. My reply to her was, she had me at reason number one, however why Carnival? She said she wanted me to see Key West and this was one of the stops on the itinerary. She had been there before with her sister and had always wanted to go back.
Now that you have a little background information as to why we selected this cruise, on with a brief review.
We arrived the day before our cruise and stayed at the Sleep Inn in Dania Beach, simply said; avoid this place like the plague. Great location (next to a Walgreens, Publix and some nice restaurants), however this place is nothing like the newer Sleep Inn & Suites. We ate at Don & Vinny's Italian Restaurant and it was very good - excellent home made soup & bread.
Cabin Review
Ocean Suite
The entry had a beautiful wood floor and cabin was nicely sized. It had tons of storage space (we barley used half of the drawers & closets); ample supply of glasses; nice mini-fridge; worthless safe (you had to use a credit card to open and close it - as Suzi said, the credit card was one of the items she wanted in the safe, not outside of it! You would think it would be hooked up to be used with your room key.); two big closets by the comfy bed (similar to Princess & RCI - however not a luxury bed like on HAL); leather couch (that could be used as an extra bed); two chairs; a desk; big bathroom with two sinks (although the tub/shower unit was cramped); between the entry and the bathroom hallway was a nice vanity across from two huge closets and decent sized veranda with 3 chairs and table. Decent size flat screen TV with the best channel selection I've seen on a cruise (NBC, ABC, CBS & Fox networks to mention a few). You can view the menu for lunch & dinner on the TV after 8:00am. The downside to the cabin (as we found out throughout the week) was it had no insulation in the front door/entry way and the veranda door. All week long we heard people talking and walking down the hall and every night we heard non-stop noise on the veranda until the wee hours of the morning. Overall the suite was nice, however next time we will look for an aft cabin.