We booked an excursion through Royal Caribbean to "Coral World." It's basically an aquarium where you can take part in a bunch of activities. 
It was a MESS trying to get there. There was a big group of us going, but loading into the open air busses was disorganized...with one guy taking us all over the port to try and find busses for us. The place itself was nice, but you had to go through a ROUGH neighborhood to get there. I remember looking at my wife and going "where the hell are they taking us!" 
Overall though, the place was nice. We got to pet a shark, feed a stingray, and see a sea lion. We also did the underwater boat tour (not a submarine, but a boat with a lower area with windows that look out on the ocean.) Not a HUGE number of fish, but still kind of cool. You can also do snuba and Sea Trek helmets at this place...but we skipped that this time. 
We had one hell of a crazy driver that took us back to the port (60 mph on a hilly winding mountain road probably isn't wise) but we made it. 
By that point we were hot and tired so we decided against doing any shopping and just got back on the ship. 


St. Thomas

My wife and I both love St. Maarten. The water is always beautiful...and it seems less "shady" to us than St. Thomas. 
We did a snorkeling excursion at a place called the "Tiki Hut." Basically it's a floating platform they use to go snorkeling, swimming, or just hanging out in noodle chairs. 
The port was MUCH more organized. We met a woman who took us right to our exclusive boat that took us right out to the Tiki Hut. The place was nice, there was a covered area where you could get food....and also lounge chairs and a small pool you could use to get acclimated to your gear before heading out into the ocean. (A really nice touch in my opinion) 
The water was a bit cloudy so the snorkeling was not great, but we still had fun. After a couple of hours the boat came back and took us back to the ship. We could have stayed another hour if we wanted but we decided to head back. The port at St. Maarten is really nice so we did some store browsing there before heading back on board. 


St. Maarten

I like staying towards the back of the ship. We were in 9694 on the port side. Room was nice....it's towards the end of the hall so it was very quiet most of the time. Balcony was nice size. Deck 9 was a good choice too because we could just walk up to Deck 11 to go swimming or to the Windjammer. We could also walk down to 5 or 4 without problems. We were on deck 6 last year....too much to walk all the way to 11.

they've changed their smoking policy a bit since our last cruise.Room was perfectly clean of course and our stateroom attendant was great throughout the whole cruise...

Freedom of the Seas Review

Fun & Relaxation On The Freedom!

Rating by category

Additional details

Cabin Review

Superior Oceanview Stateroom with Balcony

Find a Freedom of the Seas Cruise from $259