Freedom of the Seas Review
Rating by category
Additional details
Background - We are a family of four. DH and I are in our early 30's, DD is 5 and DS turned 2 during the cruise. We took our first cruise 8 years ago with Carnival for our honeymoon. Since then we have done one Disney cruise and one other Carnival cruise. This was our first Royal Caribbean cruise.
Pre-cruise - We flew into Orlando the evening before the cruise. We rented a car from Thrifty and drove to the Hampton Inn in Cocoa Beach. The Hampton in was very comfortable with a nice hot breakfast for the day of embarkation. We returned our rental car at the Cocoa Beach location only to stand in a long line for the cruise port shuttle in the hot sun. It was so bad that we decided to share a taxi with two men who had already dropped their families off at the port.
Embarkation - We did not feel the need to get to the ship as soon as they started boarding so we didn't get to the terminal until about 1pm. After the taxi dropped us off there was barely a line to get into the building. Since we had my son in a stroller we were put into the Diamond line (which was actually no line at all). We were on the boat about 15 minutes after being dropped off by the taxi.
Cabin Review
Promenade Family Stateroom
We had a Promenade Family Room which was more than enough room for our family of four. We were two decks above the Ben and Jerry's with two windows with window seats. We had a queen-sized bed (two beds pushed together), a full sofa bed (great for the kids but a little short for us) and a small room with bunk beds. There was a very nice sized walk in closet with an additional full closet in the main room with a half-sized closet in the room with the bunk beds. Our bathroom was nice with a tub and shower combo instead of just a shower which was great for the kids.
We loved looking down onto the Promenade. It was more interesting than just looking out of the window at water. We definitely heard music playing on the Royal Promenade below and heard banging at times from the crew service elevator right next to our stateroom but it never bothered us.