We did it! We jumped ship to the Freedom of the Seas and it's...(review added!)

jahber

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jun 22, 2012
Awesome!

We are on Day 2 of our sailing and we are really, really impressed. There are many things that are different--some things we prefer on DCL and definitely some that we like more on the FoS. But the biggest thing I think is that the ship is really gorgeous inside and at least as well maintained as the Disney ships. From the way people talked about other ships, I was assuming we'd be in a sea of neon garish Vegas decor falling apart and rusting away. But nope. It's perfect. And we haven't even seen the casino, except once from the elevators.

This is pretty great. Over the next few days I'm going to do some comparisons for people like me who want a run down of DCL vs Royal with kids. If anyone has any specific questions, let me know!

Edited to add: I've started a review below.
 
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I am glad you are enjoying it - I love Freedom class! I just got off Liberty last week and will be on Freedom in November :) Can you tell me who is Performing in the pub this week and who is on Piano in the schooner?
 
How are activities for younger kids - outside of the clubs? Are there scheduled family activities - more than once per day?
 


Hi thank you for posting! How is tge dress code compared to DCL? I like to be casual. Is it more fancy?
 
Glad your having time. That ships going to be in the Med next year.
 


thank you.

how are the kids clubs?

My 9yo is having a blast. There are very few kids on this sailing, so they have combined the 6-11s. I wasn't sure how that would work out at first, but he's happy. I think it's better than having just a few kids in the 9-11s.

The younger clubs are very structured, which my son likes.

My 12yo likes the Living Room, but again, there are very few kids aboard, so aside from organized activities, there isn't much going on. So far she has loved teen-only ice skating, boogie boarding, and ping pong.
 
How are activities for younger kids - outside of the clubs? Are there scheduled family activities - more than once per day?
We don't usually do many of the family activities, but so far all I've really noticed are sports-type things and movies by the pool and in the theater. There's also an ice skating show and character appearances. But not a whole lot of the kinds of things happening in the bars during the day like on DCL or Carnival.
 
Hi thank you for posting! How is tge dress code compared to DCL? I like to be casual. Is it more fancy?
Sorry for not multi-quoting, but I'm sharing wifi, so I can't be on for long :)

The dress code is definitely fancier than DCL, but that said, I've seen plenty of people in shorts. Lots of older people in really nice clothing and some families, too. But especially the older set seemed to be dressed to the nines. We are not fancy people (and I'm nursing a baby, so a gown is out of the question for me), but most nights I've gotten my kids to at least wear pants. Except tonight, when my son wore shorts--and I'm just too tired to fight it. No one cares, really. The people on the ship have been almost universally friendly and fun-loving. Even when my toddler ran barefoot through the Olive or Twist (a nice bar) as I chased him, baby in arms. The people he ended up with were dressed for formal night, but welcomed my barefoot toddler with open arms :)
 
Sorry for not multi-quoting, but I'm sharing wifi, so I can't be on for long :)

The dress code is definitely fancier than DCL, but that said, I've seen plenty of people in shorts. Lots of older people in really nice clothing and some families, too. But especially the older set seemed to be dressed to the nines. We are not fancy people (and I'm nursing a baby, so a gown is out of the question for me), but most nights I've gotten my kids to at least wear pants. Except tonight, when my son wore shorts--and I'm just too tired to fight it. No one cares, really. The people on the ship have been almost universally friendly and fun-loving. Even when my toddler ran barefoot through the Olive or Twist (a nice bar) as I chased him, baby in arms. The people he ended up with were dressed for formal night, but welcomed my barefoot toddler with open arms :)


Thank you for your kind reply good to know. It sounds like as long as I don't wheel in wearing a bikini ( very scary for young children with my figure lol ) it will be ok based on my being smart casual. That is funny about your toddler in the Olive or twist bar! I would have loved to have seen that.
 
been on RCCL 5+ times. prefer DCL for food, entertainment, movies, Disney theme, but RCCL is an excellent alternative, IMHO. For men, long pants and a polo are fine all nights. DH usually wears a short sleeve botton down and tie on formal night, but not necessary. DS wore nice shorts til he was 13, now same as DH. I wear capris/casual skirt and DD15 wears same or even yoga pants with a nice top. shorts during the day in all venues are fine. I do not find RCCL fancier than DCL, but we always sail during school breaks. My kids from 5-11 LOVED RCCL kids' clubs with the structured activities. Agree with PP, not a lot of family activities during the day. you have to make your own fun, like going putt-putt together. We took boards games and played 1X each sea day, as our teens do not do the clubs anymore. Also, 12+ teens club are usually not staffed during the day, only after dinner. They do things aroudn the ship, like bball tourney, putt-putt, scavanger hunts in groups, but no staff hang out place like DCL, if that matters. RCCL MDR not as good as DCL, IMHO, but still perfectly fine. We do upscale dining 3X and feed the kids at the buffet and then send them to kids club @ 7 and then go to a 7:30 dinner reservation. We miss the show that night, but it gives us some couples time at a nice restuarant.
 
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Sorry for not multi-quoting, but I'm sharing wifi, so I can't be on for long :)

The dress code is definitely fancier than DCL, but that said, I've seen plenty of people in shorts. Lots of older people in really nice clothing and some families, too. But especially the older set seemed to be dressed to the nines. We are not fancy people (and I'm nursing a baby, so a gown is out of the question for me), but most nights I've gotten my kids to at least wear pants. Except tonight, when my son wore shorts--and I'm just too tired to fight it. No one cares, really. The people on the ship have been almost universally friendly and fun-loving. Even when my toddler ran barefoot through the Olive or Twist (a nice bar) as I chased him, baby in arms. The people he ended up with were dressed for formal night, but welcomed my barefoot toddler with open arms :)


Thanks for your notes :) We've been on Freedom without our kids (DD12 and now have DD-10 days old!) so I was happy to read about you being on the ship with a nursing baby- how old is your little one?
I bet your bank account is thanking you also ;)
 
Thanks for your notes :) We've been on Freedom without our kids (DD12 and now have DD-10 days old!) so I was happy to read about you being on the ship with a nursing baby- how old is your little one?
I bet your bank account is thanking you also ;)
I'm happy to help! I'll write more of a review when I can get to my computer.

I have a 2 year old and a 6 month old. 6 months is such an easy age to cruise with, I've found. We cruised when my toddler was 6 months too.
 
A brief review of our experience on the Freedom of the Seas...
Our party was me, my husband (who is Indian, which will be significant when it comes to food :rotfl2:), my 12 year old daughter (who is athletic), my 9 year old son (who prefers indoor activities), my 2 year old son (who never stops moving), and my 6 month old daughter (who was the easiest one of all). Plus, a good friend sailed with us as our "nanny." She was a huge help and we had a ton of fun. My family lives in Orlando, right off of 528, almost exactly 45 minutes from Port Canaveral.

Embarkation:

The drop-off at PC took quite a bit longer than DCL, but we also arrived at prime time (11-ish). Security took foreeeeever. My husband dropped us off so we could get in line, drove over to my brother's house on Merritt Island, then drove back so my brother could drop him off and park our van at his house. My husband arrived back at the port about 5 minutes before we made it through the line to the scanners. It was easily a 30-minute line, given that my brother lives about 10 minutes from port. But once we were through security, there was basically no wait to check in. We were on this ship within a few minutes.

In the terminal, we bought the bigs each a lanyard--the kind with ends that clip on and off--and had a hole punched in their cards to attach them. They were $5 and a great purchase! the clip makes it easy to detach for purchases. I much preferred this to a pouch for the kids.

For anyone who cares, they use a bar code scanner to scan everyone's card when you get on and off the ship, which means you can just hold a couple of cards in your hand with the bar codes showing (say, if you have multiple littles, like I do), and they can scan them one after the other. So convenient. And kids don't have to take their lanyards off or try to stretch them to reach the RFID scanner like on DCL.

We entered the ship on deck 4 and I was genuinely surprised. I'll admit to being a bit of a DCL snob in the past and believing the reviews from people who said ALL other cruise lines' ships were basically tacky floating casinos. Silly me. The ship is beautiful inside and I LOVE the promenade. What a terrific idea, even if it is just a glorified shopping mall. It opens the interior of the ship up so much.

OK, that's all I have time for for now. I'll be back later with more.
 
General ship information:


We were on the Freedom of the Seas, traveling to Labadee, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel. The ship is larger than the Dream or Fantasy (carrying 4500 passengers vs 4000), but we found the layout to be pretty good for making it not feel too crowded. Most of the time.


Our muster station was in a lounge, which was very crowded (we didn’t get seats, so my husband held my 2yo and I held the 6mo). At least we were inside! It was a hot day! While we were in the muster drill, a woman was pulled out by a ship’s officer. My friend heard the officer tell her they had photographic evidence of the woman sharing her drink package with someone. Yikes! We saw her around later, so I guess they didn't make her walk the plank. There was also a deaf party there, but no official translator onboard. We heard an announcement shortly thereafter asking if anyone on the ship was a sign language interpreter. It kind of surprised us that there wasn’t one on board—I wonder if they would have arranged for one if the party had requested one. The crew didn’t even know they had deaf passengers onboard until just before the muster drill. The party was a few doors down from our stateroom and we saw that an officer had to enter their room to get them to leave for the drill—obviously they didn’t hear the alarm or announcements. Odd. But I guess they worked it out, as we saw them around the ship on other days.


We watched the sailaway from the helicopter pad. That was nice. We don’t usually do sailaway parties, so I have no idea what happened at it.


There is a casino, but we were able to avoid it pretty well. I’m sensitive to smoke from a childhood with heavy smokers. Now that I'm an adult and have a choice, I won’t sit near someone who is smoking or who has just smoked a cigarette and I absolutely can’t walk through the casino, even when there’s no one smoking in there (say, when gambling is not allowed because we are in port). So, we learned quickly that deck 5 (the promenade) is our friend. Our rooms were forward and our MDR was aft, which meant taking a walk every night. Sometimes we chose to walk outside on deck 4 (but be sure to take the non-smoking side!). Sometimes we walked down our stateroom deck, and sometimes we walked down the promenade and stopped at the R Bar or Starbucks or whatever. It could definitely get crowded there before dinner!


People (many, many people) also used the smoking section on the port side of the mid-ship pool deck. Even though it was technically only the mid-ship section, smoke travels when it’s windy, which meant I couldn’t ever sit on the port side of the pool—even in the section of the port side that isn't actually a smoking section (which is the H20 splash zone). It’s ok, though. I could sit in the aft chairs or on the starboard side and was just fine. Overall, as long as you don’t hang out near the casino entrances or the smoking areas, you can avoid almost any contact with smoke. If you are really really sensitive to it, you’ll want to avoid ever being on deck 4, and that’s completely do-able. It also helped that we had 4 port days, which meant the casinos were closed for the day over half the time.


We had a stroller this time and our rooms were waaaaaaay forward, so we did a ton of walking and a tooooon of waiting for elevators. Without a stroller we always take the stairs, so this was pretty frustrating. I never realized how few people take the stairs. We were often waiting for an elevator, only to have newcomers hop on it. I made my big kids take the stairs when it was crowded and I also let a wheelchair go before me on a crowded elevator because people who actually NEEDED the elevators ended up waiting quite a while. Just a side note, only one elevator bank goes up to the Viking Crown (sports deck and Olive or Twist bar/Diamond lounge). Before dinner those elevators are always always full of people coming down from the lounges before dinner. Go to the other side and use the other Centrum lifts instead around dinner time. Trust me.


Generally speaking, the ship was in excellent condition—really gorgeous. I always saw people cleaning, polishing, vacuuming, scrubbing. I even saw a guy scrubbing the sign that says which staterooms are on that side of the ship. The ship was renovated in 2015 and it shows.


I also found that the crew was pretty universally friendly and helpful. I had a baby with me almost all of the time, and often a toddler too, and crew members in the buffet were constantly offering to help carry a plate, find me a table or a high chair, or get me a drink. I definitely didn’t feel a difference in service from our Disney cruises (or Carnival, for that matter).
 
Thanks for sharing your review so far. We got off Liberty a couple of weeks ago and found the smoking to be about the same, but we felt that we could deal with it, it wasn't as bad as we were expecting. I am looking forward to the rest.
 
My 9yo is having a blast. There are very few kids on this sailing, so they have combined the 6-11s. I wasn't sure how that would work out at first, but he's happy. I think it's better than having just a few kids in the 9-11s.

The younger clubs are very structured, which my son likes.

My 12yo likes the Living Room, but again, there are very few kids aboard, so aside from organized activities, there isn't much going on. So far she has loved teen-only ice skating, boogie boarding, and ping pong.
how are the character interactions?
 

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