Our first cruise without the mouse - Liberty of the Seas - August 28, 2016 - COMPLETED

[ukintheus]

Welcome to anyone that might follow along. This is our first RCI cruise after 14 DCL cruises and I enjoy doing trip reports (mainly as a reminder to myself of our vacation) and luckily enough the DIS has a Royal Board so here goes!

A little background on us - skip this if you already know us. We are DINKS (double income no kids) and have precious few vacation days to use each year. We typically cruise when kids are in school, and we typically don’t utilize many of the things available on the cruise other than our cabin, the pool, the dining rooms and the various bars. We had been mulling around the thought of a RCI cruise out of Galveston and originally booked one in April 2017 but an offer came out for this sailing and so we booked it. Liberty of the Seas is a Freedom Class ship on RCI and had gone through a fairly extensive dry dock at the beginning of 2016 adding several features, such as water slides and FlowRider as well as other things that I didn’t really pay attention to. For $400 more than a typical 7 night for the two of us on DCL out of Galveston in a 5B verandah, we got a Junior Suite, all inclusive premium drink package (Ultimate Package which includes beer, wine, cocktails, bottled water (still and sparkling), specialty coffee and juices), and 4 nights of specialty dining. Trip insurance was also included but that's a wash as we also do trip insurance on DCL. A Jr. Suite doesn't have any real suite perks other than priority boarding and double points. There is no concierge included with it unlike all the other suites, but it was $1,000 cheaper than the concierge suites. So, with background over, it's time to sail and here's a bonus picture of us so you know who you are looking at. We are particularly happy in this photo because we had just got back onto the Wonder as part of our first back-to-back last year.



I have to add some pre-cruise stuff in here as there were a few things that were different and I may as well get all the boring text over with. One thing that I immediately loved was that I could pre-purchase a drink package and a dining package online, and have it paid for months before our cruise. I also liked that the booking window was the same for everybody (at least it appeared that way to me) and I didn’t have that pressure of the “gotta check in and get my reservations” this time, which was nice. The other difference pre-cruise is that you don’t get a nice little packet in the mail with RCI like you do with DCL. You print your own luggage tags and your cruise packet is downloaded from the internet. It was easy and not a big deal, but the fun of finding those luggage tags in your mail box is really nice.

 

[ukintheus]

Sunday - August 28th - Embarkation Day

We finished our packing and left home at about 8:30 am. The skies weren’t looking promising, and there was an 80% chance of torrential rain today. It was a bad enough forecast that I had lined our suitcases with trash bags just in case they got soaked while they were being loaded and it looked like that might pay off as we drove through Houston.



Traffic was really light going across Houston and we got down to Galveston easily. As we turned to go to Lighthouse parking we got a good view of our new ride.



We were parked at about 10:15 am and the shuttle was already almost full so we loaded our luggage and were off straight away to Terminal 2. There was a little delay with traffic waiting to pull into the terminals as Carnival also were in port at Terminal 1 and people were still disembarking from both ships, and so there was a lot of traffic in general. Our shuttle just had passengers for our ship, which was different from our experience when we have sailed on DCL out of Galveston where they mix passengers. This was nice because we didn’t have to go to the Carnival pier first and so we were soon pulling up at the terminal. They offloaded our luggage from the shuttle and we gave it to a porter to take to the luggage place and we left to make our way inside.



There were a lot of people sitting waiting to be picked up and I was glad we didn’t have to fight the crowd with our suitcases. The port has opened a new Terminal 2 building since we last cruised in January and the area for security was much larger. Basically the entire area that used to be security, check in and the waiting area is now just security. It's this area (photo taken on a different cruise) but now with just the security screening.



We had no wait all and got through security within minutes. There is now a walkway into a new building where check in takes place. There were lots of available desks for check in and after being directed to the line for Suites we had nobody ahead of us to check in. It didn't take long for the agent to wave us forward and we signed the medical form, had our photos taken, and receive our Sea Pass cards that already had our beverage package sticker on them. Before we left we managed to snap a quick photo of the new check in area.



We walked through to the new waiting area, which is much larger than the old one, but as we were suite guests we were directed straight onto the ship. They had some back drops here to have photographs taken, and I assume that’s where Mickey and the Gang will be when DCL sail out of Galveston in the future. We boarded on deck 4 and were aboard by 11 am.

I had sworn to myself that I wasn't going to constantly compare DCL to RCI but it was really hard not to do at first. The first big difference was that once we boarded we were immediately approached, just like you are on DCL, but this was to try and sell us the beverage package instead of trying to help you figure out what's open for lunch etc. It wasn't over the top, just different. We went up to Deck 5 and took a look at the Promenade area which was a hive of activity - again with quite a few sales pitches for upgraded dining and drink packages, but not so pushy that it was annoying.



The Promenade was large and very impressive and it looked like it would be a great place to hang out in the evenings with both a pub and a wine bar. They had these ship maps in several places to help find your way around.



These are interior promenade rooms that overlook this entire area.



We decided to make our way up to the pool deck to take a look around up there. We went up in the forward elevators and were at the Solarium area. This pretty mosaic is right as you walk out of the elevator area.



There were lots of comfy loungers and some two person swing seats here.



Solarium pool.





We saw Sky Bar sitting there looking very lonely so we headed up there and ordered our first drinks.



Texas Tea for me and a Shiner Bock for Scott. The crazy Texas liquor laws apply no matter what cruise line, so nothing different there and the Texas Tea was probably one of the better drinks that I’ve had.



View of the main pool.



And the very plain smoke stacks.



This reggae band were setting up and had started to play.



We wandered around and checked out everything. This is their running track, which is up on the top deck so no shade while you are running....IF you are running...which wasn't a problem for me!





Looking back this is the top of one of the cantilevered whirlpools at the Solarium below.



The first thing that struck me was that the pool area looked much better for kids compared to DCL. The main pool was much larger and the splash zone was also very large.





At the back of the ship were two water slides and the Tidal Wave slide.



There was also the Flowrider surfing ride which wasn't operating yet.








Although we didn’t get to the back today to see the rock climbing wall and the basketball court they were also back in this area and I've got pictures of all that coming up later in the trip.

 

[ukintheus]

Having had a good look around up top we headed to Windjammer which is the buffet on deck 11 aft for a bite of lunch. Here's a look at the sea pass card. The UP sticker is our drink package sticker. One thing I liked was that they have the last 3 digits of your stateroom number on the bottom left hand corner, so you just add your deck number to the front - it made it nice and easy to remember!



A quick word here about our specialty dining plan (sorry, more boring text! ). I had read that we would be assigned our restaurants and times and that we could change them once we got onboard. This wasn’t the case for us though. I asked about it when we boarded and was told that there weren’t any reservations and that we could make them for whenever we wanted. Before we entered Windjammer for lunch, there were people from Chops and Giovanni’s outside and so we booked Chops for Monday and Giovanni's on Wednesday night. I still needed to make the other two reservations (we had a 4 night package) but we decided to see what we felt like doing later in the week. The Mexican restaurant, Sabor, was the third available option and we were going to double up for the fourth night once we figured out which one we liked the best.

Windjammer was fairly crowded and we followed the lead from the rest of the crowd and went and got a table first and then went to get food.



The view was nice (if you like oil rigs - ha ha!) and given the no-so-sunny day it was nice to be inside although it did get a little warm when the sun finally showed its face.





The buffet offerings were just OK, there wasn’t anything that struck us as exciting, and it was definitely not on par with the offerings on DCL but we didn’t starve LOL. This was mine...the bread was good, just like DCL but the ground meat for the pasta was very greasy and the pasta sauce was just like a can of tomatoes.



And this was Scott's...



We didn't bother with dessert as we had other alternatives in mind and we headed back to Sky Bar to grab another drink (loving the drink package at this point – LOL). The bar tender up there was called Hugh and he was from Falmouth, Jamaica and so we chatted to him about our trip there last year. We ended up at the Solarium, which is the equivalent of Cove area, and found a couple of comfy loungers until the announcement was made that the staterooms were ready just before 12:30 pm. We went off to find our home for the week, deck 9 forward. 9234 was our cabin number and we had stuff in our "not a fish extender" thingy already!



So, this whole Jr. Suite thing...yeah...AWESOME!!





Our soda package cups were waiting for us.





It comes with a coffee maker and a kettle, which I know now has my Mum and Sister twitching at the mere thought that they could make tea in the room.


The closet was HUGE...walk in and tons of room.





Bathroom was nice and had a full size tub.





And finally, the verandah....ta da! LOL It was really large with two loungers, two chairs and a table. It was one of the main reasons we booked this cabin and it didn’t disappoint us. I could see us spending time here this week.





Looking foward...



And looking back...



And below was a whole bunch of luggage!



The cabin definitely exceeded my expectations of how large it was going to be and how clean it was. Happy camper indeed.

I put a few magnets on our door. There was only one other door close to us that was decorated and that was with one of the Birthday packages available for purchase from the ship. A lady walked by and asked if we were on our honeymoon as I was decorating our door. Um, no, just decorating because it’s fun.

 

[MomoMama]

Following. Can't wait to read more!

 

[ukintheus]

Having poked our noses into every nook and cranny in the room, we left and went for a walk around. We went up to the top deck again and there were a couple of ladies up there that asked us to take their picture and they reciprocated.



We found this huge area at the front with a crazy golf course. (Is it called crazy golf in the USA? Putt putt maybe?) LOL You know what I mean.



This looked like a lot of fun....although we never made it back up here! Typical of us.





I wanted to go down to the helicopter pad on deck 5 forward as I had heard so much about it. We had grand plans to make it here many times during the cruise, especially for sail away, but this was the only time we were there.



There was a great view and we sat for a while soaking up the sun, which had finally made an appearance, until we were too hot to stay there.



If you want to have a Titanic moment you can get all the way to the front. I'm not so keen on heights (hate them and hate is a strong word! ) so as you can see, this is as close as I got to take a photo.



We continued our wander and found ourselves in the main dining room which has three levels.



I took this panoramic one but I'm not sure it really shows anything any better.





When headed back to our room. The hallways seemed quite a bit wider than we are used to.



When we got back to our room our bags were outside. We were quickly unpacked as everything fit into our closet between hanging and the shelves and there was room for an open suitcase on the floor, which we use to put our dirty laundry in as we go along. The good news was that the trash bags hadn't been necessary and everything was nice and dry.





Our stateroom host, Walid from Egypt, knocked and introduced himself. Muster was at 3:30 pm and we were inside in Star Lounge. It was the quietest muster we have ever been to. LOL. People actually were quiet when they were asked to be. The overall vibe of the ship was different though, of course, with the majority of passengers appearing to be couples, and probably older couples at that. There were so few children that it seemed a little strange.

We had planned on going to watch sail away from one of the upper decks, but while we were in muster the sky had opened and it was chucking it down so we elected to watch from our verandah.



They don't look too concerned up there.

 

[ukintheus]

Following. Can't wait to read more!

Thanks for following along.

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

Following along great so far! Really enjoying it. Looking foreword to more.

 

[ukintheus]

Following along great so far! Really enjoying it. Looking foreword to more.

Thanks for following along. I'm trying to get day 1 done. LOL

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

Thanks for following along. I'm trying to get day 1 done. LOL

We have considered RCL but we adore DCL so interested in reading your valuable thoughts! We tried NCL no thanks.

 

[Frozen2014]

Great review so far. I'm a Royal fan wrt cruises (but love Disney) and have recently been on Allure plus Voyager and Grandeur. Liberty looks amazing and I noticed good prices end of summer (week before your cruise) and we almost jumped on it.
Looking forward to hearing more.

 

[ukintheus]

We pushed away from the pier and the water churned from the side thrusters much to the delight of the seagulls. I don't know if you can make them out in this picture but they were all over the place.





The Carnival ship had their muster drill going on as we went by.



We sailed past Harbor House which is a favorite hotel for those wanting to see the ships come in and out.



If you've read any of my other trip reports you will know I always take a photo of the Del Monte containers and today the ship was there too!! Bonus!! Ha ha.



Line up of shrimp boats.



Scott got this good photo of the skies...too bad they weren't blue, but this is a pretty cool photo.



Getting close to the end of the island.



Looking back I could see that the Carnival ship was also heading out to sea.





The pilot boat came alongside as I was standing out there.



The pilot hopped off the ship like it was nothing at all....not something for the faint of heart.



So, look what's up ahead!! Blue skies!! You can also see all the tankers that are lined up to get into the Houston ship channel. It's a busy place out there!



And behind us it was still nasty and dark but we were leaving that behind and heading to the Caribbean so all was right with the world.



Scott decided that he needed to take a power nap so I caught up with my trip report. A little while into the peace and quiet some really loud music started playing in our cabin. I know this is one of those times when you really needed to be there....but we must have looked really funny trying to figure out where this music was coming from. I was looking to see if there was a radio alarm, then I tried my phone, then my ipad, Scott tried his phone, then his ipad, and we pushed every button that we could find without any success. Finally Scott stuck his head out of our door and Walid was outside and he came in and said it was the speaker that you can turn on and off to hear the announcements and promptly tried to turn it off.



Nope! Nothing...no amount of pushing or twisting the button did anything. Then he brought in a "white shirt" and she tried to turn it off. Nope! It was funny, trust me. Anyway, they said they would have to do something somewhere else on the ship, and that there was one other cabin close to us that had the same problem. In a few minutes it went off and we never had the problem again. It was actually nice to have the ability to turn that speaker on really quick during the cruise when you wanted to hear what they were saying.

And here's the obligatory photo to show that you are sailing in the Gulf of Mexico. A rig platform and a tanker.

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

Wow that churning of the waters! Too cool. Don't you just love heading away from dark skies into the bright skies. No better feeling. That is so funny about the speaker in your suite. Lovely suite by the way! Do RCL do any kind of Conceirge service like DCL with the lounge etc? I have never sailed out of Texas must be something and real cool for you if it is closer for you guys. I must check your other trip reports! Too funny about the dole fruit containers. I got obsessed by the containers on a Hawaain cruise! My wife kept complaining look at the mountains...

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

one thing I find confusing with RCL when I came to look was all the different classes of ships and the dining options! It seemed quite complex. But maybe it was me finding their website a little frustrating. I must try again!

 

[ukintheus]

Tonight we had My Time dining which was something that had really appealed to me where we could go to dinner whenever we wanted to instead of at a set time every night. That said, you could make reservations online ahead of time, and so I had made one at 6:45 pm. You can't stop a planner from planning.

All of the My Time Dining was in the Rembrandt Dining room on Deck 3 aft. The traditional first and second seating dining was in the other two Dining rooms on Decks 4 and 5. We eventually figured out where we were supposed to be, although our route took us through the casino, which was (as we had suspected it would be) very smoky and not our cup of tea, and it was the first and last time we went into it.

We checked in for our dining reservation and were seated within about 5 minutes and although I felt a bit shy about taking photos of our dinner (evidently it's not as common as it is on DCL!! Ha ha.) we did take photos of our food anyway.

For our appetizers I had the shrimp cocktail and Scott had the spinach salad.





Then I had prime rib and Scott had horseradish crusted salmon.





We split carrot cake and blueberry & peach cobbler.





Overall the food didn’t wow us, although the desserts were good! Our servers were also very good, and were nice and friendly. Dinner took a little over an hour and then we decided to walk around a little more and do more exploring of the ship. It was fun to see new and different things and we were having a great time checking everything out. We passed through On Air bar and ended up at Studio B where we found the ice skating rink.



There was an ice skating session in progress and we watched the various levels of expertise for a little while, with a couple of chuckles at some of those that weren’t very adept at skating – which is totally mean of me as I would be hopeless at it – but it was still fun to watch others in their misery – HA!



It just struck me at this point that our friends that have sailed with us on DCL with their 11 and 9 year olds would just LOVE everything that there was to do on this ship. It was getting a bit chilly sitting by the ice so we walked up to the Promenade and found our way into the Hoof and Claw pub where we enjoyed a cocktail (or three).



We sat outside and did some people watching.







The servers in there were awesome and we spent a little while chatting with them.



To be fair on my cocktail count my drink below (on the right) got thrown away as I didn't like it very much. It was an Old Fashioned made with Maker's Mark and was just way too strong to end the evening with.



We grabbed a couple of waters from Hoof & Claw before leaving and then Scott got a couple more from Sorrentos which was the pizza place right at the end of the strip of shops and right before our elevators.

We went back to the room and were in bed by 9:45 pm. So much for trying the nightlife! We watched a little TV before calling it a night. The seas were very calm and there was very little movement. It also struck me how quiet the cabin was compared to DCL. There was no creaking, banging or any noise of any kind. Maybe it’s because we mainly sail on the Classic ships that are a little older, but this cabin was the quietest we’ve ever been in. So that's day 1 in the books.

Coming up tomorrow is an at sea day.

Adding this in because I forgot it!! The elevators all have the day of the week inserted into the carpet which can come in handy! LOL

 

[ukintheus]

Great review so far. I'm a Royal fan wrt cruises (but love Disney) and have recently been on Allure plus Voyager and Grandeur. Liberty looks amazing and I noticed good prices end of summer (week before your cruise) and we almost jumped on it.
Looking forward to hearing more.

Thanks for following along. There were several people doing a B2B from the week before as well as this one. We had looked at the week before too, but it was nice to have the extra day with us getting back on a holiday weekend.

Wow that churning of the waters! Too cool. Don't you just love heading away from dark skies into the bright skies. No better feeling. That is so funny about the speaker in your suite. Lovely suite by the way! Do RCL do any kind of Conceirge service like DCL with the lounge etc? I have never sailed out of Texas must be something and real cool for you if it is closer for you guys. I must check your other trip reports! Too funny about the dole fruit containers. I got obsessed by the containers on a Hawaain cruise! My wife kept complaining look at the mountains...

Yes, on this ship (which is the only one I did any research on) there were three categories of concierge suites that all had access to the concierge lounge. We couldn't justify the extra $1,000 for a Grand Suite which was the cheapest. We were really happy with our Jr. Suite.

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

Oh lovely re Conceirge what no spare $1000 in your pocket that you didn't realise was there lol...

 

[mandymouse]

Great start Jenny I'm really looking forward to reading your views on RCL

Loving all your photos too, and look forward to seeing your cocktail count

Your room looks amazing too, and so big. I hope you had a fun week

 

[tennesseemo]

Always interesting to read these reports, so far the only thing that has my undivided attention is the kettle in the room ️️ seems like a really good idea to me

 

[ukintheus]

Oh lovely re Conceirge what no spare $1000 in your pocket that you didn't realise was there lol...

Not that I could find! LOL

Great start Jenny I'm really looking forward to reading your views on RCL

Loving all your photos too, and look forward to seeing your cocktail count

Your room looks amazing too, and so big. I hope you had a fun week

Thanks Mandy - the cocktail count was pretty impressive this trip with that all inclusive drink package!! I won't let you down.

Always interesting to read these reports, so far the only thing that has my undivided attention is the kettle in the room ️️ seems like a really good idea to me

I knew that would get your attention!! Ha ha.

 

[CesD]

thanks for this!!
Is the buffet quality equivalent to say Souplantation on land or a middle of the road Vegas buffet?
What would the MDR quality be equal to-- like cheesecake factory, Chili's?