Carnival Liberty Cruise

Overall my husband and I had a great time but this was due to the islands not the ship.  We purchased the drink package, do your self a favor and don't bother unless you stay on the boat the entire time.  After talking to many other people it is too easy to put alcohol in your checked luggage and you can save $800.  The dinners were pretty good and our wait staff was wonderful but the breakfast left a lot to be desired.  The buffet was exactly the same every morning and if you wanted an omlet plan on waiting in line about 15-20 minutes then you get to wait in another line for the buffet if you want anything else.  We only ate the buffet lunch one day and it was ok.  We had the late dinner so we were usually hungry when we got back on the boat around 4 and our food options were limited.  You can have pizza, hamburgers or a deli sandwich (none of these options were anything to write home about) and you get to wait at least a half hour for each.  The buffet was never opened during this time.  We did order room service once and it was fairly quick and pretty good.  One big disappointment was there was not a midnight buffet.  This was always one of those things we looked forward to on a cruise.

The layout of the ship was kind of strange, we either had to go up or down a couple floors to get to our restaurant or you walk right through the other restaurant to get to it.  The main pool deck usually had something going on but there were constantly a ton of kids there so we would go to the adult pool but there wasn't ever anything going on there, not even music.

We went to the show every night and enjoyed a couple of them but they were cheaply done, I've seen much better shows at all inclusive resorts and other cruise lines.  We also went to the comedy show a couple times and even though they were for 18 and older people were bringing kids in, I feel they should of been stopped at the door, the shows were quite funny but they were not appropriate for children.

We had an inside cabin on the 6th floor and it was a typical cruise ship room, nothing special, but definitely bring an extension cord with an extra outlet we only had one in the entire room.  Our room attendant was good.

We booked an excursion at just about every island and went through Viator.  These tours were fantastic, limited amount of people on each tour.  The carnival tours had about 50 or more people on a snorkeling cruise and ours had 12 on one and 8 on the other for the same price.  We also did a land tour that only had 6 people.  If possible book these in advance to save yourself a headache when you get on the ship.

The last night of your cruise they ask you to put you luggage outside your stateroom (this is optional). You have to be out of your room by 8:30am then you go sit on the pool deck until they call your number.  Ours wasn't called until 10:30 and when we got off the ship we had to go find our luggage and wait in another line to leave the port.  I would recommend either leaving your luggage in your room, go eat breakfast and then leave the ship before 830am or let them take your luggage and go take a nap on the Serenity deck until its time to go to the airport. 

Overall it was a good vacation but an all inclusive vacation is cheaper in the long run.  The next time I cruise will be with Royal Carribean, the ships, shows and food are so much better its worth the extra money.