2nd time on Freedom ...still great

Spent this week in room 8354. Standard balcony room which has a great location from our point of view. Good access to the stairs / elevators. Our room steward "Speedy" did a fine job for us. We carried on two bottles of wine which he chilled for us when we wanted them to be cold.

We used my time dining for the first time. We had six people in our group and did not try to pick dining times prior to the cruise. We were faced with a choice of 6pm or 8:30pm. Nothing else. We went with 6pm for every night. Had the same table every night. Service was decent. We finished in time to go to the 8pm games in On Air which were always done in time to go to the 9PM shows. The cruise staff were very good hosts at all the events we went to. The cruise director was very much to my taste. Not over the top but very still entertaining.

My over all score for entertainment during this cruise was about a 6 out of 10. Others in our group rated it as high as an 8. The magician show was just so so. The production numbers were ok. We'd seen them before and they were so so then also. The ice show remains superior even though there were new skaters in their first week of work on the ship.

We ate at Chops and I personally found a couple of their changes not to my liking. Both my wife and I really were disappointed that they replaced Mississippi Mud Pie with a mousse style cake which was ok but nowhere near as good. They had the nerve to call it by the same name to add insult to injury. Secondly, I did not like how they changed the mushroom side dish from what they had previously served. My wife was ok with the change. They used three types of sliced mushrooms instead of the single type of whole mushrooms used before. The differences could be enough to keep me away next time.

We had very good island excursions at every port. On Jamaica we did the Martha Brae bamboo raft float. Relaxing and perfect weather. No bugs there may be normal based on what the guide said. It certainly made the trip more enjoyable. Grand Cayman was a catamaran trip to stingray city and snorkeling. First time for us at stingray city. It was fun. Snorkeling was so so. If we did this stop again we'd forego the snorkeling for time on 7 mile beach and we would not need to see stingray city again. It was worth doing once though. At Cozumel we did a jeep tour which was the best excursion of the week. We used cosumelcruiseexcursions.com. Very nice time and very good value.