Wonderful trip with beautiful islands!
Freedom of the Seas Cruise Review to Caribbean - Southern
Contributor Level:
Purser
Cruises: 2-3 cruises
Reviews: 2
Helpful Votes: 82
7 Night Southern Caribbean (San Juan Roundtrip)
Sail date: December 29, 2019
Ship: Freedom of the Seas
Cabin type: Inside
Cabin number: 7671
Traveled as: Couple
Reviewed: 4 years ago
Review summary
Very fun time with beautiful islands! The ship is nice, staff are attentive and polite, excellent food, and gorgeous places to see with great excursion options! I’m excited to see the ship after renovationsEmbarkation
Very fast experience. Arrived to the port at 12:30pm, no lines this time. We walked straight up to the counter, spent 5 minutes getting Seapass cards, and were allowed on the ship at 1pm. Easy and fast!
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
Main dining room had amazing food! All of their beef entrees tasted amazing. Plenty of food to eat. Never left hungry from there! Sorrentos had good pizza available 24/7 which was awesome. Windjammer was hit or miss with some food, but most of it was good. Windjammer is very busy on sea days so expect some trouble finding a table if you have a large group and longer lines for food.
Onboard Activities
Lines were not bad for the rock-wall and it was fun! The pools were VERY packed on sea days and lots of people saving chairs with towels or shoes with no one sitting in them for hours, which became frustrating. On port days, the pool areas had plenty of room. The activities were fun, just busy on sea days which was unavoidable.
Entertainment
The Ice show is awesome!! Totally go see it if you can. The comedian at the 18+ show we saw was okay, most of his funny jokes were at the end. The Love and Marriage show was funny as always.
Children's Programs
No kids with us.
Service and Staff
Room steward was very attentive and polite. I loved the towel animals he made. The waiters we had were great! Lizel and Mark went above and beyond for us and a guest with us who had a shellfish allergy. So did the head waiter. We had a negative interaction with a worker policing the coke machines as we were filling up our water bottles, but oh well, eventually he realized we were filling them with water and not stealing.
Ship Quality
Common areas were clean and well-maintained. The ship was nice. It is older in design but going for dry dock now so some upgrades will be nice. Nothing to complain about.
Cabin / Stateroom
The cabin was nicely kept up with enough room for my boyfriend and I. It is very cramped (shower is about 2 ft x 2ft) but nothing that was annoying. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the cabin so it didn’t bother us. Be sure to set alarms if you’re in an interior room because it is so dark in there, you have no idea what time it was. We overslept until noon one day thinking it was 9am because it was so dark.
Ports of call
We stayed 2 days after disembarkation. Driving is scary so I would recommend taking a taxi. We did an excursion to the rainforest there with rock climbing to a natural waterfall and waterslide which was amazing!! Very beautiful! Don’t rely on Uber because they cancelled on us twice due to traffic. Take a taxi, it’s worth the extra money.
Thumbs Up
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There are areas that are still run down from the hurricane. We went to Maho Beach which was awesome! Once in a lifetime experience there. There is one entrance to the beach and there are women who wait there for any woman walking onto the beach offering to braid your hair. They were very persistent, following me onto the beach, insisting how cheap it was. I gave in, she did not listen to what I wanted, gave me 15 braids and charged me about $70 for them. Needless to say, I was not happy and even worse, all the braids fell out within 3 days. So use caution with them. Don’t risk doing it if you don’t want to get taken advantage of. Braids were pretty but not worth it. Otherwise the beach was beautiful!
Beautiful island! We went to the rum distillery where they make blue curacao. There were free samples which was cool. Then went to Mambo Beach which is gorgeous! But beware they charge $3.50 to get onto the beach and $3-5 to get a chair, which we were not told about. Great snorkeling there though! Crystal clear waters and lots of colorful fish. The taxi for 7 people ended up being $105 to the distillery and to the beach and then $18 back so I believe $18 per person round trip, and they will wait for you at the rum distillery.
It is beautiful like Curacao but more commercialized than the other islands. Kind of reminded me of Myrtle Beach with all the shops with the same printed t-shirts. We went on a snorkeling boat out to the Antilla shipwreck and then their coral reef. It was a lot of fun! The ship was beautiful to see and tons of pretty fish too. Bring a GoPro if you have one! We got lots of great videos.
I wasn’t sure what to expect but this may have been my favorite island. We went on a 2 hour tour to the south side of Bonaire to see their salt banks and pink salt water, toured their famous lighthouse, saw some flamingoes, and learned a lot from our tour guide about the history of the island. We then were dropped off at Coco beach which is a nice free beach. It has a rocky shoreline so bring watershoes if you can. But once you get in the water, its crystal clear straight to the bottom. We saw lots of fish and a couple sea turtles that surfaced! It was amazing! Again bring a GoPro if you have one.
Disembarkation
Feels kind of jumbled. The ship calls the tag numbers very slowly so we were left wondering when we were going to be called. The cruiseline also shattered a 3 liter Jack bottle one of the guests with us had purchased between the room and the customs area overnight so that made everyone upset. Be careful buying glass items. Once out of customs, it was chaos trying to find taxis to the airport. Traffic was backed up with the people for the next cruise coming in with our cruise still trying to get out. I believe it may just be the nature of the port being one entrance and one exit but it took us almost 2 hours to find a taxi and finally get to the airport. For some reason, the taxi drivers in Puerto Rico have a habit of making diversions to do personal tasks with their friends while driving you to your destination. It didn’t affect our plans thankfully but beware that may happen because it was very off-putting to us. It happened with a couple taxi drivers we had.
Traveler Photos
