After returning from Macedonia, my boyfriend and I got
married after 8.5 years of dating in July 2012. We had to postpone our
honeymoon until our jobs would let us. That meant we didn’t get to go until
about 9 months later or about April 20, 2013. We decided to sail with Carnival
Liberty on a Eastern sailing. This will be my 4th sailing with
Carnival and Bobby’s 2nd. It allowed me to become a gold member of
their VIFP program (Very Important Fun Person aka Carnival’s rewards program).
It left from Miami, which let us leave at 6am and drive down on the day of. We had a friend of ours, pick us up and drop us off at the port so we didn’t have to pay the ridiculous port parking fees (think $20/day or $140 total). We were lucky enough to buy the Faster to the Fun (FTTF) passes. These allow us to have quicker boarding, quicker tendering, dedicated guest services lines and quicker debarkation. They cost $50 per stateroom, but this was the best $50 we spent the entire cruise! If these are offered on your cruise BUY IT NOW! No kidding, I’ll let you know a little of each as things go on in the cruise, but it was totally worth it.
It left from Miami, which let us leave at 6am and drive down on the day of. We had a friend of ours, pick us up and drop us off at the port so we didn’t have to pay the ridiculous port parking fees (think $20/day or $140 total). We were lucky enough to buy the Faster to the Fun (FTTF) passes. These allow us to have quicker boarding, quicker tendering, dedicated guest services lines and quicker debarkation. They cost $50 per stateroom, but this was the best $50 we spent the entire cruise! If these are offered on your cruise BUY IT NOW! No kidding, I’ll let you know a little of each as things go on in the cruise, but it was totally worth it.
While the FTTF would have allowed us to board at 11 am and
have our room ready, we decided to sleep in an extra hour or so at home. We
arrived at the Port of Miami around 1pm. We made it through all of the lines
and on board the ship by 1:45pm. We breezed through security and getting our
sail and sign card, only to be held up at the picture taking line. FYI carnival,
you need to have a FTTF line here as well. All in all, it was super easy. Our
room was ready when we boarded, so we dropped our stuff off and went up to Lido
deck to get some lunch! Sadly to say, Carnival has dropped the ball a bit on
their food. The Lido buffet has increased from the horribleness it was the last
time we sailed in 2009, but the dining room has decreased. As a vegetarian
traveling, it was difficult to find foods to eat on Carnival that were healthy,
delicious and not Thai 4 star curry hot. If you are a carnivore, you will find
lots of food to eat that is super high is quality, but not so much on the other
vegetarian options. After eating at Lido we went to look and see if our bags
were in our rooms, and lo and behold they were. We changed into our swimsuits
and went back up deck to make our good bye calls and take some pictures of us
leaving. We sat up on the Serenity deck, which was awesome to discover. The Serenity
deck was a 21+ deck , which meant no screaming kids and no super loud music. As
a side note there is also a adults only pool and whirlpool on the Aft portion
of the Lido deck.
Next up was the muster drill, which Carnival has changed to not
having muster stations where we have to bring life vests and sit in a location
to having us stand on the deck in rows while they wait for all >2,000 people
to be absolutely silent and demonstrate how to buckle your life vest. There was
a bratty kid and stupid parent next to us complaining the whole time. While I
won’t rant about how instead of letting her kid know how to safely do
something, she just told him how to circumvent the system. Anyways, we had some
more time and went back to the Serenity deck to relax, but by this time the sun
had gone away. L
We hung out there, took a nap and enjoyed the hot tubs. We decided to have a
late seating dinner and will never do this again. It is painfully long and you
miss out on all of the evening entertainments. Take the early seating or your
time, in our opinion.
Dinner on cruises is often referred to as cruise casual. It
is basically anything but jeans and swimsuits is fine. We take the opportunity to
dress to the nines almost every night. But we are usually in the minority. Our
tablemates were awesome- near our age and other couples. One set ever showed
up, but there were three couples that ate everyday (including us). We had fun
servers including two from Indonesia and one from Hungry. They were funny and
very attentive. They learned what we wanted and helped every night. I can’t
really remember what we ate every night, mostly because it wasn’t that
memorable for me. The desserts were yummy, but my stomach kept messing up and I
would have issues with nausea. The other two couples would order about 3 or 4 appetizers
and at least 2-3 main entrees. We mainly just ordered one. There was a new
thing called didja which was new and unique things people may have never tried
(frog legs, escargot, sushi, alligator). Which, hey when its free- and you eat
meat- why not?
They had a Welcome Aboard show that night, with some dancing
and awkward games. There was a newly married couple on board who had been
married on the ship earlier in the day (they were SUPER drunk). The shows were
cool throughout most of the cruise and we enjoyed them. We did however crash a
bit early that night!
See you around the globe!
As some of you might remember: I can longer post pictures on this blog unless I pay Google large ssums of money, so here are the links:
