Carnival Liberty- April 2017- Post Three
[Archived from April 2017]
Thursday, Embarkation Day, Continued:
We headed to the Blue Iguana Cantina for my fiance to get a burrito (even though we had BBQ no more than 2 hours prior, he was really excited to try the food). He said it was delicious even though the jalapeno tortilla wasn’t that spicy and is now hooked on their burritos. We headed to the Versailles bar and got a round of drinks, which took about 5 minutes to get served, but it wasn’t a big deal.
A comment about the drinks: this was our first of four cruises together that we didn’t buy or receive the unlimited drink package. I was pretty nervous about not having it, since I really enjoy saving money and didn’t want to drink more paying per drink than we would’ve using the drink package. We love the drink packages but are learning that there is an internal pressure to drink and get our money’s worth, even if we don’t really feel like having a drink at the time. Luckily, we made the smart choice to pay per drink on this cruise instead of the package. After some quick calculations, we paid about $200 in drinks instead of the $300 the package would’ve cost us. We had a lot of beverages off the ship in Nassau, so we didn’t drink that much Friday night, and we brought a bottle of wine that accompanied us (via wine glasses I borrowed from the Cabinet Bar upstairs from us) to the dining room. Sure, we probably did limit our purchasing of drinks a little knowing that we pay per drink, but overall it worked well and we definitely won’t be buying the drink package on our Vista honeymoon (8 days, 4 ports).
So back to the review, we hung out at the Versailles bar and pool until muster drill was called. This pool used to be adults-only but the switch to allowing children occurred a few weeks before the sail. I was a little bummed since the Serenity doesn’t have any pools, but the reality is- we don’t swim that much and it didn’t affect us at all. I do totally understand that people do enjoy the pool and having kids in a space that used to be child-free could annoy them. Thankfully we found that relaxing in the Serenity was were we found our quiet time. Also, we don’t recall seeing that many kids on this cruise, so maybe it would’ve been more problematic in the summer. We went to the muster drill and they didn’t scan our cards, but we never got called to redo the drill and even checked with the staff at the drill to make sure we didn’t need to be scanned in, and they said no we were good. The muster drill was very long compared to Royal’s muster drill, but thankfully we weren’t standing in the shade so that part was easier to manage.
Sail Away Party:
After the muster drill we went up to check out the mini golf course before the sail away party started. I was pretty annoyed to find that there were only 3 golf balls and mostly short child-sized clubs. I loved playing mini golf on cruise ships in the past, and I have never seen such short supply of golf balls and clubs. The course itself was a little rough too, with scratched up greens and some broken obstacles. We made do and played a quick round before the large whale tail sounded its loud horn, right next to us on the course. Yep that was pretty startling!
We put our golf materials away and headed down a deck to watch the sail away party and dancing start before making our way to the Serenity for a drink and to watch sail away. It took quite a while to get a drink in the Serenity, probably 7+ minutes, but we think there was only one bartender serving the window and a few other people that were roaming the deck taking orders and making those drinks. We watched sail away and had some great conversation about life and our love for cruising before heading to the room to get ready for dinner.
Watching Sail Away from the Serenity with my fiancé:
Once back at the room around 5:30ish, we notice that the bathroom sink is still clogged, so we call again to complain and they say they’ll come take care of it. For those still keeping track, 4 hours have passed, we have now called twice and told our room steward once (although we also told her someone was taking care of it). We also noticed that our room steward didn’t bring us a corkscrew yet so we called room service and they brought one over quickly, free of charge! It’s a pretty simple piece of plastic with the metal spiral, but it’ll for sure be our travel corkscrew from now until it breaks! We opened our wine, got ready for dinner, and headed to the the 6pm dinner seating in the Silver Olympian Dining Room in the aft of the ship.
We showed up a little early but were seated right away, around 5:55. We had opted to sit with other people, which we were a little apprehensive about. I’ve had one or two less-than-great tablemate experiences but overall, all has gone well, so we decided to try it out again. We were seated at a table for 6, so we were guessing there would be two other couples with us. For the first 20 minutes of dinner, we wouldn’t know who our tablemates were, because no one was showing up. Finally at 6:20, after our orders had been taken, one couple arrives. We ended up having some good conversation, mostly pleasantries about where we’re from and the cruising experience, but it was nice to meet other people. Spoiler: our other two tablemates never showed up for the entire cruise. Also, I had read that Carnival was implementing a policy that if someone arrives 30+ minutes late to the dining room, they would be turned away. I can say for certain that this was not being implemented on this cruise, or at least for our dining room. I was pretty surprised to see people showing up that late, but they were and they were granted access.
MENU- Thursday 4/20/17, Port Canaveral Embarkation
The food was okay. And by okay, I mean I was able to find something that I’d eat, but I don’t think that there was anything I was ever SUPER excited to try or thought was delicious after I had tried it. I know that food is a huge complaint across the boards and I get it- we could’ve eaten somewhere else or asked for something else. We didn’t starve and we didn’t hate the food, but we did find ourselves unimpressed and wanting better food options and quality. My fiancé had the "Rare Finds" Cured Salmon which wasn't what we expected but was okay, and the Vietnamese Roll which was good but mostly filled with noodles and not meat/vegetables. He also had the Port of Call Main dish of Sword Fish which he said was really good but the rice was super dry and not sauced, and the Carnival Melting Cake that was VERY melt-y and really rich. I think had the Chicken Quesadilla which I'm sure was alright, the Sweet and Sour Shrimp which was also not what I expected as it was 90% fried batter with 10% of a stick of shrimp with fried rice, and the Melting Cake that again was really melt-y but I enjoyed it!The service staff was mostly great, no real complaints there.
After dinner we headed to the Gender Showdown at 8:30 in the Venetian Palace. We watched from the second floor and had a good time laughing at answers and activities going on, but chose not to participate. After that show, we headed to the piano bar for about an hour and had a great time there. The performer wasn’t the best singer but he was great at playing and was pretty funny, so we definitely knew we would be coming back every night. There’s one waiter/bartender for the piano bar who walks around taking multiple orders and then heads back to make them all. He’s really nice and unfortunately I didn’t write his name down, but he had pretty great service although sometimes it was a little slow, we didn’t have any problems! The piano guy, Tommy G, ran his show as a sing-along, so he welcomed people shouting out requests and making music choices. It was such a great environment and atmosphere!
Piano Man Bar, Deck 5 aft- We would end up spending a lot of time here! (picture taken earlier during the day)
After the piano bar we headed to the late night comedy show by Tom Foss who was a little raunchy but definitely really funny! The show was at 11:30 and since I had heard that the Victoria Lounge in the aft fills up quickly, we arrived at 11:10 to get our seats, and by 11:20 it was packed. His show was pretty quick on the first night, as I think we were heading back to the room around midnight. My final note of Thursday/Embarkation day was that at midnight, our bathroom sink was still clogged. We decided not to call anyone to fix it and wait for the morning, but at this point, it’s now been 10.5 hours since we first noticed the sink was clogged and asked to have it fixed.
Link to Next Post: Friday, Nassau
Thursday, Embarkation Day, Continued:
We headed to the Blue Iguana Cantina for my fiance to get a burrito (even though we had BBQ no more than 2 hours prior, he was really excited to try the food). He said it was delicious even though the jalapeno tortilla wasn’t that spicy and is now hooked on their burritos. We headed to the Versailles bar and got a round of drinks, which took about 5 minutes to get served, but it wasn’t a big deal.
A comment about the drinks: this was our first of four cruises together that we didn’t buy or receive the unlimited drink package. I was pretty nervous about not having it, since I really enjoy saving money and didn’t want to drink more paying per drink than we would’ve using the drink package. We love the drink packages but are learning that there is an internal pressure to drink and get our money’s worth, even if we don’t really feel like having a drink at the time. Luckily, we made the smart choice to pay per drink on this cruise instead of the package. After some quick calculations, we paid about $200 in drinks instead of the $300 the package would’ve cost us. We had a lot of beverages off the ship in Nassau, so we didn’t drink that much Friday night, and we brought a bottle of wine that accompanied us (via wine glasses I borrowed from the Cabinet Bar upstairs from us) to the dining room. Sure, we probably did limit our purchasing of drinks a little knowing that we pay per drink, but overall it worked well and we definitely won’t be buying the drink package on our Vista honeymoon (8 days, 4 ports).
So back to the review, we hung out at the Versailles bar and pool until muster drill was called. This pool used to be adults-only but the switch to allowing children occurred a few weeks before the sail. I was a little bummed since the Serenity doesn’t have any pools, but the reality is- we don’t swim that much and it didn’t affect us at all. I do totally understand that people do enjoy the pool and having kids in a space that used to be child-free could annoy them. Thankfully we found that relaxing in the Serenity was were we found our quiet time. Also, we don’t recall seeing that many kids on this cruise, so maybe it would’ve been more problematic in the summer. We went to the muster drill and they didn’t scan our cards, but we never got called to redo the drill and even checked with the staff at the drill to make sure we didn’t need to be scanned in, and they said no we were good. The muster drill was very long compared to Royal’s muster drill, but thankfully we weren’t standing in the shade so that part was easier to manage.
Sail Away Party:
After the muster drill we went up to check out the mini golf course before the sail away party started. I was pretty annoyed to find that there were only 3 golf balls and mostly short child-sized clubs. I loved playing mini golf on cruise ships in the past, and I have never seen such short supply of golf balls and clubs. The course itself was a little rough too, with scratched up greens and some broken obstacles. We made do and played a quick round before the large whale tail sounded its loud horn, right next to us on the course. Yep that was pretty startling!
We put our golf materials away and headed down a deck to watch the sail away party and dancing start before making our way to the Serenity for a drink and to watch sail away. It took quite a while to get a drink in the Serenity, probably 7+ minutes, but we think there was only one bartender serving the window and a few other people that were roaming the deck taking orders and making those drinks. We watched sail away and had some great conversation about life and our love for cruising before heading to the room to get ready for dinner.
Watching Sail Away from the Serenity with my fiancé:
Once back at the room around 5:30ish, we notice that the bathroom sink is still clogged, so we call again to complain and they say they’ll come take care of it. For those still keeping track, 4 hours have passed, we have now called twice and told our room steward once (although we also told her someone was taking care of it). We also noticed that our room steward didn’t bring us a corkscrew yet so we called room service and they brought one over quickly, free of charge! It’s a pretty simple piece of plastic with the metal spiral, but it’ll for sure be our travel corkscrew from now until it breaks! We opened our wine, got ready for dinner, and headed to the the 6pm dinner seating in the Silver Olympian Dining Room in the aft of the ship.
We showed up a little early but were seated right away, around 5:55. We had opted to sit with other people, which we were a little apprehensive about. I’ve had one or two less-than-great tablemate experiences but overall, all has gone well, so we decided to try it out again. We were seated at a table for 6, so we were guessing there would be two other couples with us. For the first 20 minutes of dinner, we wouldn’t know who our tablemates were, because no one was showing up. Finally at 6:20, after our orders had been taken, one couple arrives. We ended up having some good conversation, mostly pleasantries about where we’re from and the cruising experience, but it was nice to meet other people. Spoiler: our other two tablemates never showed up for the entire cruise. Also, I had read that Carnival was implementing a policy that if someone arrives 30+ minutes late to the dining room, they would be turned away. I can say for certain that this was not being implemented on this cruise, or at least for our dining room. I was pretty surprised to see people showing up that late, but they were and they were granted access.
MENU- Thursday 4/20/17, Port Canaveral Embarkation
The food was okay. And by okay, I mean I was able to find something that I’d eat, but I don’t think that there was anything I was ever SUPER excited to try or thought was delicious after I had tried it. I know that food is a huge complaint across the boards and I get it- we could’ve eaten somewhere else or asked for something else. We didn’t starve and we didn’t hate the food, but we did find ourselves unimpressed and wanting better food options and quality. My fiancé had the "Rare Finds" Cured Salmon which wasn't what we expected but was okay, and the Vietnamese Roll which was good but mostly filled with noodles and not meat/vegetables. He also had the Port of Call Main dish of Sword Fish which he said was really good but the rice was super dry and not sauced, and the Carnival Melting Cake that was VERY melt-y and really rich. I think had the Chicken Quesadilla which I'm sure was alright, the Sweet and Sour Shrimp which was also not what I expected as it was 90% fried batter with 10% of a stick of shrimp with fried rice, and the Melting Cake that again was really melt-y but I enjoyed it!The service staff was mostly great, no real complaints there.
After dinner we headed to the Gender Showdown at 8:30 in the Venetian Palace. We watched from the second floor and had a good time laughing at answers and activities going on, but chose not to participate. After that show, we headed to the piano bar for about an hour and had a great time there. The performer wasn’t the best singer but he was great at playing and was pretty funny, so we definitely knew we would be coming back every night. There’s one waiter/bartender for the piano bar who walks around taking multiple orders and then heads back to make them all. He’s really nice and unfortunately I didn’t write his name down, but he had pretty great service although sometimes it was a little slow, we didn’t have any problems! The piano guy, Tommy G, ran his show as a sing-along, so he welcomed people shouting out requests and making music choices. It was such a great environment and atmosphere!
Piano Man Bar, Deck 5 aft- We would end up spending a lot of time here! (picture taken earlier during the day)
After the piano bar we headed to the late night comedy show by Tom Foss who was a little raunchy but definitely really funny! The show was at 11:30 and since I had heard that the Victoria Lounge in the aft fills up quickly, we arrived at 11:10 to get our seats, and by 11:20 it was packed. His show was pretty quick on the first night, as I think we were heading back to the room around midnight. My final note of Thursday/Embarkation day was that at midnight, our bathroom sink was still clogged. We decided not to call anyone to fix it and wait for the morning, but at this point, it’s now been 10.5 hours since we first noticed the sink was clogged and asked to have it fixed.
Link to Next Post: Friday, Nassau
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