GregD

Interesting. I did not notice any difference with mine. ?? I was able to be completely Horizontal, and look around at many different angles without any issues.

I just purchased this mask Greatever G2 Full Face Snorkel... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VRHNSFD?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share I used it last week on my cruise and can 1000% recommend it. I felt like I could breathe easier than a traditional mask and snorkel, the field of view through the mask is also far superior to a traditional mask as well.

Now that is funny. Like @WAAAYTOOO said, how did you know, and what did they do with your keys? Or is that how you knew when you suddenly did the why aren’t my keys in my pocket dance.

Some stats that we learned about the ship for all those facts nerds out there like me The ship makes its own fresh water at a rate of 712,800 gallons a day. 65,000 lbs of ice cubes are made a day 125,000 meals are made in a week. 60,000 apps, 84,000 mains, 90,000 desserts, 69,000 steaks Consumed in an average week, 13,000 lbs of beef, 8,000 lbs of chicken, 5,000 lbs of pork, 1,400 lbs of lobster (15,000 lobster tails) 11,000 lbs of seafood, 2,500 lbs of salmon, 90,000 dozen eggs, 25,000 lbs of flour, 4,300 lbs of sugar, 1,500 lbs of coffee, 64,000 lbs of fresh fruits, 65,000 lbs of fresh vegetables, 600 lbs of fresh berries, 18,000 lbs of potatoes, 8,000 gallons of ice cream, 8,000 gallons of milk, 5,800 lbs of fresh cheese, 10,700 bottles of beer, 8,500 cans of beer, 11,500 cans of soda, 2,900 bottles of wine, 200 bottles of whiskey, 18,000 slices of pizza. The ship itself is made of 3,700,000 sq/ft of steel plate with 350,000 individual pieces of steel used in the hull. There are 1,013 MILES of welded seams, 111,000 gallons of paint, 2,200 miles of electric wires/cables, 100 miles of piping, 62,430 sq/ft of windows, 139,920 gallons of fresh water in the pools. At 154,000 gross tons, Liberty is equal in displacement to the total of Royal Caribbean's first FOUR ships put together. I just love facts like these. I cant wait to find out these numbers when I sail on Oasis.

Funny story to add here, because its one of those situations where all you can do is just laugh. So of course, we had that LOOOOOONNG travel day home. We arrived back to Albany at around midnight. We collected our luggage and headed to the car only to discover that something got left on and of course..................we had a dead battery......The three of us adults just looked at each other and laughed. The kids thought we lost our minds. Thankfully, a phone call later to the fleet company (Heather has a fleet car for work that we get to use for personal use as well) a tow company is dispatched and we eventually made it home. Now I'm wishing for those ship laundry machines as I slowly make my way through that mountain.

Yes, I suppose you could say the sloths have been tamed. That being said, they are still wild animals and can be unpredictable, so as long as you are nice to them, they will be nice back. I think some of the "risks" refer to the long claws that they have that can be sharp, so just be mindful of them.

We have a new pilot....they let anyone pilot a cruise ship, plane, you name it these days!

Post cruise thoughts, observations, etc etc. We had a great time on this cruise. Liberty is a great ship there is plenty to do, and the crew that we dealt with are outstanding. My earlier observations about how quickly hallways are cleared continued throughout the week. I don't know if the crew was better, or the passengers were more conscientious than on Navigator, but unlike navigator, I never saw piles of dishes, and glasses everywhere, room service trays did not linger etc. I even saw a couple crew members wet vacuuming and squeegeeing the deck in the splash away bay area. I'm not sure what supervisor they pissed off to get assigned that task, talk about an effort in futility! Comparing Liberty to Anthem and Navigator, I do say we really liked the Music Hall on Anthem so we are happy that came to Oasis for our next few cruises coming up. I really liked El Loco Fresh on Navigator, so I hope for future guests Liberty get that venue. Funny story about paying attention to your bills. Heather purchased some lanyards for herself and the kids, and somehow the cashier charged Heather an 88K tip! Yup, you read that right 88 thousand dollar tip. When looking at the receipt, it looks like there was some sort of glitch, and the system took Heather's account number and placed it in the tip area. We thankfully saw that quickly and guest services quickly took care of that. Lets talk about food. The food on Liberty was better than that on Navigator, but not quite as good as Anthem IMO. I find this interesting since with menus being standardized across the fleet there should be little variation. Speaking of little variation. I witnessed a family discussing the food with a waiter just outside the MDR. They apparently were on a B2B. The waiter asked them why they had not come to the MDR for the second week, and was very concerned that they weren't there, and that somehow his service was the cause of their absence. They assured him that his service wasn't the case, and that they chose to eat elsewhere due to the lack of variety in the MDR. He advised them to talk about this in the post cruise survey, which I also did. While I like the food, I would like to see a better rotation in the menu choices. (I know this is a huge undertaking, but one could hope) I would do this same itinerary again if given the opportunity. In all of the ports, I saw multiple different excursions that I would like to do, so I guess I do have to come back. I would also not hesitate to use the Air2Sea program again. Everything has worked out well. Could I have done transfers to the airport cheaper and maybe not have had this long of down time here waiting for our flights, probably, but again this has had a semblance of So that is appealing. Well those are my thoughts for now. We should be boarding in about 20 minutes, so time to do all the last minute potty breaks etc. Thank you everyone for reading and following along. All of your comments and reactions were truly appreciated. Now my 256 day long dry dock starts, so time to live vicariously through all of you guys!

So currently still sitting in the airport in Houston waiting for our flights. The shuttle ride was uneventful. We got here around 11am and through security quickly and settled in for our long wait. Our flights were scheduled to depart at 4:30. Heather and I are diligent about monitoring flights etc to be aware and proactive about delays. We are flying United and have their smartphone app. All morning our flight has been stating "on time." A neat feature of the United app is that we can see where our plane is coming from. Clicking on that link, we have been following that the plane that is arriving in Houston is starting to get delays. We soon discovered that the plane was going to be departing for Houston over 3hrs later than scheduled. At this rate, we would absolutely miss our connection to Albany. (Our flights still showed on time) Heather quickly went to the United counter to inquire about our flight status. The agent confirmed our suspicions and was able to schedule us on different flights. We will arrive in Albany 20 minutes later than originally planed, but that sure beats the next day. United was nice enough to give us $50 in food vouchers as well. I feel lucky since we now beat out all the other passengers who may be looking for new flights. The departure boards only just updated that our original flights are delayed. We got our flights changed at noon Houston time.

yup.....

Have a great cruise. Sailing on her next year also in the ATS, so this will help me prepare.

Have a great cruise! I’m working on getting caught up with all the other live blogs That are out there. It was herd enough to keep caught up with mine, let alone everyone else! Thankfully I have many hours of waiting at the airport to do so.

See ya later Liberty! We are headed to the airport. Our wallets a little lighter, waistbands a little tighter, and our hearts full of wonderful memories of a great time with family and new friends we met on board.

We were walked off the ship by Francis. Slight delay in getting our luggage, but we are on our shuttle to the airport waiting to depart. Time from walking off to on the shuttle 25 minutes, snot bad at all.

Currently sitting in the schooner bar with the rest of the suite guests ready for departure. Post cruise blues have set in ship wide. All week walking along the hallways people would greet each other with cheerful greetings, this morning all you get is a terse nod?

We are back where we started

Current situation.....sad day

After dinner we dropped the kids off at adventure ocean, and we started the arduous chore of packing. Since we have the transfer, we have luggage tags #1. Conveniently our departure time lines up with the suite departure time, so in the morning we will meet Francis to be escorted off the ship. The gangways are still down, so it will be deck 1 for departure. with most of the packing done we headed off to the farewell show. In the cruise compass, it was described as a comedy show. Turns out it was a variety show, with a comedy act stuck in the middle. The comic was Dean Austin and he was very funny. After the show we hit the silent dance party. If you have not done this, you should, it’s a great time. They hand out radio headphones with two channels. Each channel has different music playing on them, so you get groups of people singing along and dancing to different songs which results in fun people watching. This is one of Lydia’s favorite events. Johnny gave it the college try, but soon realized all the cool kids were sitting and watching, so he came and sat on my lap. Of course I wasn’t about to let an opportunity to make him do something slip by, so when the YMCA came on, he of course was made to do the motions. These two kept at it, and weren’t impressed by us cool kids. Shortly later, Johnny had no more room in his fun bucket, and that he was tired and ready for bed. We let the ladies continue with their fun, and we headed back to the stateroom. About two minutes after his head hit the pillow, he was out.

Our last meal in the MDR and I finally got a halfway decent sunset. This evenings menu. Appetizers that we chose were the Asian Style pork tacos, and an iceberg wedge salad. Entreés were the lamb Chops, Steak Diane and the Garlic Tiger Shrimps ( which of course, I didn’t get pictures of??) For dessert, we got the Tres Leches and the Cherries Jubilee Sadly our dinner came to a close, and we said our parting words to our Waiter Bryan from the Philippines and his assistant Raju from India. Raju will be departing with us for a return trip home before continuing on with RC on Oasis. Both received well deserved extra tips from us and we wish them well.

We went to the engine control room, not the actual engine room. As cool as that would be, it’s probably a little loud in there and I can’t imagine the liability they would be taking on with that. We didn’t get to the recycling area either. I heard that we were supposed to go there. I wonder if it was a goof that we missed it. We did make it to the food storage area. Since it’s the last day, it’s mostly empty. When we sail star class on Oasis, I want to try to see if the genie can get us a tour on an earlier day so we can see all the provisions actually on the ship, and not in passengers stomachs.

My thoughts exactly

Thanks for following along! I’m glad I’ve been able to provide so much info for you. So we were in the Manatee pen all of 5 minutes. The trainer justs walks up and down the platform with a head of lettuce that the manatee is eating so you get to pet them briefly. Their skin is pretty soft and has lots of ridges on it. It’s really unique. I have a hard time comparing it something. Their faces are really cute with all the whiskers on them as well. Have a great time on the Halloween cruises. I hope they decorate the ships for you. I’m sure the cruise director Cory will have lots of fun things planned!

And now folks, we are now caught up! Its now Saturday afternoon. We have received the dreaded luggage tags and departure information. The seas are much calmer now and we are moving at about 20kts towards Galveston. We should be tied up around 6:30am. Earlier in the cruise Johnny mentioned that he wanted to see the bridge. We had talked to Francis about this, and apparently due to "security reasons" this is no longer a suite perk (we got a tour on Anthem) so he signed us up for the all access tour that cost $. Oh well, its something that the geek side of me enjoys so why not. We met this morning in the MDR for the first part of the tour, where one of the managers discussed how many meals are prepared etc. On average 125, 000 meals are prepared weekly. We toured the galley, and saw all the different areas where food is prepared. Shrimp Cocktail anyone? Jonny was impressed at the stacks of covers Bakery operations where 50,000 rolls are baked a day This is the main hot line. Each dining room has its own dedicated line. All food for the windjammer is made in the deck 3 galley. The specialty restaurants have their own galleys. Meals and portions are tracked as they go out so they know what is moving. Following the galley, we headed below to tour the provisioning area. We met with the manager who spoke about how the provisioning happens. Since about 2007, RC has been keeping track of their provisions and what meals are ordered. The provision manager orders the supplies 3 weeks ahead of time. He knows based on historical trends what to order more of and when. All of the loading of the 496,000lbs of provisions happens in 5 hours on turn around day. Currently since we are at the end of the cruise, the ship is nearly empty. You can see some of the remaining fruit being gathered up by crew members. Normally, these stacked metal pallets are full of supplies All of the galleys and food storage areas are completely encased in stainless steel. These are washed down completely every day. The provision manager is actually looking forward to Sunday because he hopes he gets inspected by the health department. Apparently enchantment just was. He feels that with the inspection and the anticipated good marks, he uses that as a tool to show the crew why they go through all the trouble of the extensive cleaning that they do. Next up was the laundry area. We couldn't see all of it for some reason, I couldn't hear what he said very well. I did catch that their main washers have a 9 ton capacity. I should get one of those for my house, that will make laundry much easier. Here is a folding machine Pressing shop All along "I95" the main passageway down the middle of the ship. You can see the weeks recycling all bundled up ready to be offloaded. Crew mess We hit the engine control room where the mechanical parts of the ship is controlled. More elaborate deck plans Close up shots of the propulsion systems and stabilizers Next stop the bridge. The crew gets some more detailed maps of the ship, obviously Emergency plans Finally the bridge. Here are the controls on the port side wing. These mirror those on the center, and starboard side. These guys have a great view Someone was a little excited to drive the ship. We apologize to our shipmates who suddenly felt the ship turn hard...... After the tour we got a sheet of fun facts about the ship that I will post later. I'm off for some more advantures!

I cannot wait to sail Oasis Class! I have a feeling it will be hard to go back to other ships after.

Friday night is formal night #2, which is also lobstah night! We didn't get all fancy, just part way fancy. The menu for the evening Appetizers, we are Italian, so of course we got the caprese Dinner was surf and turf Final lobster tail count was 7 between Julie and I. Heather doesn't like lobster. Following dinner, the kids went to adventure ocean, and we took in the comedy show. It was pretty funny. This evening, we were passing through a cold front so the ship was rocking and rolling. We were also pretty tired from three busy days. Once the comedy show was over we all hit the sack.