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My personal Cruise Review


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OK all.  Since many of you have been a wealth of great knowledge I will share with you some of my personal reviews from my experience of my sailing on Liberty of the Seas from 5 to 12 May 2019.

First, I will begin with the night before and the hotel stay. 

  We stayed at the Four Points by Sheraton in Galveston.   In a nutshell, STAY SOMEWHERE ELSE.  STAY ANYWHERE ELSE.  They upgraded the room to a king suite ocean view.  If that was an upgrade I would hate to see the other rooms.  The room was dirty and very dated.  The carpet was frayed and ripped in several spots.  The chairs at the dinette in the room were all stained on the seat cushion.  There were white stains on several of the throw pillows, looking human in origin (EWW!!!!).  The shower took several minutes to get hot water and was very built up with calcium.  There was mold on the soap and shampoo dispenser.  I am not talking hidden, but right on the top.  The cable did not work for the TVs and there was a missing remote.  After all of that the front desk told me that they have nobody from maintenance that was working at 8:00 P.M.  I will never stay there again.

 Cruise parking

I used the EZ Cruise Parking.  It was extremely convenient and close.  The parking was two blocks from the terminal and if you walked out the exit side of the terminal across the street you were right there.  It was open parking but that was all I needed.  I did the walking option and it only took me five minutes to walk to and from the terminal to the lot.  Will definitely use them again.

The Key Program

The Priority Embarkation and Chop Lunch was a perfect beginning to the cruise.  Check in was a breeze and the badging for the Key Program was easy to see.  We received out Voom access and schedule of times for the Flowrider, rock climbing, and ice skating at check in. Once the ship was cleared for embarkation we were inboard in less than five minutes.  We did not utilize the carry on drop off option.  Chop Grille lunch was great.  It was a nice get away from the mass confusion of embarkation and was a pleasant escape from having to go to the Windjammer to get a bite to eat.  

Voom internet was a good option for us.  We were able to still communicate with our families and each other throughout the entire cruise.  We used Facebook Messenger to communicate with each other and the other couple that went on the cruise with us.  We then used Google Hangouts to talk with family that was not on the cruise with us.  Nice option to have.  As for the speed, it was a little hit or miss.  There was some buffering but it was short lived and did not take away from the overall value of the Voom internet included with the Key Program.

Priority time for the Flowrider, rock climbing, and ice skating was an over all bust.  All of the times were very inconvenient.  Flowrider was only once on the morning of day 2.  The rock climbing wall was at the same time as the first formal night dinner.  Ice Skating was day 6 on the other formal night time slot.  And there was only one time slot for each one of these.  

Priority seating at the shows was awkward.  Half the staff didn't know about the Key and the area for the Key Program was not labeled or displayed anywhere.  We ended up just sitting in the Suites area and was never questioned.  

Priority port of call debarkation.  We didn't utilize this since we had shore excursions set up for each of the ports.  

Choice debarkation and breakfast.  The prior night all Key Program guests will receive different luggage tags for a Key Program pickup area in the terminal.  This was nice to not have to search around for our luggage and was able to just look in one specific area.  The breakfast was a nice option for the last day prior to leaving the ship.  The food was good but the service was a little lacking.  Our wait staff seemed off put for having to serve the breakfast and it was not what I would have expected based upon the top tier service we have receive the entire cruise.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The Good.  The customer service on this sailing was top notch.  There was only one exception to this which was the debarkation breakfast.  Our stateroom attendant, Edna, was awesome.  She made sure everything was taken care of and perfect at all times.  She even memorized our names before we boarded.  As we were walking to our stateroom we met her and she addressed us both by name.  Her attention to detail was excellent.  Our wait staff, Charlie and Wira, were awesome.  They were Johnny on the Spot with everything.  Never left without anything.  One roll left, and poof, a whole new batch.  Our drinks were never empty.  Great crew.

The Bad.  The cleanliness of the pool deck was not good.  I know that this is a combination of people being slobs and crew not cleaning up.  During the evening movie there were tons of cans and cups just laying around everywhere.  It just looked very messy.  Not one crew member even attempted to clean it up during the entire duration of the movie, which was Bohemian Rhapsody by the way.  The other bad item was the Royal APP.  Fairly useless and not very good overall.  I wish that they would add a digital copy of the cruise compass to it.  That would be awesome.

The Ugly.  After leaving Jamaica the captain informed us that we would be getting back into Galveston early so they could perform "technical maintenance".  All shops and the casino would be closing on Saturday evening and would not be available after that.  We literally got kicked off the Wonder Woman Slot machine and could not get a Corona after 10:30 P.M.  And since we were pierside all evening long the gentle motion of being as sea was also missing.  Kind of disappointing for the sailing to end that way.

 

EDIT:  Planner to Compass

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8 minutes ago, StayFrosty said:

I think there is a communication problem here.  What I believe @Mathew Jones wants is a pdf of the cruise compass in the app because the app neither has everything in it nor is it always accurate.  

You are correct.  That is exactly what I was trying to refer to.  I found the app very cumbersome and many times incorrect.  

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On 5/13/2019 at 2:16 PM, Mathew Jones said:

You are correct.  That is exactly what I was trying to refer to.  I found the app very cumbersome and many times incorrect.  

I agree.  I was not a fan of the app... The schedule info was very incomplete.  I was on Allure and the messaging app didn't always send and wasnt reliable with push notifications or sending messages.  We had better luck with buying voom for one device and booting each other off to check Facebook messenger.  Jane

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