As reported yesterday, we planned on not getting off the ship in Falmouth. I've never done this before. It was an odd sensation at first. I was immediately concerned that I'd be bored or Sean would be bored.

We slept in for the first time this vacation. It felt amazing. Went to a later bfast in the WJ & took our time getting ourselves together for the pool deck. We scouted chairs, we had an abundance of options as you can imagine. Settled in & relaxed.

At noon, the screen on the pool deck came alive with a showing of The Wizard of Oz. it was magical. The myriad of people who stayed on board were so different but if you looked around at one point or another we all were singing along. It was really cool.

We stayed by the pool until this nasty storm came through. Thunder & lightening & and rain so heavy at times you couldn't see the island of Jamaica. This is the most it has ever rained on a cruise vacay for me. Ever. It's kinda driving me nuts.

Turns out after watching the rain pass it was the perfect time for a nap. We originally planned on a quick cat nap. Of course 2 hours later...

Off to dinner we went. It was tiger shrimp night. Finally. This is my first cruise since the menu revamp about a year and a half ago. Ps if you're an escargot fan, prepare yourself. There is a worldwide shortage, and they are currently unavailable! But they've replaced it with bay scallops (the tiny baby ones) so it's fine. Grab a sourdough roll & dig in.

After dinner we headed to the theater for the Love & marriage game show. We thought it might be fun to get on. Knowing that there we 67 other honeymooners we realized there would be competition, we smoked 'em! The crowd picked us!!!!!

This was truly a once in a lifetime experience. How often is your new husband of 10 days going to have to know your bra size on the spot & only have 10 secs to draw a portrait of you that looks like the girl from the ring!? And for me to answer in front of 1400 people that the first thing my husband touches in the morning is a kitty of some variety. Thankfully we can relive this over z& over again on RCTV and on the DVD they're sending us home with. (Mom, you're welcome).

The best part of the night!?! WINNING!!!!!!

We took our winnings & headed back to our love shack. Caught the broadcast of the show & drifted off to Grand Cayman.

Thank you all who have been posting comments. We've been here & there with wifi, but I promise to reply/answer any when we get back on Sunday with pictures.

Thanks!!!

Smooches.
Steph & Sean

Ok, I have my stuff together today, vacay day 5. Cruise day 4 Labadee

We arrived early into Labadee this morning. The forecast today? 92, humid with a uv index of 10.

As the first island day & the place being Royal's private destination, people were ready to see what this gorgeous place had to offer. Sean & I are going relaxing in a big way. We reserved an over the water cabana for the day.

If you've read anything about the cabanas offered at the private destinations, you know then they're in high demand & lower quantity & a bit in the pricey side.

We met our friends for bfast in the windjammer on the earlier side. Headed down to the island right after. The long hot walk to the gates of Labadee & to our waiting island cabana transport and away to our slice of paradise we went.

Upon arrival we were greeted by our cabana steward, Ronald, who showed us to our cabana & told us about everything it had to offer. An ice chest filled with large bottles of ice water, complimentary of course. Our floating beach mats, snorkel gear & towels.

I'm sure some of you when you hear 'over the water cabana' are picturing the four seasons Bora Bora. Not exactly the same thing. These are built into the rocks on the water, but have super convenient water access stairs and in some cases ladders to get to the water quick.

The cabanas for us were adjacent to Barefoot Beach, the suite section, Nellie's beach. The beach get quite busy during the day,. Nellie's beach is where the kayak tours leave from ad it's the not rocky beach under the dragon flight line, so it's more pleasant on fresh pedicures. No waves though.

Even though its a busy beach. It's a great beach day beach.

Another perk of your cabana fee is getting to have the upgraded lunch buffet BBQ. We hoofed it over to barefoot beach for lunch. It was a quick walk in all honesty. The buffet offered real china & silverware compared to the WJ melamine & plastic ware. A huge salad selection, hot dogs, burgers, rice & beans, grilled chicken, steak w/herb butter, shrimp kabobs, corn on the cob, baked potatoes, and a dessert selection. Plus iced tea & fruit punch.

In the barefoot beach section I saw the difference between suite section & everybody else. Quiet beach, same amount of cabanas for fewer people to rent. Lots of peace & quiet. And no kayakers, paddle boats or boarders.

We spent the the entire day on Labadee while in port. The horn of the freedom called us back at 3 & we sailed away promptly at 4.

Back onboard, we headed to the pool deck for the sail away party & then to a late afternoon nacho snack in the WJ.

Back to the room for showers & naps the off to dinner.

Battle of the sexes, a wine flight at vintages later & we are off to bed!

We're in Jamaica tomorrow. We're staying on board tomorrow, we've never done it before so, we'll see if its as great as people say.

Vacation day 4? Lost count... Already so I'll let Royal count for me. Day 2 Aka at sea.

The rain that plagued us in port Canaveral apparently had friends. Who suck and notwithstanding Captain To's best efforts to get me some sunshine... At about 3pm...it was pouring cats. & dogs!

But we'll get to that.

On vacay I am an early riser. For instance on Allure, I legit wasnupnbetween 4 & 5 am even if I partied till 2 at twenty because I wanted a prime location at the beach pool & I wanted to see the ship with out interruption. Since I've been on the freedom before, 7 works & well I am on my honeymoon...:o/

Anyway, I had our pool chairs & sat & read my kindle till Hobbs came up for bfast. Typical WJ buffet. But always delish..

Off to the pool deck to get acquainted wi the sun & sea breeze. We registered for the cruise critic meet & mingle. Free gift in hand we scoped out the landscape. Ah ha, jackpot! Young people. (Read yesterday's entry about our dinner table). We asked a lovely young couple Lindsay & Russell if we could share their table. They said "of course". Or new friends hail from rural Georgia they honeymooned on Monarch (god rest her soul, hopefully Azamara treats her right.) We hit it off immediately.

Back at the pool deck, we discovered, there is a serious lack of courtesy by some cruisers. I won't go into details, but I will say, unless your shirt says 'pool patrol' do not touch another persons belongings.

Next up pool side activities. Belly flop competition, ice carving, line dancing oh my! Right around corner the heavens opened. This provided us the opportunity to get back to our room, clean up & go to our next social event.

We received a card yesterday, inviting us to vintages. Very little deets. We went, it was lame.

We went along to change our dinner table. To share our table with our new peeps & we met a wicked handsome father son duo, also from Georgia. Single ladies of the Atlanta area, there is a gentleman in Buford, who is general manager of a ginorm chain, who has a heart of gold, an adorable 21 year old son who loves to cook & take care of his lady. He's handsome, kind, warm, generous, of course I've only known him for 3.

Following dinner, we went off to the Honeymooners gathering. 67 honeymoon couples on this love boat. 67! We've had calm seas but the ships still rockin'.

We broke free of the honeymoon crowd & met up for show time in the Acadia theaters or "Marquee". It was good. Do not sit in the front row if you have problems with strangers sweat because it will get on you and potentially in your drink. I wish I was kidding.

Late night comedy followed & was amaze balls.

Off to bed. Labadee in the morning. We have a cabana.

I'm really sorry I can't get pictures o post but in my end of week 1 wrap up I promise to highlight & post them.

Smooches.

Stephanie & Sean

Allllllllll aboard!!! Vacay day 2

Wake up early. Yup. B-fast. Delish. Return rental car & grab free shuttle. Uh huh. Arrive at Port Canaveral promptly at 11a, only to find Freedom arrived late & now we wait. Ugh. Or maybe not? Nope. We (Read: I) are fortunate enough to be a part if Royal's loyalty program so we hop into the priority line, go through security, get waived over to station 39. A few pieces of paperwork in exchange for the key to the beginning of the best cruise

After a short hurried walk, cliche boarding picture & a squirt of hand sanitizer later & WE'RE ON BOARD! Even with the delay...30 minutes including waiting.

Up to the pool deck we go & head to the windjammer, and the Florida heavens opened up! Yikes. We'll just wait it out here looking out at the Disney Dream & a itty bitty carnival ship.

Compass in hand we're off to explore our home away from home for the next two weeks.

As it turns out it poured right up until sailaway. Which is annoying sure, but it Florida. The have us a reason to head to our cabin, deck 10 balcony. We arrived to find our door decorated in love! Open the door & the decor continued! Free champs & snacks too! How romantic! Our bags arrived soon after, and I'm a nut about unpacking so with football in the background we unpacked.

A couple of things I've done different takin into account of the length of this vacay. When I cruise, by day 3 my cabin can look like a clothing bomb went off. So I've brought a popup hamper this time! For all my toiletries we bought a over the door pocket organizer, that totally keeps everything in place and in WAY easier than trying to remember what cabinet it was in that in my case it rarely makes it back to. So far I'm really pumped about my 'innovations' we'll see how they work out in he long run.

Unpacked & it's time to muster. Then the Dreamworks sailaway party, a quick bite at Sorrento's & the welcome aboard show.

The CD is Richard Spacey. He is by far my favorite CD. Had him 4 years ago & that to this day has been my most favorite cruise vacation.

Next up second seating in the MDR. sooooooooooooooooooooo in all my sailings when I've selected a large table, I've struck gold with table mates. Similar interests & age groups. Great people who I've gone to have lasting friendships with. This cruise, Royal has failed me. We're at a table if B2B-ers. You know who does back to back cruises on a regular basis? Not youngish honeymooners! Sure they seem great, but , c'mon, they're children are our age! We've decided to stick it out, because now we can use this as encouragement to go to other dining venues. We will be speaking to the red jacket MDR guy to see what I can do about week two, there have got to be more people like us right? Right?

Since I rarely sleep before sailaway day, it's off to bed and a piece if Sunday night football for us.

Tomorrow, Monday , we're at sea.

My apologies for they delay in my post, Royal wifi has been down all day.

We're continuing our guest live blog of Stephanie's back-to-back Freedom of the Seas honeymoon cruise.

Well it's official...we're on vacation.

We made it to the airport in record time, the new JetBlue terminal in Boston is nothing short of incredible.

Gate 34. Check. The Jets official JetBlue plane. I totes thought they were kidding. So did the other 235 Boston based passengers. Some even decided to not make the trip at all. Weird. Estimated flight time, 3hrs & 12 mins. We made it under 3!!! Arriving in Orlando 85 degrees at 10:45! Yikes.

We made a ressie in advance with Hertz & we're a part of their free loyalty program so we were able to walk right to our rental for $35 one way (returning early Sunday morning in port Canaveral area). Ginorm tip...incognito windows. They keep sites from knowing you're trying to find a bargain. Our rental went from $119 to $35.

Rental on the road, we google mapped a Target on Merritt Island, and headed due east. We made the decision not to pack toiletries & sun care products.Traveling for 2 weeks, we needed more clothes than we're used to & travel toiletries prices are fixed between MA & FL. It just made sense for us plus we got some snacks. Everybody wins. Supplies procured, we found a dunkin donuts & drove to our hotel. The Residence Inn by Marriott on Astronaut Blvd. we chose this hotel due to the proximity to the port, but mostly because it shares a parking lot with our Hertz retail return location that offers a free shuttle as early as 10am!

A short bit at the pool. See picture. A much needed nap & a happy honeymoon glass of wine & we are off to dinner. We are planning on heading to the Island Waterfront Bar & Grill. According to trip advisor, it's a top rated locale. Looking forward to it. It seems to have a great selection of seafood & other food. Hubbs, who hails from the Ocean State doesn't eat seafood so while I love it, a seafood only place wouldn't be ideal for us. Other than the food, the view sounds incredible!

Looking forward to seeing Freedom in the morning and getting the meat & potatoes part of this honeymoon started.

Later.
Stephanie & Sean

I want to welcome Stephanie as our guest live blogger, as she will be posting daily blog posts about her experience on back-to-back Freedom of the Seas cruises as part of her honeymoon.  I hope this will offer everyone a fun insight into what happens on a back-to-back cruise as well as a honeymoon cruise.  Enjoy!

Hi everyone! My name is Stephanie & I would love to invite you all along as my brandy new Hubbs & I fly to Orlando, drive to Cocoa Beach, dine at fish lips, stay overnight at the Residence Inn, return our rental car, take a shuttle to Port Canaveral pier 10 & board Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas for our back to back honeymoon trip.

We hail from Boston. (Go sox! Go Pats!!!) In the past week, we've gotten married, unpacked wedding gifts, banged out all our thank you's, and packed for the trip of our lives together. Sure we've both cruised, but not back to back and definitely not married.

Who are we? Sean & Stephanie Cullen. I've sailed with Royal Caribbean over a dozen times while Hubbs has sailed once on Allure of the Seas. Yeah, his first ship was the biggest & bestest Royal Caribbean had to offer.

Our combined travels don't make us experts on cruising by any means, but we do love cruising on Royal Caribbean. We originally booked way back in June 2012, as soon as Caribbean routes for 2013 & 2014 were released during a WOW sale.

I follow cruise boards pretty closely and after what happened in the Atlantic & Caribbean this time of year last year, I was encouraged by several passengers stories that maybe a travel agent isn't a terrible idea.

So this cruise is my very first not booked through Royal Caribbean directly. So far, so good. Not great just good. It's little things like waiting for your documents because they're supposed to send them to you, and the old style sticky luggage tags they they're supposed to send to you too. Royal Caribbean is so self service. Having to wait/follow up has been a bit annoying BUT if (knocking on wood) we need re-accommodation she'll be doing it for us & we can simply continue our vacay. So while its been a bit of a slow process, peace of mind comes fast and free.

This kind of is a cruise of firsts for us, besides the aforementioned firsts, this is the first cruise where I've booked a non Royal Caribbean excursion (!) & one some islands haven't booked a thing while on others I'm re-doing excursions done before.

So here we are Friday morning. We leave for Orlando in the morning and while I've had my suitcases collecting all the ideas of what I want to pack, I still have the actual packing to do... I'm really looking forward to sharing this trip with you all.

Please follow along post some comments or questions and I'll do my level best to get to them & get answers.

Later. Stephanie (And Sean too)