With the hopes of going somewhere warm for about a week but also facing the reality of my resident physician salary, I scrolled through the Carnival Cruise website and secured a cabin in the Carnival Freedom in late April–a five day cruise leaving from the Orlando area, making stops in the Dominican Republic and Turks and Caicos. A round trip with Southwest Airlines later, I am a few weeks finished with this cruise and survived all the Wobble by V.I.C. to tell you about it.
Things went very smoothly from the beginning. My girlfriend, Kat, and I pulled up to the port, went through a very simple registration process and security checkpoint, met a friendly looking drug-sniffing German Shepherd, and were on the boat in minutes. Once on the boat, we quickly visited our muster station and then checked into our cabin. This review will best be read when organized into topics, so I will start with the cabin.
Cabin
I was pretty pleased with our interior cabin on the sixth floor located near the aft of the ship. I could seldom hear the neighboring rooms or other parts of the ship unless there was loud music playing. The room was clean when we entered and was well kept by our room steward. We were able to receive a fan for the room upon request. Interior rooms are known to facilitate great sleep due to the complete darkness, and I feel like I got pretty restful sleep. There is definitely room for improvement though. For instance, we chose a King size bed cabin, but we got two Twin size beds put together. The television also only had one news channel and not much else besides Carnival Cruise content.
Food and Drink
Burgers, Beers, and Buffets. All three have B’s in common, which is the grade I would like to give the food and drink experience on Carnival Freedom, but sadly I might have to go with a C+ (and I’m not even feeling that pessimistic today). In terms of food, the convenience of food availability was as clutch as I expected. Pizza at midnight? Yes. Soft serve ice cream after a quick lift in the gym? Sure. My favorite food items were the Guy’s Burgers, Blue Iguana breakfast burritos and tacos, and some of the dessert items during dinner-times. The options for appetizers and entrees were plentiful but just did not meet my expectations for sit-down dining when it comes to taste and portion-size. I have observed other cruisers leave similar reviews about the food, some saying previous cruises had better food, and that Carnival may be cutting corners after suffering pandemic revenue losses.
Speaking of revenue, I don’t doubt there is anything but significant profits when it comes to alcohol. Carnival has a Cheers! drink package that costs around $60/day per guest. You get up to 15 alcoholic drinks a day with this plan. You cannot pick and choose which days you get this package, so you have to pay for this on your shore days when you may not be on the boat for a couple hours. Kat and I did not sign up for the Cheers! Package. We aren’t big drinkers and couldn’t reconcile throwing $600 at drinks. I didn’t interview anyone with a Cheers! package, but I bet there had to be at least a small percentage of people who felt an internal pressure to order a few too many drinks to make the package “worth it.”
Carnival does, however, let each adult of drinking age bring a 750 mL bottle of wine on board at the beginning. Readers should beware that if you forget a corkscrew, Carnival will charge you a $15 uncorking fee, which is borderline ridiculous considering how inexpensive many wines are. We had some success ordering two beers at the bar and casually asking the bartender to uncork a bottle. We tipped accordingly.
Entertainment and Activities
I enjoyed the entertainment on our sailing. The theater was well designed and had a sufficient amount of seating. There was a theater troupe of eight performers that cleverly used treadmills and animated backdrops to make their shows colorful and dynamic. Every vocalist that held a microphone, from the stage performers to the cover bands, had serious chops. A violin trio rosined up their bows on a nightly basis to fill the ship’s atrium with song.
In terms of DJing, I would have liked to hear newer songs. They really overplayed 90s-00’s hip-hop; this was likely done to appeal to a large span of age groups, but I think Carnival underestimates how current Millennials and Generation Xers are with their music preferences.
Other aspects of the entertainment were notably good. The sail-away party was a bop. The comedians Manny Acosta and Dominic Leonelli were solid. The cruise director Gabe had a great personality and hosted a very funny “couples show.”
The Grounds
This ship was built in 2007. Back then, I’m certain no one in the industry thought of putting a roller coaster on a boat or creating a bougie neighborhood concept. The color scheme and interior design situation was outdated, but it’s a week-long cruise–not a real estate investment. There is some definite truth about what you may read online about the occasional smell of sewage on certain parts of the trip. It was not an overbearing smell, but it was something you would notice. I also would have liked to see bigger pools.
The People
The Carnival employees were hospitable and professional. 100%. The cruise industry is filled to the brim with strong work ethics and high standards. My only criticism would be the blatant price gouging of the professional pictures. I mean–how are you going to look at me in the face and offer me digital files of the pictures I’m already buying for an extra price of $40? It’s 2023. This practice should change.
My fellow passengers were overall courteous. There were a few instances of questionable elevator etiquette and disruptive talking in the back of shows. There was also a bizarre moment on the Lido deck when an overserved lady started flashing everyone, which almost led to a physical altercation.
We had the pleasure of meeting a kind young newlywed couple from Alabama during our dinner-time. This was a product of Carnival placing strangers at dinner tables together. I understand what Carnival was trying to do, but just by looking around and appreciating the vibes of the room, I can attest that this is a swing-or-miss concept. Grouping tables by age is a decent way to organize strangers, but maybe in the future they can utilize surveys to group people based on common interests.
Ports of call
Kat and I were hyped to go to the DR and Turks and Caicos. We did our due diligence through YouTube and were able to appreciate beforehand that both ports resembled isolated plazas off of highways in rural parts of the islands. This is in opposition to other ports of call that are piers in cities, filled with places to walk to.
We booked an ATV excursion in the DR, where we rolled through the woods, local streets, and alongside the ocean. We stopped at a roadside shop where we were given delicious samples of hot chocolate, coffee, and native rum liquor Mamajuana. We were also offered cigars but politely declined. Towards the end of the tour, we made a twenty minute stop at a private beach that was peaceful and vacant–it was so nice that I would pay for a taxi ride to go there had I not been on this excursion.
Turks and Caicos had a beach connected to their port, but it was extremely crowded—which brings me to an important point of discussion.
This was a very “you get what you pay for” vacation. To get room, board, travel, entertainment, and food included in a five day vacation all for the price of about $500 per person…how can I seriously complain that much? But when you have approximately 3,000 guests on the Carnival Freedom and the 6,500 guests on the Carnival Mardi Gras descending on the same ports on the same days, you’re going to get a pressured experience. It can be fun, but it won’t be relaxing.
Overall, we had a nice time on the Carnival Freedom. We will definitely go on more cruises in the future. I might be more particular about choosing sailings with more urban ports of call. I would recommend the Carnival Freedom to others as a budget vacation, but I do not see myself going on this boat again.
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