MITSUGIRLYS FREEDOM OF THE SEAS REVIEW & PICTORIAL
Day 3: Cruise Day
Day 3...Cruise day!
We were up before Kendra and her crew and already hungry. It was time for breakfast and Sakari loved the place we went to the day before and begged to go back. I normally like to try something different but she insisted.
I decided to try something different this time around.
Hubby had his coffee...so he was happy.
After breakfast we headed back to the room to pack up our things and Kendra was already at breakfast (I think they went to the same place).
Our check out time was 11am and Kendra's wasn't until 12 noon. So, we gathered our things and headed to Kendra's room.
It was around 11:45am and we decided to go ahead and head downstairs to find a ride to the port. As we were leaving out of Kendra's place, there was a lady standing outside with her dog. We had 4 adults and 4 kids with about 25 suitcases (just kidding) walking out of her place. Oh boy. The lady standing outside was obviously the cleaning lady that came in to clean after check out. I know she thought we had all stayed in that room.
Kendra and I proceeded down the hallway, talking very loud, and making comments like
"You are lucky that you got to check out at 12 and OUR ROOM was 11"
"Your room was nice, but the view from OUR room on the top floor was amazing"
"Yea mom, I wish I had to view you did from YOUR room"
and so on. LOL Fingers crossed our coverup story was believable to the cleaning lady.
Outside was a stray cat that we played with while we waited on Uber to pick us up. Kam had a husky dog beanie boo that she put down in front of it and a catfight broke out at that point. We never laughed so hard. That cat was seriously threatened by the stuffed animal.
Uber came and we all piled in.
Sakari was showing the kids the magic trick she learned from youtube. lol
And we finally arrived.
Kendra said "that ship looks old and little". Hmm, I didn't understand why she thought that but after prying a little, it came down to saying that it was because of the green tinted windows. (She remembered when she was little and we went on RC that they all the green tinted windows and didn't realize it was just a RC thing). Little? I'm not sure where she got that from.
We did walk to the grocery store prior to leaving the condo to get pop and they did allow us to check the luggage in with it instead of carrying it around with us. Woo hoo!
CHECK IN WAS SUPER QUICK! Like I noticed this last time as well. Not much of a line and if there was, it moved FAST and nonstop. We were checked in, and walking up to the ship in no time.
Yea, she's excited.
Billy is not a breakfast person, so by the time we made it on the ship, he was starving and the first thing we did was head to the buffet.
They were celebrating Easter and had a cute display as you walk in.
Lunch was good and the amount and variety of food on this ship was plentiful and amazing! The rest of the cruise would continue to offer a wide variety of foods during meals and we found that everything was good! This would be Billys first cruise with RC and he even made the comment that all the food was fantastic.
The hubby wasn't hungry yet, so he just hung out for awhile.
We decided to go check out our rooms. We headed to Kendras room first.
She had an interior, but it did come with a curtain.
She was in room 7657 toward the back of the ship. Sorry I had the wrong setting on my camera when I took pictures.
I liked that they had a couch in it. We have only had a couch in a few of the interior rooms and it makes it feel bigger to me.
Your standard small bathroom with super small round shower. I hate these things.
Now remember I decided to go with a bigger room this time. I booked the Ultra Spacious Oceanview at the front of the ship. Kendra kept making fun of me for paying an extra $500-600 to do this but remember...this is my graduation cruise and I deserve it!
We stayed in room 9200 (which I would later discover that ours and the room on the other side of us (9500) were the same size but the room on the other side of us and down were smaller. I did get a glimpse of some of the mini suites down the hall from us and they were very small in comparison.
I walked in and was OH EM GEE! This thing is HUGE! wow!!!!!
The space was AMAZING! A living room/couch area (the couch pulled out into a bed) and there was a curtain to block that area off.
Then the bedroom area consisted of a sitting area too..over by the windows. There was TONS of closet space, drawers, places to hang clothes and even the mirrors at the sitting table opened up for more storage.
We also had 2 desks to sit at.
This room definitely got Sakari's approval (notice her ok hand signal).
The sitting area beyond the bed and by the windows. There were 2 chairs (one on each side) with foot stools and those opened up for additional storage as well. There was a glass table in the middle of them, but we just pushed it in the corner because I wanted to stand there to look out the windows.
Now lets talk about the bathroom again...SO SMALL! It was the same size as any other bathroom, like the interiors, and I would have thought with all this space they could have extended it some and made it bigger. I would have definitely gave up part of the room at the second desk area for a bigger bathroom and shower. Ugh.
Then we come to Sakari's "room". She absolutely loved this. I was like having her very own place. It had a bunk bed in it and she claimed the top bunk. lol It also had a nice sized closet in it and she was able to have all of her clothes and necessities in there with her. Then the best part was it also had a curtain to pull it closed and she felt like she had her own room.
The jealousy immediately came across Kendra's face and she couldn't hold back anymore. She now wanted to pay the extra $500-600 for this room and wished that she had! HA! mom +1 vs Kendra 0. I'm winning.
They had these magnets to put on your door instead of the normal door hangers when you needed something.
So if you can't tell....WE LOVED LOVED LOVED THIS ROOM! If I had my choice, I would get this each and every time and now I feel a little spoiled and will be looking for something equivalent to this in the future. I would take this over any balcony any day.
Since the hubby hadn't ate lunch when we did, he decided he was hungry and we headed back up the buffet....only to find that it was closed. Down to the promenade deck we went to find the pizza place.
Now we usually cruise spring break with our cruising friend (Kia) and her kids. She had her flights canclled all together and wasn't sure if she would be able to get to the ship in time or would have to fly to our first port stop.
She did make it just in time (flying in the day of the cruise) and she let me know that they were having an Easter Egg scavenger hunt and then party after that. Sakari is growing up on me and really wasn't too interested in an egg hunt or a party. I really wanted to be at the sailaway party and dance the day away...but where was it? The Freedom has an odd layout on the pool deck and there's really no place for dancing parties or a sailaway party. That was the one thing I really didn't like about it. They obviously had the sailaway party somewhere else because there wasn't anything going on in the pool area.
I finally talked Sakari into going to the dance party. The minute I told her Kia would be there she changed her mind. Kendra had also went to the egg hunt and party so we met them down there.
The kids were playing with the hula hoops and balloons.
We immediately found Kia and I introduced her to Kendra and the kids. They participated in the balloon dance competitions and hula hoop contests while I relaxed and took pictures. Kia and I have the same camera (our last cruise together her camera got water down in it and it didn't recover so she bought a new one). While they were dancing and playing games I took it upon myself to do some pictures and videos with her camera of her and Xander her son. I didn't bother to tell her I did it and I wonder if she now knows? SURPRISE! lol I figured it would be a nice surprise when she got back home to see them when she downloaded her pictures.
Then the Easter bunny came out for the kids. Sakari is at that stage where she just don't know... I hate that. I know the days coming that she will learn the truth about the Easter bunny, Santa and the tooth fairy and that's a sign that she's no longer a child in her eyes. 😞
The kids were given tons of sugary goodness for Easter and then they had another egg hunt there in the room. They had previously hidden the eggs before the party and the kids were to go find them. They made a comment about the Easter bunny would go to the back of the room and you could get pictures with him...but it was right at the point they anounced eggs were hidden and the kids were busy with that. No pictures darnit. (Even though I'm not sure I could have convinced Sakari to take a picture with him in the first place).
After the party we went back up and met up with the guys and then they decided it was time for dinner.
The buffet area had some neat litle areas, including one that we would adopt during the cruise, that was like a little gazebo.
We just hung out the rest of the day and before heading back to the room that night Kendra left Billy with the kids and snuck off to the room to hide the Easter baskets. I told Sakari that I needed to use the restroom and then sprinted to the room...taking the steps down 2 floors, to the room, put out her Easter basket, then ran up the 2 flights of steps and back to the pool area only to say it was late and we should probably go back to the room. WHEW! I don't mind going down steps but going up...sigh. But, for the sake of the Easter bunny...
We had a wonderful view of the moon reflecting off the water from our nice huge room.
After Kendra seen our room, she kept making comments about wondering if they could do an upgrade. Well, when I got back to the room, this was stuck on our door (not sure why it had room 9201 on it when we were 9200). I guess that answers her question.
I spent the rest of the evening packing our beach bags for our first port day tomorrow and Sakari sat around drawing on her new ipad art program. Everyone knows what an artist she is and she normally only draws with paper and a pen (won't use a pencil for some reason and she always claims "I don't make mistakes so I don't need to erase"). Well lately, she's been trying to draw pictures on her small iphone with a program she downloaded. I decided to get her an ipad and put a program on there for her to use and we bought the drawing ipad pen and she's discovering how to use it and using color. I personally like her paper drawings better, but at least she's trying something new.
She's so in love with her dog (a husky) so everything she draws is somewhat husky or wolf related. She'll make different characters out of a husky on just about everything she does.
This was the drawing she did that night before going to bed.
All of my previous cruise reports (over the last several years I believe) have shown Sakari's drawing ability. It was discovered as early as preschool that her ability to see things in detail and draw them were really advanced. She was 3 years old when she first started drawing and she amazes me all the time. Well of course her teachers have noticed it all these years as well and she was submitted for the gifted and talented program from her teachers at school. Kids from every school are submitted and I believe she had 3 kids from her school submitted to the program. She had to submit a portfolio of her drawings and creations (I think this was done right before one of our last cruises) and several judges had to grade and cretique her work and submit whether or not they thought she was a good candidate to attend the art school here next school year (in August). They did approve her (and she was the only one accepted from her school out of the 3 kids submitted, which shows not everyone is accepted and you have to earn that spot) and set up an interview with her prior to us cruising. Sakari passed with flying colors and they were all very impressed with her abilities. The only thing left was to submit her application to the art school and hope for the best that she would be accepted. (They only allow 20% of the students who attend there come from a different school that they would normally attend).
We kept our fingers crossed and got word last month that she had been accepted to the art school for 6th grade next year. She is super excited and toured the school and can't wait to go!!! We are so proud of her! Of course, she just looks at it like it's every day life and something she loves to do.
So up next will be my ship pictures...
I did manage to find some parties going on during sailaway....Deck 5 of course. There wasn't anyone participating in the crowd and it was just the crew dancers trying to get people going. I guess it didn't work too well. There's just not enough room here for this type of entertainment.