Monday, January 9, 2012

Carnival Liberty Cruise 2.0


I've been working on my 2012 goals and will have several posts soon on how to choose the proper keywords for a website, how to evaluate your competition and other things, but I have some more work to do.  Hopefully those will be ready to post next week.

In the mean time, we managed to knock out another of our goals which was to choose a vacation destination.  We also ended up booking it this weekend so that one is fully complete.  Ahead of our goal to finish that by the end of March.

We were thinking a cruise, but also initially we were thinking the west coast as well.  We found one cruise aboard the Princess Sapphire that was pretty good.  It left from LA and went to San Francisco, Santa Barbara, San Diego and an uneventful port in Ensenada Mexico.  The problem with that one was that you were only in each port for a day and for San Francisco, that did not seem like enough time.  Also, anything other than an interior room, which is the smallest cabin with no exterior light, was pricey.  We also had to factor in the airfare, extra hotel night stays on either side, airport transfers, etc.  Add in the excursions and the cost got out of hand pretty quickly even with the interior room, which we weren't too keen on.

We ended up doing some more searching and came across several cruises out of Florida that had itineraries that we had not been on yet.  To make a long story short, we ended up choosing the Carnival Liberty out of Miami.  It is a 7 night Western Caribbean cruise that goes to Cozumel Mexico, Belize City Belize, Roatan Honduras and Grand Cayman.  The only port we've been to there is Grand Cayman and it was a cool port.

What we liked about the Liberty was that the cabin pricing was much better and we were able to actually pick an extended balcony aft cabin, which are the balcony cabins on the rear of the ship.  I think there are only 8 of those on 3 separate ship decks for a total of 24.  They're longer than the regular balcony cabins, generally have less wind than the side cabins and you also have a very nice view when pulling away from the different ports.  It's something different and that sealed the deal for us. We're in the middle of the 3 levels about 2 from the left hand side, kinda where I circled it in the picture I believe.  



The ship also went into dry dock a few months ago for their Funship 2.0 upgrade.  They added a bunch of things like a Guy Fieri burger place, Blue Guana taco/burrito/chips/salsa place, Serenity outdoor adult only relaxation area, RedFrog Rum bar, Alchemy bar and EA Sports bar.  They also changed their smoking policy I believe so that the only places you can smoke inside are a jazz bar and a portion of the casino and outside there are designated smoking areas.

Blue Iguana

EA Sports Bar

Guy Fieri Burger Bar

RedFrog Rum Bar

Serenity Adult Only Area

Outdoor movie screen


We're looking forward to it!  We're checking out excursions now and planning to do a zipline, possibly some snorkelling and a trip to some Mayan ruins where you can actually climb the ruins and explore around.

Should be fun!

3 comments :

Jen said...

Oh Wow, I didn't know you changed destinations. Sounds fun! We went on a submarine ride in Cozumel and really enjoyed that.

Chris said...

We will have to check that out, which reminds me I wanted to see if they have Snuba too.

Mock family said...

Wow direction change shocker! Keepin everyone on their toes, I like it

 
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