Royal Caribbean - Freedom of the Seas Review

Overall 4.56 of 5 view all 32 reviews

eddie05sl
Mason, OH

No Freedom of Disease

love to travel

Pros

Room was comfortable & quiet, Good food

Cons

Too many kids--over 1,000 on our cruise, Mediocre staff

APR

2009

Royal Caribbean - Freedom of the Seas —

One nurse described the amount of illness on our Freedom of the Seas cruise as "the worst she has seen in 8 years". You will never hear about it in the press as the Dr. visits were complimentary and they would provide you with no copies of your paperwork. We had a skeleton crew due to the illness and many were working 19 hour shifts.

Once you were diagnosed with the Norwalk Virus or Norwalk-like Virus you were quarantined to your room for 48 hours--your traveling companion is quarantined for 24 hours whether they have symptoms or not. You are given free pay-per-view movies and free pop and candy from the mini-bar. You are reimbursed for the excursions that you miss. If you decide not to visit the Dr. and choose to stay in your room to recuperate on your own, your cabin steward will report your behavior. If you do not leave your room for 24 hours, the medical staff will demand a stool sample. If you do not provide a sample, they assume you are ill and you are quarantined until you comply.

We understand that illness can spread on a ship as easily as anywhere else. Given the amount of illness on our ship, we feel certain that with the remaining crew members it was impossible to properly clean the ship before the next group of happy, unsuspecting cruisers came onboard.

This was our fourth cruise, the first on Freedom of the Seas. Yes, it's a big ship and most days at sea are spent by the majority of people around the pool. How about making the pool bigger???! This ship offers the "Deck Patrol" to make sure you do not leave your deck chair for too long! When you get up, they tag it with the time...if you're gone too long, they remove your items so others can have a seat. Hmmmm...how about more chairs and less rules?

We'll cruise again--never on Freedom of the Seas and for the first time, we will consider other cruise lines.

Royal Caribbean - Freedom of the Seas is not recommended by eddie05sl

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Comments about eddie05sl’s Review

In response to rajandseema's comment from Apr 13, 2009 at 12:23PM:

We have been on two other Royal Caribbean cruises and had wonderful vacations--on this ship, even prior to the virus, we were disappointed. One person in our party was exercising in an exercise room and was told there would be a class in 10 minutes and she "would have to get out!" ...not "would you like to join us"--or "could you move to the side of the room"--or "we'll be done in 30 minutes"...no, she "would have to get out"??!. Crew on the other ships went out of their way to be friendly and gracious--on more than one occassion on Freedom of the Seas, staff would avoid eye contact or rush to get through a doorway before my husband and myself. With the constant announcements, hand sanitizing monitors, letters in our cabin, looping TV info-mercial about the Norwalk virus and gloved and masked disinfecting-spray-bottle-toting attendants everywhere, it was difficult to feel the virus was "in the background". For our group, it was a creepy and unclean feeling of being trapped at sea...

we too were on this ship at the same time and have a completely different story to tell. We were aware of the Virus that was going around but fortunately we did not contract it.
We felt the staff were fantastic all week in making our holiday memorable regardless of what was happening in the background.
Yes there were over 1000 children, but at no time did we feel any of the childrens areas or pools were overcrowded!.
Even the entertainers were working double shifts and serving food and cleaning, etc.
It was one of those things that can happen anywhere but it did not spoil our holiday. Maybe it would have been a different tale if we had fallen victims of the virus