Once again I am unable to get to my Google Photos on my laptop, so I well add some photos to my Facebook page and add them to my blog when I get home. I did manage to email myself a few of them.
Time to wake up and go to the Sea Day brunch
After the crazy night before moving all our things to our balcony cabin, we decided to sleep a little later. One thing about this cabin, 6427, is that it is above and to the side of one of the nightclubs, so you can hear the bass of the music till the wee hours. We did get to meet our new room Stewards. Both are named Michael, should be easy to remember. They both seem great, I’m sure we’ll get along fine. I love getting to know our Stewards.
We’ve been going to the Sea Day brunch ever since it was the Comedy Club brunch. That was a long time ago. We still enjoy going, but the menu has had some major changes, especially since the Covid shutdown. And it’s not for the better, it’s more aimed at saving money.
Before you go to the brunch, you have to put a reservation in the HUB app. Put it in before you leave your cabin. It doesn’t usually take very long to get a table. We got in within five minutes of reserving the table. On this ship the Sea Day brunch is in the Posh restaurant on deck 3.
I put in my usual order, yogurt parfait and Huevos Rancheros. Plus I got orange juice and hot tea. I’ve been kind of disappointed in the Huevos Rancheros lately, mostly because they don’t always include all the sauces that used to come with it. And on this ship, you get no sauce at all. It kind of makes the eggs dry, they really need the sauce. The parfait was good though. But one thing that I’ve noticed on this ship is that they don’t automatically refill drinks for you. I could have used some extra hot water. No big deal though.
Time for the Fun Ashore show
We always go to the Fun Ashore show because they give away some nice prizes, like excursions. Before that show we sat and watched the Cruise Director Gabe do the morning show. He seems pretty good, I like him. Then we moved closer to the front of the theater so we could see the Fun Ashore show and got one ticket per cabin for prizes from one of the Fun guys, Mickey. Once the show started we got to learn a bit about the two stops we’re doing, Amber Cove and Grand Turk.
Throughout the show prizes were given away. They had three or four excursions, a Build a Bear, some candy, a bottle of champagne, and some arcade certificates. And then we won something! It was a packet of Bingo cards and a dobber. I made him go up and get it, just hope we win something off of it when we play Bingo our last day at sea.
Lunch at the BBQ restaurant
We decided to try the BBQ restaurant for lunch. We’ve heard some bad reviews of it, but we decided to check in out for ourselves. You’ll find this restaurant at the back of the Lido buffet. You’ll see a large Statue of Liberty fixure with staircases on each side. Just go up the staircase and the BBQ restaurant is there. There are plenty of tables up there, and a drink station.
There are three types of meat to choose from, chicken, beef, and pork. You tell them which you want and the person in the back will put it on a plate and hand it to the server. Then you tell her what sides you want. They have mac and cheese, baked beans, slaw, and potato salad. The macaroni didn’t look that good, and the beans looked more like calico beans than baked. I skipped both. I did have slaw and potato salad. There are a few different sauces to choose from. A couple of them were from Guy Fieri’s collection, and a couple of other flavors. I chose Guy’s Brown Sugar BBQ sauce, which was very good.
My review for the restaurant is that it was good. The pork and BBQ were good together, but the meat was kind of cold. The slaw and potato salad were good, and I’d try it again. I’d just suggest to Carnival that they make sure the meat is hotter when it’s served.
Time to work and get ready for Elegant Night
After I ate I went back to the cabin to work on my blog. Internet is a bit spotty on the ship, but it seems to work well in my new cabin. It was such a treat to be able to watch the ocean out of my window while I worked. I definitely appreciated the upgrade! I have been having problems with Google Photos, but I’m not sure if it’s the fault of the ship’s internet, or Google.
Then I started getting ready for Elegant Night. Elegant night is usually the first whole sea day on this ship. It’s a night where you can dress up a little or a lot, and have a nice dinner. This is another thing that has suffered since the Covid shutdown. On a five day cruise there is no more Lobster Tail at dinner. But you can still dress up and also take advantage to all of the photo opportunities around the ship. I like that you can get a ton of pictures taken, and only buy what you want. They print them all out and you can look at them before you buy. They are a bit pricey though. If you don’t want to dress up, the buffet is open also.
Dinner
I’m not sure what to think of dinner on the Carnival Freedom. Our wait staff is great. We have Triana, the lead waiter, and his team, Fais and I Dema. They’ve been friendly and helpful all along. But on the first night the Maitre d’ did an announcement that everyone needed to be at their table by 6 pm because there is another seating at 8 pm. I’ve never heard a Maitre d’ do that before. And then the second night all of the waiters seemed very rushed. We were getting our two appetizers at the same time, and the tables were being cleared so quickly. Refills of iced tea were not offered either. I just got the feeling that the waiters were being rushed to get everyone out of the dining room early. I asked our waiter if there would be a show that night, but he checked and said no, they were too tired from having to do a brunch earlier in the day. Just not what I expect from Carnival.
After dinner, since there are no longer any real snacks late, we went to the Lido buffet and got some dessert, then put it in our room for later. Ice cream is still being advertised as available till midnight, but it hasn’t been. We had also gotten some OJ at the Lido at breakfast time and brought it back to our fridge for later Mimosas.
Entertainment
We wanted to see a show, but the playlist show, Heart of Soul, is something that we already saw on Carnival Elation a few months ago. We decided to just watch for awhile, and then head over to the Punchliner Comedy Club to see the comedian. On the way to the theater we saw the end of the Captain’s Toast. He was there with all of the other top officers on the ship. Hopefully I’ll get to see him again later.
After that we went into the Victoriana Theater and sat towards the back so that we could leave early. The Victoriana Theater is beautiful. I love that each of the little tables in the seating area have a different Victorian era woman’s painting on it. The show was good. It was exactly the same show that we saw on Elation, but the cast was new. They’ve only been performing for two weeks, but they did a great job. I do wish that Carnival would have different shows on each ship though, instead of the same show on several ships. Kind of doesn’t give an incentive to cruise on Carnival if you’re going to see the same shows on all of the ships.
And then it was time for the comedian. We always go to the comedy shows, and we prefer the PG ones over the R rated ones at later hours. This comedian was named Manny, and he was very funny. We enjoyed the show.
One thing to note is that while standing in line at Customer Service, I was hearing disgruntled passengers complaining about bar service and also the Bubbles package. The man behind me was having a very poor cruise, he said that he could not get waiters to get his drinks for him. He said that there were no servers walking around asking if people wanted drinks in the theater, and no one in the comedy club either. Now, we’re not drinkers, but I was more alert after that, and I did see servers going around and getting drinks for people. I’m not sure what’s really going on or if maybe the man was just impatient. Also, there were a lot of glitches at first with the Bubbles soda package. Hopefully that is straightened out also.
Ending the day and a word about Covid protocol
We walked around a bit after that. I love to people watch! One thing to notate is that the ship was full, and there is absolutely no social distancing. A few people and a few crew wore masks, but mainly it’s back to normal. People are everywhere, so if that bothers you, you probably don’t want to cruise yet. I haven’t heard any word about anyone being sick yet, so hopefully that’s how it will stay. Personally, I’m really glad that things are getting back to normal.
The Quiet Cruiser 