Liberty Travel

Kauai was so beautiful, and the perfect place for a honeymoon. We loved being on the south side, and the beach at our hotel was perfect. The woman at Liberty Travel completely mislead my DH though. He told her we would have a partial ocean view, and would get a free upgrade for being honeymooners, which we did not..fist of all, there was no partial view, and secondly, we had to pay $50 extra a night to upgrade. She also did not have the correct info on some of the excursions we bought,but regardless of Liberty being so lame, we had an AMAZING time, and ended up in a beautiful room overlooking the ocean..

Gordon is my aunt’s travel agent. He has been everywhere and when I told him what we were looking for—relatively short plane ride, quiet, gorgeous beach, good food—he said “Go to Aruba.”

Aruba was gorgeous. Our hotel was lovely—intimate, small, quite—on one of the top 10 beaches in the world! We stayed in the Tara wing in one of the suites overlooking the ocean. Waking up to the beach every morning is my idea of heaven!

Our honeymoon consisted of sitting on the beach practically every day, enjoying the turquoise blue ocean water, snorkeling, watching pelicans dive into the ocean for fish, pina coladas and PBJ sandwiches for lunch, amazing seafood dinners. It was exactly what we needed. We can’t wait to go back!

We used Maria at Liberty Travel in Englewood NJ. The only reason we went with a travel agent was because we were traveling with a large group and most of our guests booked through Liberty Travel. After our experience we won't ever use a travel agent again for the following reasons (1) didn't really save us money (2) we were mislead about quite a few things about Hawaii (3) we weren't given the perks of newlyweds that we were told we would get and (4) we were booked on the worst airline ever (US Airways).

Maria was very hard to get in touch with. I'd call (leaving a message with someone) or email and would not get a call back 90% of the time. I would finally catch her on the phone the same or next day and she would acknowledge she owed me a phone call but never did call me back.

The mis-information:
- Since we had a group of more than 10 on our flight out to Hawaii we wanted to make sure we all sat together. Maria said we'd get a block of seats assigned to us and we could do whatever we wanted. Not true. She didn't even assign our seats at all and we all ended up scattered on the plane going there and back. When we were checking in at the airport and we complained about not being seated together the airline said that a lot of travel agents do not do it because they are either to lazy or don't know how to do it but they are able to assign seating.

- We wanted a layover to Hawaii to break up the flight but were told that the Honolulu layovers were in small "scary" planes so we opted to layover elsewhere. Turns out that the interisland flights are huge 737s!

- We were told we'd get perks if she indicated that we were honeymooners/newlyweds. We only got perks at the Sheraton in Kauai and weren't even married then! At the Sheraton Waikiki and on the cruise we got zip and when we inquired we were told that the travel agent didn't indicate anything when she booked us.

- We booked a beach front room at the Sheraton Kauai (because the hubby wanted direct beach access) and instead ended up at an Ocean Front Room (which goes off into lava rock and no beach at all). Luckily we liked the room better and it was definitely in a quieter area of the resort.

- The Mountain view room at the Sheraton Waikiki was barely a mountain view. We had more of a highway and generators view.

Other drama:
- When we flew out to Hawaii we laid over in Phoenix and got stuck for 5 hours because our plane had a irrepairable mechanical failure and we had to wait for another plane to fly in from Mexico to take us to Hawaii. We were only give a $6 voucher for the delay. Barely enough to buy lunch.

- Luckily our guests didn't have a delay going home but we flew home a good 9 days after our guests and ended up delayed in Phoenix for 2 hours again due to a mechanical failure (this one was repairable).

- Pricing could never be clearly broken down by the travel agent (which was more annoying than anything) but I think this is the same with all travel agents.

- Maria also didn't keep very good track of all the payments we made because we would've been overcharged $500 if I wasn't keeping insanely detailed records.

All in all, we learned a lot from our experience with Maria at Liberty Travel and honestly, would never again use a travel agent because there was almost no benefit besides the learning experience.

My husband and I used Liberty Travel in River Edge, NJ, to book our honeymoon. We have a travel agent there that we have used for other vacations, and she was great. We got married in May, and we knew we wanted to go to the Carribbean, but we needed guidance.

Our agent, MaryBeth Duffy (and later, Helen McMahon), was extremely helpful in providing information about different locales and outlining costs, etc.

We decided on the Royal Plantation in Ocho Rios, Jamaica for our trip and flew first class. We only had one glitch, and that was due to the fact that the airline changed planes for our trip home - we were unable to fly first class home, but received a voucher for the balance. When we did not hear from the airline in a few months, Helen followed up with her contact and the refund was almost immediate.

We are actually traveling to Aruba at the end of the summer for a belated one-year anniversary trip and that trip was booked through Liberty as well.

We went through Liberty Travel to set up arrangements for our honeymoon to Hawaii. They were very helpful and it was so nice not to worry about practically anything. You can create a registry through them for everyone to donate money to your honeymoon trip. This was helpful for us, because we have everything we need since we're already living together. There were mixed reactions in the family, though - some people didn't find it very personal; you may want to do a regular registry, as well. They also tell you about different activities you can do and they will sign you up for them and add it to the tab; you don't have to worry about a thing. I'm so happy we went with Liberty Travel.