Let me start by saying this ship is HUGE!!! 2.5 times around deck is 1 mile. Our cruise was soldout, but you never felt crowded. The buffet lines moved nicely and you could usually find a chair anywhere on the ship. I've never seen so many lounge chairs! With the good comes the bad...when you have that many people on board there's bound to be issues...
We sailed Saturday, Aug 14th. Being past Carnival guests they upgraded us 4 times. Nice. You know how rare that is on
DCL. Embarkation was a breeze. Unlike DCL the entire family gets in line. We arrived at 11 am and walked right on the ship. We went to Nassau, St. Thomas, St. Martin and a emergency stop at Puerto Rico for a medical reason, but could not get off the ship. Too bad. Nassau is still a pit. We got off for about two hours to shop with Mikayla. She hadn't been there in years. Even she hated it. She won a digital video camera in a raffle and used the day taking pictures of flowers. St. Thomas never changes. We went to Meghan's Bay, as usual.
RCCL's Oasis followed us the entire week. Between the two ships we had 11,000 souls on board. Security around the ships was really tight. It was quit a sight to see the two largest vessels in the world side-by-side all week. On Sunday night we raced out of Nassau. It was fun, Oasis won that round, but we wasted her later in the week. Obviously the Captains had a good time. St. Marteen gets better every year. We were on the beach by 9am and spent a king's ransom in jewelry by noon. Yeah, I bought more blue diamonds. Only 3 carats this year, we are in a recession after all! Eric bought a watch.
The boat has 15 decks. Laid out very, very well. But, in my opinion it looked like Wayne Newton and Elton John threw up on board. Vegas glitz and glam. I like the old nautical style of DCL much better.
Rooms opened up at 1:30 on the dot. We had a king room with a balcony on deck 10 forward, one bath. The room and balcony were much larger than on DCL. No problems with the one bath. It was very spacious. The bed... OMG I wanted to steal everything from the sheets to the pillows! Eric wouldn't let me! LOL You have 3 room stewarts. The room was spotless. We swore they had a camera in the room. The minute you left it was cleaned.
We spent about an hour exploring. Then it was off to the first buffet. Hands down folks, Carnival has delicious food. We sailed with them 10 years ago, twice and were very disappointed with the food. I don't know who they hired, but WOW!!! Presentation, quanity, quality...just great, great food. I've never loved DCL food and now I feel like Topsiders is on par with a high school cafeteria. The dining room menus had a lot of variety. We ate there 5 nights, once at the buffet for dinner, breakfast at the buffet or at the restaurants and once at the Chef's Steakhouse. A private restaurant like Palo.
I think we counted 15 places on board that served food. Not to mention the bbq they did every day on deck. In the evenings some of the food places turned over to evening appetizers, sushi, a tappas bar, etc.
Hands down our meal at the Steakhouse was the best meal Eric and I have every had in our lives. From ther Versace china to the 7 course meal. It was a culinary presentation of art.
Mikayla enjoyed the kids clubs during the day, but said they were boring at night. Eric and I didn't realize how much we missed a casino on board. We had a BALL playing craps!
There was always something to do. 3 story high waterslides, pools, laser tag, arts and crafts, mini golf, 14 hot tubs, gym, etc. Eric and Mikayla loved running around while Mommy soaked up the sun and plenty of cocktails. At night on the jumbo screen they showed first run movies which was nice. They had ICEE machines for the kids and REAL popcorn.
Ok... now the bad.
2 pools? Are you freakin' kidding me? The deck plan showed 3, but one turned out to be inside the spa. We did not use the spa, very expensive in my opinion. The pools were salt water. Really? In this technical day and age, salty pools. Yuck!
The kids and teenagers were OUT OF CONTROL!!! Parents would dump their little darlings at the pool for hours and vanish. You know me, I was tossing them out that miss matched socks. Besides, one brat kept getting my hair wet! LOL. One night at 1am we were heading back to the room. We had to walk through the Midnight Orgy of teens laying all over each other in the halls. They were getting more action than married couples. I sent E and M on to the room and took care of business. I chased those kids out like alley cats in heat.
The entertainment couldn't hold a candle to DCL. We sat through one show and laughed our butts off. The big dance performers were a street rap group. Yeah, I pass these kinds of acts in Times Square passing the bucket. Sorry, not our style. The bands were just plain bad.
If the ship made port in
Walmart I would be concerned we would tip over. How do I say it... some bought a new package of wife beaters for this cruise. The dinning staff really had a hard time the first night telling some of them how to dress. Of course Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers took offense.
Those are my major complaints. Would we said Carnival again, yes. Consider it was $1200 less than DCL, hell yeah!!!
Ok.. now the funny story of the cruise...
This 400lb woman waddles into the Lido restaurant (one of 5 buffets). She puts an entire pizza down on the table. Yup, she's alone and that pie is going down her pie hole. She walks up to the buffet and comes back with not one, but two trays of food. 2!!!! OMG, some on call the cops her pizza is gone. She finds this poor little server and starts yelling at the girl you took my pizza, you took my pizza. Do you know how long it took me to get it? The poor server apologized. Miss Piggy insisted the girl go get her another one after spewing a slew of curse words at her. I went right after the server and followed her to the pizza restaurant. I told her I thought she handled two ton tilly very professionally. Then I went to the dining room captain and commended the server. When I walked back past Miss Piggy I stopped at her table and dumped a shaker of salt on her pizza. Then started singing Magaretville and walked away. She sat there in shock! The look on her face was priceless. She knew she was owned. I saw her later in the day at the pool in a bikini... oh god! I didn't know spandex could stretch like that. Eric just sat there and laughed his *** off!
Then maybe AK and Rain Forest for lunch.
