hilltopfamily
"The sun and the sand, and a drink in my hand....w
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2003
- Messages
- 558
Hi all! 
We are back from our Carnival cruise, and I had promised to relate some of our findings, for those that are interested in a perspective that can compare very recent DCL & CCL experiences (they were about 8 months apart). I feel that is important, as cruise lines (particularly Carnival perhaps) can & do change over the years. Please keep in mind these are only OUR experiences and OUR opinions, many others will feel differently and may have firmly-held beliefs which I am in no way attempting to change or alter.
In short, we had a fabulous time on Carnival. Having read such negative posts here about CCL (although there were a few "defenders") we had pretty low expectations for our trip but we firmly decided to go in with a positive attitude. CCL completely exceded all our hopes and we had a delightful experience. There are certainly differences between the 2 lines, and I'm happy to answer any questions that I can. I hope that this can be a constructive thread and not be seen as a thread "bashing" any line in particular.
Just to hit a few highlights of our trip: our kids loved the kids programming---we have 3 and they were each in different age-groups some of the time. They thought that overall the kids clubs were better on CCL than DCL (again, not seeking flames here, just relaying OUR experiences) Our oldest is 13 and even was allowed to join the age group just below hers when she liked what they were doing better. She has special needs and sometimes didn't enjoy what the older teen set was doing. This allowed for more personalization in our experience--she moved from 1 group to the other as she chose but made sure to let us know where she was all the time. My 2 oldest were allowed to sign in/out of the clubs on their own, so we had our "rules" that they had to follow, which they did well with. We did get a beeper for our youngest child, which made us happy. We were onboard one of CCL's oldest and smallest ships, so we were not surprised that the physical layout of the specified kids clubs was small---every one of their newer ships have significantly improved in this area. But the kids did such a huge amount of activities in different areas of the ship, this wasn't a problem.
The dining on board was good in the buffet (where we went for lunches & breakfasts and really enjoyed the made-to-order omelets) and was wonderful and completely delicious in the dining room!! We had such a great experience each & every night in the dining room with the most attentive wait staff you could imagine. On DCL we had pretty mediocre servers, especially now that we compare them to our recent experience. The exception to this was the servers in Palo. Our carnival ship did not have alternative dining venues, so we ate in our assigned dining room every single night.
The staterooms were just as large and almost as nice as on DCL (although you could tell by the tile in the bathroom that the CCL ship was older). We missed not having a small couch in our room as we had on DCL, but instead there was a chair. They have singular, not split, bathrooms but since we book 2 rooms for our family of 5, we still had 2 bathrooms, so no problems there. Some of the older ships (like ours) don't have connecting rooms, so we tried 2 rooms side by side and had absolutely no problems this way. Kids enjoyed the 1st run movies on the TV in our room---of which 1 channel of the 3 was always just kids movies.
ALL of the staff on board our ship were consistently & incredibly friendly, wishing you a good day, or whatever, just in passing them while going down a hall!! A couple kids counselors even joined our family for ice cream 1 evening and chatted about their life experience on board a cruise ship--so in other words lots of fun, personal attention. We had a great time with all the activities on board, finding plenty of family-friendly things to do.
And here was our biggest worry: We did not EVER encounter obnoxious or drunk people, and I cannot recall seeing any inapproriate activities during the times we were out and about on the ship. I do know that the late night entertainment is not kid-suitable, but we were all in bed or close to it by midnight most nights anyway!
So, just wanted to relay that we had great experiences with both our cruises, we DO NOT feel like we received a "walmart" quality product on CCL, and that we enjoyed a great product at a price that was a lot friendlier on the pocketbook. (On a cost per day/ per person basis we spent less than 1/2 of what we did on DCL). Happy cruising to all!! 
We are back from our Carnival cruise, and I had promised to relate some of our findings, for those that are interested in a perspective that can compare very recent DCL & CCL experiences (they were about 8 months apart). I feel that is important, as cruise lines (particularly Carnival perhaps) can & do change over the years. Please keep in mind these are only OUR experiences and OUR opinions, many others will feel differently and may have firmly-held beliefs which I am in no way attempting to change or alter. In short, we had a fabulous time on Carnival. Having read such negative posts here about CCL (although there were a few "defenders") we had pretty low expectations for our trip but we firmly decided to go in with a positive attitude. CCL completely exceded all our hopes and we had a delightful experience. There are certainly differences between the 2 lines, and I'm happy to answer any questions that I can. I hope that this can be a constructive thread and not be seen as a thread "bashing" any line in particular.
Just to hit a few highlights of our trip: our kids loved the kids programming---we have 3 and they were each in different age-groups some of the time. They thought that overall the kids clubs were better on CCL than DCL (again, not seeking flames here, just relaying OUR experiences) Our oldest is 13 and even was allowed to join the age group just below hers when she liked what they were doing better. She has special needs and sometimes didn't enjoy what the older teen set was doing. This allowed for more personalization in our experience--she moved from 1 group to the other as she chose but made sure to let us know where she was all the time. My 2 oldest were allowed to sign in/out of the clubs on their own, so we had our "rules" that they had to follow, which they did well with. We did get a beeper for our youngest child, which made us happy. We were onboard one of CCL's oldest and smallest ships, so we were not surprised that the physical layout of the specified kids clubs was small---every one of their newer ships have significantly improved in this area. But the kids did such a huge amount of activities in different areas of the ship, this wasn't a problem.
The dining on board was good in the buffet (where we went for lunches & breakfasts and really enjoyed the made-to-order omelets) and was wonderful and completely delicious in the dining room!! We had such a great experience each & every night in the dining room with the most attentive wait staff you could imagine. On DCL we had pretty mediocre servers, especially now that we compare them to our recent experience. The exception to this was the servers in Palo. Our carnival ship did not have alternative dining venues, so we ate in our assigned dining room every single night.
The staterooms were just as large and almost as nice as on DCL (although you could tell by the tile in the bathroom that the CCL ship was older). We missed not having a small couch in our room as we had on DCL, but instead there was a chair. They have singular, not split, bathrooms but since we book 2 rooms for our family of 5, we still had 2 bathrooms, so no problems there. Some of the older ships (like ours) don't have connecting rooms, so we tried 2 rooms side by side and had absolutely no problems this way. Kids enjoyed the 1st run movies on the TV in our room---of which 1 channel of the 3 was always just kids movies.
ALL of the staff on board our ship were consistently & incredibly friendly, wishing you a good day, or whatever, just in passing them while going down a hall!! A couple kids counselors even joined our family for ice cream 1 evening and chatted about their life experience on board a cruise ship--so in other words lots of fun, personal attention. We had a great time with all the activities on board, finding plenty of family-friendly things to do.
And here was our biggest worry: We did not EVER encounter obnoxious or drunk people, and I cannot recall seeing any inapproriate activities during the times we were out and about on the ship. I do know that the late night entertainment is not kid-suitable, but we were all in bed or close to it by midnight most nights anyway!
So, just wanted to relay that we had great experiences with both our cruises, we DO NOT feel like we received a "walmart" quality product on CCL, and that we enjoyed a great product at a price that was a lot friendlier on the pocketbook. (On a cost per day/ per person basis we spent less than 1/2 of what we did on DCL). Happy cruising to all!! 
do you suppose they were the same?! LOL "Leroy" from Jamaica was one of those that told us repeatedly to mark "excellent" on our card for him, too bad he never delivered on that level of service. On CCL, our family was LOL and all smiles every single night. 
