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APDMOM

Members
  • Posts

    10,196
  • Joined

About Me

  • Location
    Perpetual Flip-Flop State
  • Interests
    Photography
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    RCL, NCL
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    The ship!

Recent Profile Visitors

17,876 profile views

APDMOM's Achievements

  1. Example Kids' Program Activities: Age Groups: Day 2 - Sea Day Activities: Turtles: Penguins:
  2. With that, My View is done. I will still post some of the kids program screenshots and ship pictures, but this is the official end. Hope to see you on a ship sometime soon! My next adventure is a girls cruise on Allure of the Seas in May. From our family to yours: Happy Cruising!
  3. And now for that Muzak survey... this same tune played over and over, then the next song is more of the same kind of over and over... 🤣 Am I old, or are there other people who agree this is not music? IMG_8657.MOV
  4. My View: Carnival Horizon and our Southern Caribbean Cruise: Pros: We loved the edible straws! What a fun way to 'help the environment'. I don't want to know how many processed foods or calories made up those straws, they were FUN! Carnival gets cake right. The best cake we have had, by far, on a cruise ship. Not a single slice of cake we tried was dry - they were all perfect. (I can't say the same for the cookies... skip the cookies, have the cake and eat it too!) Food was overall good, even though choices were MUCH more limited than on previous Carnival cruises. I think it is smart that they save money by serving the same dishes in the MDR and the buffet, with a few variations. We never went hungry and we found many excellent dishes. We LOVED the Cove Balcony (if you have not caught on to that yet). We love hearing the sound of the ocean, rather than loud muzak and music playing from public venues. Sometimes, the ocean spray got onto the balcony and I could taste salt on my lips, but it was just 2 days out of the whole cruise, and it was all part of the fun! I appreciate that Carnival is cracking down on drugs with their drug-sniffing dogs. I did not realize until day 7 that a dog lives on the ship! I saw the dog and trainer playing on the basketball court that night. It also seems like Carnival is cracking down on poor behavior - there was lots of security on the ship. We also heard that people got left behind in La Romana. The ship left ON TIME. I believe in personal responsibility and taking care of unforeseen circumstances with a good attitude rather than expecting a whole ship to wait... or book your excursions through Carnival - then the ship will wait for you. Smoke is contained VERY well on this ship! I love how they have glass around the Casino view on deck 5 - it contained the smoke so well. The only place I ever smelled smoke was in the forward stairwell by deck 4 (Casino entrance) and the few times I walked through the starboard smoking areas. I like that you can have small table seating for brunch and breakfast for an intimate family experience. Live music was very well done. Cons: There is no digital checkin. You are required to print out your boarding pass. Drinks are very expensive. We could hardly find any alcoholic drinks under $12 - only the spiked coffee and Amaretto Sour cost us under $10. The milkshakes at the coffee bar were not worth the price. Excursions are also expensive on Carnival - the same excursions on Royal Caribbean are much cheaper. In the end, it probably evens out, but it is just something we observed since we had two ports booked through both cruiselines and could compare exursions and prices. There was limited to no live music during the day on sea days. They play mostly muzak/elevator music, which I cannot acknowledge as 'music'. Maybe I am just old, but who likes listening to this stuff (I almost said 'junk') ... oh, wait, there I did it 🤣. ...see video below with an example and tell me if you like it. Something was wrong with the electricity and wifi on this ship. Prior to our power outage, the wifi took up to 12 tries to connect. My flat iron also stopped working - I thought it had broken because it is older. After the power outage, it seemed like the power had reset. Wifi connected well and my flat iron worked again. As the last couple of days rolled around, wifi troubles re-emerged and the flat iron 'broke' again. We did miss the more elaborate breakfast items in the buffet, like whipped cream and banana compote. Only one special item was available per day, like only pancakes or only french toast. However, the arepas made up for it! Cleanliness was a serious issue in the buffet. We watched the tables being wiped only half-heartedly and often sat down to a sticky table, or one with crumbs. One time, I had a spoon in the MDR that had a coffee line on the handle and lines where it looked like it had been licked. I wiped it with a wet wipe and it came clean, so it was clearly a dirty spoon replaced to be re-used. Dishes and cups often had food residue in the buffet, so we would need to set them aside to be taken back for a re-wash. The rest of the ship was spotless, so something is wrong with the supervision in the dining and food prep. In Summary: This was a fantastic cruise overall. We enjoyed the ship and amenities. We loved the ports and people. Although Carnival is not our favorite cruiseline, we are all glad we took this cruise, since the price was right. We will cruise Carnival again if the opportunity arises, with the right price, ship, and itinerary. We just prefer NCL (DH and DS), Royal Caribbean (Me) and Celebrity (all of us). Now for our Favorite Experiences/Memories: DH: Jonathon Timpanelli Show Excursion with the train trolley in La Romana SkyRide DS: Water Slides Blue Iguana Ropes Course APDMOM: Minigolf SkyRide La Romana and the friendly people Favorite Food: DH: Vegetable Wellington (MDR) Huevos Rancheros from Blue Iguana DS: Cake (all of them) Huevos Rancheros from Blue Iguana APDMOM: Arepas Strawberry Frozen Yogurt Soft Serve
  5. Breakfast: We were very happy to see that Blue Iguana was open for debarkation. There was no line at 6:30, nor at 7 - we stopped by twice. Once for Huevos Rancheros, and once for my LAST Arepa. Debarkation: Something went wrong with debarkation. Here are the theories about what 'may have' been problematic... 1. We were the last big ship to dock, even though we had been hovering outside Miami since 4 AM. 2. Customs took a long time to clear our ship. We had a close-up view of the gangway to the terminal from our balcony. We left our room around 8:10 and even then, nobody had walked off the ship through that gangway. 3. People who were not self-assist took it upon themselves to just cut in line and walk off, looking for their checked bags in the terminal. Many checked bags had not even left the ship when they jumped the line. Well... Whatever it was, it did not ruin our cruise. We kind of go with the flow, but we do draw the line by making a WIDE line of our family of 3 when people start cutting the line in front of us. 😄 After about 10 people passed us "looking for family ahead", we decided it was time to walk wide, or we would be pushed right back to our cabin. (Not that we would mind another few days on the ship, but I hear they don't accept stowaways) 🤣 We "got lost" leaving the port parking, and ended up driving through the tunnel:
  6. Ships in Port: Oasis of the Seas: Norwegian Encore: MSC Divina: Our Space waiting for us: Carnival Celebration: Granduer of the Seas: Scarlet Lady: Seabourn Quest:
  7. Beautiful Views Entering Port: I woke up at 4 AM, noticing the ship was slowing down a lot and that Miami was in the distance. With pictures always priority in my life, I could not sleep anymore, thinking I would miss sailing into port. Little did I know we would hover outside port as one after another ship sailed in, waiting for about 2 hours! Almost Full Moon!
  8. I am sorry I don't know about this... I would assume the instructions of where and when to meet will be on the excursion ticket, but I don't know about the luggage. Hopefully, someone with that experience will chime in here. 🙂
  9. Yes, they did. We signed up for 8:05 for self-assist in the app. I will post more about debarkation tomorrow, but it was indeed messy. There is lots of back and forth blaming between Carnival and Customs, if you can believe the posts on another platform. 😄 I'm just happy we got off without injury and still enjoying our cruise memories.
  10. That's it for now. Tomorrow, I will close out with our debarkation experience, our 'favorites' of the week, and a quick summary of our view of Carnival Horizon. Thank you for following along! After a grueling day at my 'day job' it was fun to relive a few more VIEWS from our amazing week.
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