Just off the Victory Yesterday

Hello Everyone!

Yesterday ended my first experience on the Carnival Victory. This was our 4th cruise. Prior to sailing, but post booking, we read many many negative reviews about the Victory and to be honest, we were very apprehensive about our trip prior to boarding.

Quick summary: Overall a good cruise. Good food, good staff (exceptions explained below) clean. Had a few bad experiences, but mostly a great time was had. Returned to port in Caymans due to a sick person, waited on them and was back underway. Cost us about a half our docking in Jamaica, but the Captain worked some magic and got us an extra two hours stay there to make up for it. Smooth embarkation, not so good debarkation.

Before you continue reading, I'll share a little bout my wife and I. First, we are a middle class household. We have two college aged children. I work for a local Law enforcement agency and she is a professional assistant. We vacation for the "lets chill" experience and are not the party animal types.

OK.. so now what you want to know from our perspective.

Boarding in Miami: We arrived as the ship was docking from the previous cruise so obviously we had plenty of time to people watch and observe the debarkation. It appeared to go somewhat haphazardly from our perspective, but we couldnt hear the announcements coming from the ship. Once we made it inside, Security, check in and the whole "port experience" was a breeze. We made it to the waiting area and were able to watch the guests leave the Victory while we waited. Man did they look exhausted! We were finally able to board and had to go to guest services first thing to handle some last minute things, but had to wait due to a computer crash, but that was resolved within about a half hour and they were up and going. Guest services lines were as you would expect, Generally short except on embarkation and the morning or Debarkation and even then no longer than average on any other ship I have been on.

Cabin- We chose our own cabin. Room # 2456. Ocean View, Aft, Port side, right below the Pacific dining room and above the Props. I know most of you reading this are wondering what we were thinking. Right? Well I'll explain. Here on land, we sleep at night with ambient noise ( a loud fan) so we figured the hum of the engines would be tolerable, and since we usually play until late, the dining room would close at 930, we would be ok noise wise.Then there was the unique layout of the room that made it appear large in the pictures on the C****** Website. WELL, Let me tell you how pleasantly surprised we were to find that this was THE BEST ROOM we have ever booked!! We loved the ambient noise of the motor turning. Not too loud and not too soft, except when docking. There was a slight vibration in our room that just rocked you to sleep at night. For my DW and I, It was PERFECT.

Steward/ Dining staff and other staff: With the exception of one very arrogant, rude staff member (see below for explanation) all of the staff we encountered were very friendly, helpful and cheerful people. Our Cabin Steward Eladio was especially friendly and knew our names from day one and always spoke when he saw us and offered suggestions for places to go and see while in port and around the ship.

Overall, the ship herself was as we expected.. aged. But there again, all of the ships we have been on prior to the Victory (Sensation, paradise and Fascination) have shown some wear and tear. Did we see some rust? Yes, but show me a ship that doesnt have any. Did we see some stains, tears, missing grout, torn carpet, scratched doors, windows or mirrors? You bet we did. Did we see some patched tiles, carpet or other fixes? Heck yea! were the Bathrooms Pink? Yep, but they did have a bottle opener in there that was accessible from the throne? YES SIR! Bet you don't have one of those in your house! EVERY ship we have sailed have had similar issues, but the staff was always sweeping, mopping wiping scrubbing and cleaning behind the 3,000 (Thats THREE THOUSAND) guests, and she was a CLEAN ship. Just for giggles, imagine your home taking in 9,000 guests every 14 days. With Victory's current schedule that is what she sees. With those figures, not counting the staff, That ship has 234,000 people annually sleeping, eating, dancing, sweating, sunbathing and dirtying up that ship. When you consider those numbers, you realize that the staff aboard that ship does an AWESOME job of keeping her up to date and sailing.

OK. now for the bad. There were areas in the Aft of the ship that were blocked off due to construction. This was not an issue to us because although inaccessible, they were upgrading the planks on the flooring and it was looking good! One morning, the midship pool was closed due to some maintainence but it was back up and going within a few hours. One of the ice cream machines went down for a while one day but there were 4 others scattered around, so no big deal there. One of the rest rooms on deck 5 was out of order for two days, but they seemed to be working on it around the clock until it was back up and going, so not a huge issue there unless you had too much to drink at the nearby casino bar, as I did hahaha. We tendered at the Cayman islands. Had tickets in hand for our excursion and followed the directions of the sweet lady at the excursion desk. We entered the Carribean lounge to find a very long line of people filing off the boat, several seated guests and one very rude, and arrogant staff member, SHANE, who made no effort to expain to new arrivals what was going on, what he wanted us to do or any other things. What he DID do was turn on the microphone and tell everyone that "he did not have time to deal with kindergardeners and that we need to grow the hell up and learn to how do as we are told. My friend and his wife asked if we were all in the right line and he responded with rolled eyes and turning his back to again get on the microphone to say, "grow up people, everyone is here waiting on the same thing so suck it up and deal with it". Did we complain to his supervisor, NO. there were 5 other staff members present and his voice echoed down the hallway to other members of the staff so we figured to just leave it alone. Outside of an issue, actually same issue twice, with my S/S card not being able to read getting on and off the ship. The rest of the cruise was good until it was time to go home. According to all of the literature, television instructions etc, we should have gotten off the ship in this order: Early flights, Plat/gold and FTTF, then self assist, then by your zone. BUT.. What actually happened was.... Early flights, zones 1-5, self assist decks 11-8, zones 6-10, FTTF, zones 10-15, self assist decks 5-8, etc, etc. We chose self assist because we knew we had a 9 hour drive ahead of us, but because of the way they haphazardly called the zones/self assist etc, we were still almost 11:30 leaving the ship.

In conclusion. We had a great time. We set sail with a positive attitude and came home with one. We could have gone through this ship and nit picked every little minor detail of her aged body and found flaws all around. We could have also stepped back, looked at the overall picture and enjoyed our vacation with our dear friends that we brought with us, which is what we did. I would recommend a trip on the Victory to everyone I see.

Thank you. We will be sailing Carnival for the first time this July and it will be on the Victory. We are looking forward to the trip, and after your take, I think we will have a good time!

Great review! I've sailed on the Victory twice, and will be sailing on her again in July.

thanks for the review! Sounds pretty good overall. But I hope I dont meet up with SHANE!!!!:eek:

GREAT review!!!!!! Can't wait to sail on her again in 12 days!!!

Thanks for a straightforward account of your experience! We cruise to relax and leave our Type A personalities at home, so I can over come almost all of these things. Have FTTF, so no Shane worries. We sail her on the 2oth of July. "Free" cruise wife "won" as a reward for gambling losses!

Yes, thank you for the good and bad review and being specific with the bad. Looking forward to our couples cruise 1 month from today!

were the Bathrooms Pink? Yep, but they did have a bottle opener in there that was accessible from the throne? YES SIR! Bet you don't have one of those in your house!

Thanks for the laugh :D glad to hear it was a good sailing, we're considering going back on Victory in January and are glad to hear she's still in good shape :)

Thanks for the review. We will be sailing her in June and can't wait. We also cruise for R&R, and to get away from the rat race. Glad you had a good time, as I am sure we will too.

I sure felt your pain about Shane..we had a "Shane" on our last cruise...he was for some reason given the microphone during the "MONSTER" drill as he called it. He couldn't speak to save his life ..it was like watching a Penelope Cruz movie...you left there going "WHAT THE HECK DID HE SAY?" He was rude as well. Glad you guys had a great time though! It is indeed what you make it.

Thanks for the Review. I'll be on the Victory in September. I can hardly wait. Question: Did the cabins have a refrigerator in them?

No fridge in the aft balconies on 7.

Sorry for the late response.. Neither our cabin nor the cabin that our friends were in had a Fridge. We did manage to improvise using a souvenir glass and some ice from the Lido deck in our room tho.

Sounds like 'Shane' needs to grow up and also grow a pair.

Hopefully some of the fine folks at Carnival are reading this board and can take Shane aside and advise him that he is working in the service industry, if he can't handle the stress, perhaps he should seek employment in a different line of work.

We sail her on the 2oth of July.

Hey, me too!!!

Thanks for doing the review.