Carnival Victory 5/14 Bahamas 5 night review with photos

This is my review and photos from the Carnival Victory on the five night cruise on 5/14 to Freeport, Nassau, and Half Moon Cay.

Background: This was my 7th cruise, wife's 6th - all with Carnival, and it was our first cruise since 2011 and our first cruise with our kids, 4 and almost 2 (which explains the gap in cruises).

This cruise we were joined by my sister-in-law, mother-in-law, and her boyfriend. We had 3 interior rooms adjacent to one another.

We've often gone on cruises with my mother and she would get a balcony or junior suite and we we get an interior room across the hall so we can come over and enjoy the balcony. :)

The stateroom: Our room was 1044, which has two upper bunk beds that come down out of the ceiling. We ended up not needing them.

1044 is on the Panorama deck and is the highest deck that has interior cabins. I like being able to easily get outside with needing elevators. The downside is that we ended up with Pacific dining room (the aft one) so trips to both the Lido buffet and dinner are kinda long).

The ship: The past 3 cruises we've been on were on Conquest class ships, which I prefer slightly over the Fantasy class ships we've been on. The Victory is older and slightly smaller than Conquest class ships but with the same basic layout so finding everything was easy. The main things missing are the steakhouse (which we've never used) and the Fish & Chips above the Lido buffet, which I really enjoyed on past cruises. Also no Guys Burgers, but since we haven't been on a cruise since 2011 we've never had one with that amenity anyway. I'll talk more about the ships and it's ongoing upgrades later.

Getting to Port Canaveral:

We live in Raleigh, NC, and rented a van so the 5 adults and 2 kids could all fit in one vehicle. It's cheaper than flying! It took right at 10 hours to get from Raleigh to Titusville including several stops.

The kids did great for their longest car ride ever. It helps to have ipads, a vehicle with lots of power ports, long power cables, and a 4G hotspot. They somehow managed to use almost 1.5 gb of data in 4 hours!

Pre-cruise hotel: We stayed at the Quality Inn Kennedy Space Center because the MIL got it for free thanks to all her business travel points. It's an older property but it turned out to be pretty nice. It was clean and the free breakfast was nice. It's only 25 minutes from the port.

I'll start with photos on my follow up. Also, please ask any questions. Thanks!

Pre-cruise:

The Quality Inn Kennedy Space Center in Titusville. Right off I-95. Here's our rental van, a Dodge Caravan with less than 2k miles on it.

We were pretty tired from the drive so we went to the Sonny's BBQ for dinner then promptly went to bed.

The next morning we "slept in" until 8am then enjoyed the free breakfast buffet. Here's Big Sister (4 and 1/2) and Little Sister (21 months old) enjoying breakfast. They are excited to get on the big ship. Well, Big Sister is, as she understands the concept but I don't think grasps how big the ship is. She understands we'll stay at a hotel on the ship.

After breakfast we had enough time to go to the pool. This and the previous sailings of the Carnival Victory have been departing late (6pm) due to a "beautification project." Rooting around the forums it sounds like they are taking on supplies to redo the rooms, maybe by a deck at a time, and that the rooms are getting new furniture, tile in the bathrooms, TVs, carpet, etc.

I guess they decided to do this instead of just spending time in drydock doing it. The cruise was completely booked, but that might have been because a block of rooms weren't filled because of ongoing work. (I was too lazy to explore every deck and find out).

When we were in Nassau they were unloading dumpster after dumpster of old room furniture and such.

Anyway, boarding was set to start at 1:30 so we had time to hit the pool and it's very cold water. There's a neat waterfall feature and a small tunnel where you can actually walk under it.

We wanted to get on the ship by lunchtime like usual but because of the last departure that wasn't happening. But the good thing is that it provided plenty of time to drop off the rental van. I dropped everyone off at the port then drove the half mile over to the Alamo rental office (a new, closer location to the port, I might add), and catch the shuttle back.

Boarding:

Boarding the previous time we were in Port Canaveral was pretty quick and easy and it was the same this time. In fact, the only time it's every been slow was in Miami on our first cruise when I was on a tour bus with 50 people. Our bus arrived at port fairly late in the boarding process and we ended up waiting quite a while.

Oddly, the ship was leaving out of one dock and returning to another, so everyone parking at the dock had to part at one dock then take a shuttle over to this dock. There's a lot of construction going on at one of the docks so that probably accounts for it.

Since we had a stroller with a kid in it, the security person said "oh you have a stroller" and directed us to the check in desk for passengers with special needs. I'm not sure why, because we saw passengers in the regular lines with strollers. I didn't want to feel like we were taking advantage of the system but we decided to listen to her and went to the desk and they had us boarding in about 12 minutes. Hey, I wasn't going to turn it down. The kids were starting to get fussy because it was past lunch time. The rest of the family was on board about 30 minutes after us, where we all met at the Lido buffet for lunch.

Boarding the ship. I think this might has still been in the "no cameras" area oops.

Yes! On board and at the Lido buffett!

We leave in 13 days on the Victory. Thanks for the review so far, can not wait to see the rest of your story about the trip.

It was a little weird not getting on the ship until around 2:30 and not leaving port until 6pm. That meant the babies would miss their nap. But they were hungry so we all parked at the lido buffet.

You can see the lido decor in the background. I think it is supposed to be Mediterranean inspired? Anyway, the lido buffet food was good. It was every day of the trip. We also tried some burgers. They were good; no Guys Burgers on this ship. Burger line was always super fast; never any wait.

The pizza place by the back pool was fantastic. I added a lot of cheese, oregano, and red peppers to this one. It always had a rather long line. I'd see the line, say to myself "nope, I'm going to something with no line" and my wife would get in line and somehow have a pizza by the time I got back to the table. They really turn them out fast.

Deli was great too. Here's half of the Reuben sandwich. Sometimes when they were not busy I'd ask them to make a sandwich that wasn't exactly on the menu and they were more than happy to. The lines for the deli and the Asian place on the opposite side were always really short. The Asian wok was good too. The rice was fairly ordinary but all of the entrees were good. Both the deli and especially the pizza place would get pretty busy late in the evening (10pm) when they were the only places open.

Disney Fantasy and Carnival Magic were also in port the day we left out of Port Canaveral. When we returned we would dock where the Magic is located. Both left before us as we had the delayed departure. This view is from what some people refer to as the secret deck I believe - it's the deck in the front of the ship.

This room has two bunk beds that can come down from the ceiling. That's why the lights near the ceiling (seen on the left) don't run all the way around the room. It's also why the tv is down on the lifejacket container on the far right instead of mounted up by the ceiling. We ended up not using the bunk beds.

Here you can see the crib they provide. I heard it was best to contact Carnival ahead of time and let them know you need one in case they run out, which we did. Those are the two bunk bed ladders on the right before the cabin steward put them away under the bed. I thought it would be very cramped with a crib but it was fine and you can see plenty of room between the chair and the crib.

The rooms were good. They were obviously not remodeled yet, at least the bathroom. The old pink tile was very worn and the grout was pretty terrible. I've heard the new rooms have blue tile. Also, the room didn't have a fridge which I seem to remember having on the Glory and Valor. And there was no ice bucket present. I asked the cabin steward (stewardess?) and she brought one and kept it filled.

Our cabin steward was good. She was pretty quiet and reserved but met all our needs, so she wasn't as memorable as some of the more outgoing ones.

We were in our rooms by maybe 3:30pm and went up the one floor to Camp Carnival to check in Big Sister. She really liked it, but she only went for one or two hours a day. It wasn't super useful to us because Little Sister was not old enough (cut off is 2 years). They had a few times where we could bring her for supervised time but it was mostly during port days, and we never ended up using the Night Owls babysitting service (which is around $7 from 10pm to 1am).

We had muster drill around 5pm while still in port. I remember having to wear life jackets at previous muster drills so I'm not sure when they stopped making you do that. At muster the kids started to fidget about having to wait around for half an hour and they got their muster station wrist bands. Thankfully they didn't seem to bother the kids having to wear them the whole trip.

Right after muster it was time for our 6pm dining.

Our group of 7 had been assigned to different dining rooms so first we stopped by the Atlantic (forward dining hall) and spoke with someone (maybe a headwaiter?) who I don't think understood exactly what we were asking. Finally she directed us to the Matre D' in the Pacific (aft dining room).

The Matre D' was great and took care of it right away. He got us a table in the Pacific which, in my opinion is the better dining hall because you have ocean views on three sides instead of two sides. We were just leaving port at 6:30pm while in the dining hall.

Escargo. Good. Very buttery and lots of garlic. The first night we asked for kid menus, straws for their water, and a high chair for little sister. Every following night they had these things waiting for us - really nice!

The duck appetizer. Very good. Overall, we enjoyed the dining room food. The pork chop the first night was a bit tough, I'm told by one of our group, but overall every loved everything. The appetizers were often the best part of the meal, and we'd usually order a couple apiece and pass them around to sample.

Little Sister intently studying the kids menu. I was worried how they would do in the dining halls, and if we'd have to give up on going to them and do the lido buffet but they did really well. They loved the staff. We really had fantastic wait staff in the dining hall.

Big Sister and MeMe. Kids - you take them to a nice restaurant and what do they order? PB&J or chicken nuggets, every night. Plus ice cream, of course. We had to bribe them to be good by promising it!

I'm sorry, I've forgotten what this was. Pork roast or something? I really should have taken notes!

No cruise would be complete without warm chocolate melting cake!

After dinner we went up top to watch the sunset.

The kids, especially Big Sister, LOVE the mini golf. We had to go play every evening after dinner. It was never so crowded that we couldn't get clubs and balls.

Everyone getting ready for the "Dive In Theater" movies. They seemed to be a big hit. Every night the chairs be be just about full. I remember they showed The Intern, Pitch Perfect 2, Jurassic World, Star Wars Force Awakens, Deadpool (late midnight showing), Kung Fu Panda 3, among others. One night they only had one movie instead of 3 because of the lido deck party.

Obligatory photo with the Carnival Victory name on the seat.

Sunset over the ocean. Actually over the coast of Florida, because we left port so late.

Little Sister enjoying the singing in Pitch Perfect 2 and some of the popcorn. The kids liked the movies and sometimes we'd watch them while in the pools (which would get a bit chilly at night) or the hot tubs.

After a little of the movies we checked out the arcade which had a good number of games that younger kids could play where you throw balls and such. We stopped by the welcome aboard show which was Living in America and Little Sister seemed interested in all the lights and dancing but Big Sister thought it was too loud so we headed to bed. After riding the glass elevators, of course. After putt putt their second favorite thing on the ship was the glass elevators.

Up next, our first port - Freeport.

Great start, looking forward to the rest of your cruise. Gary:)

Freeport

I know a lot of people don't care for Freeport. After all, the port is very industrial and not as pretty a sight as many other ports. But there is a lot it offers and I hope to go back and visit the Lucayan National Park and Gold Rock beach.

Last time in Freeport we went to Our Lucaya marketplace and this time, with the kids, we wanted a beach day.

View of the port area. They've expanded it a bit over the years. On the left you can see they have a lot of picnic tables but no shade. Some umbrellas would have been nice.

More of the port area. They were building some new buildings.

Little Sister awake and ready for her first day in the Bahamas. We ate breakfast at the lido buffet. There was no line at the omelet station.

Also in port is the MS Grand Celebration of the Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line. It's actually a former Holiday class Carnival Cruise ship that now does 2 day runs back and forth from the Port of Palm Beach.

Looking at the lifeboats and upper deck of the Carnival Victory after getting off.

Part of the port area after getting off. Their is a new building under construction on the far right. There were a lot of bar, food, and shopping options around the port including a Senior Frogs. The only store we stopped at was the Tortuga because my wife wanted rum cake.

Thank you for your review! Looking forward to reading more.

Getting a taxi in Freeport ended up being a bit of a hassle. We weren't the first off the ship but still there were some lines for taxi. There was one woman directing people to taxi drivers. We had 5 adults and 2 kids in our group headed to Junkanoo beach.

The taxi director sent us to one taxi driver who then ignored us and started soliciting other passengers into his van. He sent us back to the director who yelled at him and put us in a smaller Toyota Ace.

Taxi driver was great. I don't remember how long the trip was. 15 minutes? Maybe 20? The price for many taxi trips is set by the government. Round trip to Junkanoo beach is $14 a person and they didn't charge for the kids.

Junkanoo Beach Club is adjacent to the free Taino beach. It's just $3 to get in and they have showers, bathrooms, etc. Also they have beach umbrellas for rent for $3 and beach chairs too. We got there after most people from the ship so they were out of beach chairs and instead offered us some plastic lawn chairs for free. They offer the straw covered huts on the left for $20 and you can always sit in the restaurants open air area.

Looking southeast.

Looking southwest.

Overall it was a pretty good value as far as beach clubs go. The others in the group wanted to head back to the ship for lunch but I was hoping to get some cracked conch or conch fritters first, but oh well.

Local beers were $4 or 2 for $7. They had a stand right on the beach so you didn't have to go all the way into the restaurant. They also had someone chopping coconuts and making Bahama Mamas in them for $9. We bought a plain one for $4 with a straw in it so the kids could try fresh coconut.

There were not a lot of vendors trying to peddle stuff. One guy came by selling some nice looking conch shells and starfish, and another offered jetski rides next door. They were building /rebuilding a new building (restaurant?) next door to Junkanoo.

Overall it was a nice beach day. Junkanoo is nice and I would recommend it, but I would rank it below my favorite beach clubs in places like Grand Caymen and Cozumel. Just be careful about walking barefoot - people drop bottle caps all over the sand. I cut my foot on something - I don't know what - but because it was a small but deep cut I didn't notice it until later.

Back on the ship for a lido buffet lunch. The Balearia ferry was now docked. It makes runs back a forth from Ft. Lauderdale.

A Fantasy class Carnival ship that docked next to us was leaving.

Large container ship came into Freeport just before we left. The tugs had to work hard on it!

Inside the atrium. The kids were obsessed with riding the glass elevators.

Alligator fritters appetizer. Good!

Shrimp was good. The broccoli was rubbery. All frozen broccoli is rubbery to me no no surprise on that. Everything else was good. I can't remember what else we had.

2nd night was formal night. I do kinda miss the lobster on formal night, but if I really wanted it I could pay. I always like the little song and dance that the staff do most nights and the kids loved it.

A cuddly critter was waiting in our room.

Beautiful photos, thanks!

Enjoying your review! Following......

Day 3 - Nassau

I've always enjoyed the view of Nassu from the ship.

Previously we've done walking tours of Nassu to the staircase and to Finncastle. We had also been to Atlantis briefly before.

Today we decided to take the kids to Atlantis but not the waterpark part.

We caught a water taxi for $4 a person to Paradise Island. We had to wait 20 minutes for it to fill up though before it left.

Big Sister using her binoculars on the water taxi. You can see our fellow cruise ship that joined us shortly after we had arrived. There were only two ships in port that day which is not very many considering how many Nassau can handle (5 I think?)

The water taxi ride was shorter than the wait for the water taxi to fill up with passengers. There was a "tour guide" on the way pointing out some of the interesting places. He probably made up half the stuff but he was funny so I tipped him a buck when we arrived.

Passing another boat on the way, looking back toward Nassau.

Paradise Island, just about to arrive. The water taxi/ferry terminal is under the bridge to Paradise island. There are a few vendors located there with little shops. It was the only place on Paradise Island where we saw people selling things on the street.

Excellent review and photos! Thank you for your efforts.

Atlantis was quite a walk from the water taxi stop, especially with two small children.

The marina seen from the eastern entrance to Atlantis. Tickets were maybe 40 something? But the kids were free.

The kids love Octonauts so anything to do with fish is great. They flipped out at the aquarium and were so excited!

Hello there!

The kids ran up to the glass to see the eels while most of the adults did not want to get too close.

Outside at the lagoon.

Pausing in front of a fountain.

Great photos!

Sharks and stingrays at Atlantis Resort seen from a bridge.

All of the grounds at Atlantis are quite beautiful.

We took a regular taxi back to the ship. There's no reason to do the water taxi both ways and it will take a long time. Getting back took around 12 minutes vs a half hour wait for the boat to fill up plus a 12 minute ride. Price was $4 a person.

View of Atlantis from back on board the ship.

One last look at Nassau before be leave.

Soooo... if any of you were on this cruise you may have heard the captain's announcement that we would be leaving a half hour late because a passenger with a medical condition was leaving the ship. That would be my mother-in-law who left to visit a hospital in Nassau (along with her boyfriend). Don't worry it wasn't anything contagious. It was the best option because the next two days would not be anywhere that she could easily be evacuated from if her condition became more serious, plus Nassau has an airport for a flight back.

She ended up staying a couple nights in a Nassau hospital and then flew back. The charge for seeing the doctor on the ship was around $800 and the hospital required an up-front payment of almost $9000. Hopefully health insurance and trip insurance will be paying a lot of that. Plus Carnival gave her a free cruise, but she says it will be a while before she'd want to try to go on another one.

After all that excitement, we got the kids ready for dinner. They loved this octopus outside the arcade, and loved the arcade games including the skee ball and throwing ping pong balls in jars.

This sculpture thing is in front of the Pacific dining hall (aft dining hall). Seen from deck 5 (Promenade). For some reason the kids were really interested in looking at it, so every night we'd wait here for the doors to open at 6pm (early seating) instead of waiting down on deck 3 with a crowd of people. We learned that after the first night. Once we see people going in, we'd head down.

Shrimp tempura appetizer. I think this ship has not changed to the American dining menu that newer ships have? Also there were table cloths so maybe with the change they also take those away as I've read people debating having/not having them?

This is maybe candied salmon? Some kind of salmon. Very good. I kept forgetting to take photos of the main courses. I remember having jerk pork, blue crab ravioli, chateaubriand. All very good.

Look, tablecloths! Haha. The dining staff did Amore 2nd night, Low (3rd night I think), Gangnam Style (3rd night maybe?), and the farewell "Leaving on a Funship" song the last night. The kids loved it, and the wait staff were very friendly with the kids so they didn't fuss any and we (and those at the tables around us) could enjoy our meals with tantrums, yay! Fantastic wait staff in this dining hall!

Tiramisu was so good!

Of course the kids loved the towel animals.

After putt putt, pool, hot tub, arcade, riding the glass elevators, I kept the kids for the night (10pm) so wife and sister-in-law could enjoy the comedy club. They say they liked it.

I made a big mistake - I ordered room service food. The free room service food is fine, as it always has been. But we had worked up an appetite with all that activity since our 6pm dinner and wanted a snack while watching Pokemon.

I ordered chicken tenders and pepperoni pizza, each $5. I thought maybe the pizza would be as good as the pizzeria pizza from the back of the ship. NO, NO, NO. It was the worst microwave pizza I've ever had. Hey, Red Barron pizza is all right but this was terrible. Couldn't eat even one slice.

The chicken tenders were okay but even they were not as good as the ones from the grill by the pool. Lesson learned: don't order the hot room service food.

Great review and great pictures! Thanks!

Distressing to know that your mother-in-law needed medical attention and an upfront $9000 payment was needed. Did anyone contact her travel insurance company before this was needed? It is my impression that such insurance would provide such a benefit when it is required.

I hope your mother-in-law is OK now.

Distressing to know that your mother-in-law needed medical attention and an upfront $9000 payment was needed. Did anyone contact her travel insurance company before this was needed? It is my impression that such insurance would provide such a benefit when it is required.

 

I hope your mother-in-law is OK now.

Most travel insurances are reimbursements, not upfront payments.

I echo the sentiment in hoping your MIL is doing well.

Thanks for the review.

Day 4 - Half Moon Cay

The morning started out with a weird interaction. We went to lido for breakfast as we had been and were looking for a table for 5. We found and empty table that just had a plate on it covered by a napkin. Thinking it just needed to be bussed, we moved it to another table and all sat down. A few minutes late a woman came back ranting about somebody had moved her plate. We explained that we thought somebody had left it and it was waiting to be bussed. She sat at a table next to us and started to passive-aggressively ask everyone around "Who does such a thing? Who moves someone's plate?" Whoops. Is putting one napkin-covered plate on a 6 person table like reserving deck chairs with your towel? What do you think? Anyway...

Half Moon Cay is my favorite Bahamas stop. If you are wanting a beach day its the best choice on the itinerary. Last time we were here we did the stingray excursion. This time we just planned to have a beach day.

It was an excellent beach day. The family ended up splitting a bucket of beer. We decided to head back to the ship rather than have lunch on the island.

I didn't take many photos with my phone because I'd already taken my professional camera the last time we were here. You can see those photos here:

On the playground before heading back.

Back on board watching the tenders come back.

Started to get cloudy as the last tenders returned.

Frog legs appetizer at dinner. These were a little more fishy tasting that the ones I usually get at Chinese restaurants.

I have forgotten what this was, haha! It was good though! Also had the lobster soup which was really good.

Great Review :) . . . Loved the pictures too! You mention paying for Lobster, do you remember the cost?