Carnival Sensation Review - June 15-19 2017

Before I start, a little about us. This was a mother/daughters girls trip. This was the 4th cruise for myself (Cassie) and the first cruise for both my mom (Debbie) and sister (Molly). This was a big first for me, though, in that it’s the first time I’ve left my babies (ages 4 and 2, so not quite such babies anymore, but they’ll always be my babies!). I’m a SAHM and pretty much have them by my side 24/7 and had only been away for maybe 5 hours at the most once before this trip, so it was a much needed refreshing break but I was so happy to get back home to them at the end of it. Huge shout out to my in-laws for being willing to help make this possible!

We chose the sailing out of Miami to Key West and Cozumel.

Pre-cruise

I thought I’d share this part for any other moms/parents who will be leaving little ones at home. I was a little nervous about leaving the kiddos (mostly my little guy), not knowing how they’d do, so I wanted to leave some fun things for them to look forward to each day. I left behind a letter and little gift (just things like coloring books/sticker sets/tattoos) as well as making a short video for them to watch each morning. I hear they loved it!

Travel Day

A perk to having a flight attendant sister, we get to fly for free! We had to of course fly standby, so we wanted to get to the airport plenty early in case we couldn’t make the first one we’d have a few more chances. My mom and I had to first drive two hours up to Chicago. We got there around 10, picked up Molly, drove to the parking lot (we pre-booked Airport Park – Midway for $6.95/day) and took their shuttle over to the airport. Molly then realized she was pretty sure she left her coffee pot on… (we love Molly, even with her forgetfulness and ability to lose everything!). Thankfully her crash pad is just a couple blocks from the airport, so after checking our luggage she quickly walked back to take care of that since nobody else would be there the rest of the day. Once she got back, she got us checked in up at the desk and we were excited to see we were at the top of the list. We then grabbed some (terrible) lunch and went back over to check on things and yay we got tickets! So we had to take a quick celebratory selfie before boarding!

We flew in to Fort Lauderdale and then grabbed an Uber over to Miami. This was my first time using Uber, but it was a very smooth process and worked out great. We stayed at the Casa Boutique Hotel in Miami Beach. The hotel itself was super cute and in a great location being just a couple blocks from the beach and a short drive to the port.

After checking out our room, we were ready to find some dinner. There were lots of options all down the street that looked great and it just looked so cute with all the outdoor seating. We chose a really small place that had great reviews on yelp called Al Basha Grill. It was delish!

Then after dinner we decided to walk down to the beach. It was dark by this point, so we couldn’t see much, but it was nice to walk barefoot in the sand for a bit. We attempted taking a selfie, but it didn’t turn out at all. The best I could get was of the skyline.

On our walk back to the hotel, we stopped in at a Walgreens to grab our bottles of wine (since we hadn’t planned on getting the cheers packages at that time) and a few things that Molly forgot. ;p We also stopped in a couple souvenir shops where my mom got some overpriced postcards before heading back to our hotel for the evening.

So while we did like our hotel for the most part, I wouldn’tstay here again. Maybe it was just our room, but as you can see in the abovepic, there is a club directly next door (which we hadn’t realized) which playedvery loud music until the early hours of the morning. The walls in the hotelare also very thin and our alarm clock ended up being the neighbor’s showerturning on. But the staff, especially the guy working the front desk in the morning, were very nice and helpful.

Coming up… embarkation!

Great start to you review! :)

How much was the Uber? the hotel?

Will be following your interesting review.

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Love the Sensation!

Great start to you review! :)

 

How much was the Uber? the hotel?

I believe the Uber ride was $45/$15pp and the hotel ended up being $132.

Will be following your interesting review.

 

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Hope you enjoy! Feel free to ask any questions. I'll try to keep this going as quickly as I can (or as the kids will let me).

Love the Sensation!

It was the smallest ship I've been on so far, so I wouldn't necessarily say it's my favorite, but we had a great time! No complaints.

Thanks for the review.

Looking forward to the rest of this review! We'll be sailing on the Sensation for the first time in September (actually it'll be our first cruise ever) so I'm excited to hear about your experience.

Thanks for the review.

Thanks for reading! More coming up here in a bit.

Looking forward to the rest of this review! We'll be sailing on the Sensation for the first time in September (actually it'll be our first cruise ever) so I'm excited to hear about your experience.

Oh exciting! Enjoy and prepare to get hooked!

Embarkation

In the morning we grabbed some breakfast at the hotel, which had a limited selection but hey we knew we’d be grabbing some cruise food soon enough. Once we were packed up, we checked out and called another Uber over to the port. We had selected the 11:00 check in time, and I believe that’s right around the time we arrived.

First sight of the ship on the drive over! Getting excited!!!

The Uber driver was a little confused on where to drop us off at and originally started getting out to grab our luggage on the complete opposite side of the port. We asked him to drive closer and he finally got us at least close enough that it was just a short walk. But what happened next still just blows my mind.

So we walked up here to where I remembered dropping off our luggage the last time we sailed out of Miami. You bring your luggage to the section on the left here and then go into the building on the right. There weren’t any signs, but a porter waved us over. I got there first, so I pulled out my wallet to get a tip out for him and as I hand it to him, he points to each of our suitcases and counts out loud 1, 2, 3 and would not take my dollar until both my mom and sister had dug theirs out of their purses for him. I was in shock at his rudeness! Then he immediately takes off walking over to the building, leaving our luggage there in that spot and we were left wondering did he say to follow him or what is going on? But he just charged off, never turning back. So we were a little uneasy just leaving our luggage there, but we didn’t know what else to do, so we moved on over to the building.

There were workers there checking the boarding passes to make sure we were at the correct check in time. And we quickly moved on in, through security, and the whole process was the fastest we’ve dealt with yet. It was so easy! We had just a short wait before they called our zone and before we knew it we were walking onto the Sensation!!!

We went straight up to the Lido deck to grab lunch. It was already getting crowded, so we found a table first and of course being the sweet mom that she is, she let us girls go pick up our lunch first while she sat with our things. The buffet options didn’t look too appealing and I was dying for that Guy’s Burger and Fries, so I went straight there. I’m thinking that’s what we all got actually.

Soooo good! And then we chose a few desserts next. I forgot to snap a pic before eating that first cake pop. But it was as yummy as I remembered from last time. The caramel cheesecake was excellent as well. I normally find the buffet desserts to look better than they taste, so I was better this time with my choices and what I remember liking previously, since I hate wasting food.

Our first to-do after lunch was to snap a bunch of selfies to post for social media! I won’t tell you how long it took to get decent ones that we all liked or didn’t have somebody’s hair blowing in the wind. ;p

Not a bad view!

We also walked to the other side to get a shot of the whale tail with the view.

The mini golf is over there, so I took that opportunity to grab a pic.

It was now 1:30, when we were told our rooms would be ready, so we decided to go there to check it out. One thing that was different on the Sensation from the ships I’ve previously sailed is the number system. We were on deck 4, but it is called deck R. Each floor is labeled as a letter on the elevators. Also, the elevators don't go from the very top floor to the very bottom. You might take one elevator up to the top, then you have to walk over and take the stairs up the rest of the way or walk over to another elevator if you need it. But we were in room R131, an ocean view. Here’s some pics.

And this took place before any drinking had begun… :')

Speaking of drinking, as I said earlier we had not been planning on getting the Cheers package, thanks to me. I’m not that big of a drinker and couldn’t justify spending that price when I’d already spent so much on the cruise. But my mom decided she really wanted it and was going to get it for us. Thanks, mom! We first got in line at Guest Services, which was already quite the line, but thankfully someone was walking down to see what everyone was waiting for and they told us that we could just sign up for it at any bar. So glad we didn’t stand in that whole line to be told that! So we stopped at the Atrium Bar and grabbed our first drinks! I went with the highly recommended Kiss on the Lips. It did not disappoint! I had it several times over the trip.

Our next thing we wanted to do was the Spa tour for the raffle drawing. This is something I’ve never done and thought we’d give it a try. As we walked in, someone was waiting and took us on the tour. Our first stop was the gym. I was really hoping to make it to the gym for some running on our sea day this trip, but that never ended up happening. It’s really nice, though! They had a trainer with a sign up table for classes they offer and he gave us his spiel on each.

Next was the spa rooms. Someone there explained the services she offered and handed us some kind of product to smell, which did smell wonderful!

Next up was a room full of chairs that they were waiting to fill up a bit before they started talking about the massages. They even walked around with a few tools (hot stones and some kind of rolling thing) to give us a little tease. I have to say the hot stones felt amazing! And our last stop was the hair salon. We entered our tickets and decided to go see if our luggage had arrived yet. And it had!

We started some unpacking until we heard the announcement for Muster Drill. A lady was already walking through the halls knocking on doors asking everyone to make their way down. Our station was in a lounge. We waited there for the talk and then they brought us up to the Lido to show us where our boat was. I can’t remember exactly how long the whole process took, but it wasn’t too bad.

After a stop back to our room when we realized mom hadn’t taken her motion sickness meds, we were ready for sail away. We were going to go up to check out the Sail Away Party up on the Lido deck. On the way there we walked past the Casino.

And had to stop at the bar to grab another drink. I went with the Miami Vice this time.

There was some dancing going on up at the Lido, but we seemed to catch the end of most of it. The cruise director, Kabir, had been up there on the stage, but then left to move on to something else. The DJ took over, but most people left shortly after.

We realized we’d need to head back to the Spa for the raffle drawing. Unfortunately we didn’t win, and fyi you apparently don’t have to do the spa tour to enter as there were people just walking in and being handed raffle tickets to enter...

After a little rest in our room, we got ready for dinner. As a SAHM, I don’t often have a reason to get all dressed up and spend the extra time on my hair and makeup anymore, so I really loved getting to do that each night of our cruise!

For dinner I started with the Caesar salad, which I thought was ok.

The brisket with bacon mac ‘n cheese was amazing, though! So so good!

For dessert, my mom and I each ordered the warm chocolate melting cake, but we tried asking for peanut butter on the side as I’ve seen other people on here have done. Our waiter said ok, but when he came back he said they were out, but had given us peanut pecan ice cream instead. Bummer! (of course Molly tried it the next night and got it…)

Just shortly after they brought that, out came a surprise. I had noticed during dinner that there was lots of birthday singing going on, which I hadn’t remembered from the past (but our last two cruises have been with the kids and we stuck with Lido dinners, so this might not actually be anything new). But out came the singing waiters and a birthday cake for me. I was definitely not expecting this as my birthday was the week before. Unfortunately, and I felt terrible about this as it was a nice surprise, but I was so stuffed by this point and the cake wasn’t really that great, so it was pretty much a waste.

After we finished up dinner, we went over to the Gender Showdown going on in the theater.

We didn’t know what to expect exactly. They separated the audience into men on one side and ladies on the other. Then Chad, the game host, picked out a team captain for each side. We would then go back and forth with him asking the ladies a question relating to something the men might know and then asking the men questions about something the ladies would know. It was alright, kind of entertaining.

After that, some kind of music trivia started. We stayed around for it, but I can’t remember now what it was exactly. Here’s a pic of CD Kabir up on stage.

Bingo was getting ready to start next and my mom wasn’t feeling great, so we went back for a little break in our room. Earlier in the day our room steward had stopped by and asked if we wanted morning or evening cleaning. We chose evening. So while we were out we had turn down and our first towel animal had arrived!

My mom decided to be done for the evening, but Molly and I wanted to check out the Welcome Aboard show. This is also something that we had to skip our past two cruises, with it being too late for the kiddos, but wow it’s really changed from how it was my first cruise. I was expecting a show with the singers and dancers the whole time, but it started out with two teams doing a challenge involving sticky balls. Then the towel animal puppets. The singers did make an appearance at the end, though.

After the show we went up to the night club. I guess it was still too early for the crowd, but Molly wasn’t feeling it so we just called it a night since we knew we’d be getting up early for Key West.

Coming up… Key West!

I'm glad that you luggage arrived [emoji33], how rude of that porter! Great start on the review.

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Great start--thanks for writing!

Great review! Following along for the rest of the cruise.

I'm glad that you luggage arrived [emoji33], how rude of that porter! Great start on the review.

 

 

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Right? It was such a relief when we saw they had all arrived. Thanks for reading!

Great start to your review! Did your mom and sister get hooked on cruising? I'm treating my mom to her first cruise next year, and I keep going back and forth between the Fantasy class ships (like Sensation) and something bigger.

You all are so pretty! Very photogenic too:)

Great start--thanks for writing!

Great review! Following along for the rest of the cruise.

Thanks for reading! :)

Great start to your review! Did your mom and sister get hooked on cruising? I'm treating my mom to her first cruise next year, and I keep going back and forth between the Fantasy class ships (like Sensation) and something bigger.

 

You all are so pretty! Very photogenic too:)

My sister, yes! She already has her next one booked for August. Have to say I'm a little jealous! My mom, however, although she never actually got sick, she couldn't look out at the water at all. So unfortunately our ocean view room was a bit of a waste since we could never have the curtains open. And she couldn't just sit out on the deck, other than when we went out to Serenity and she could lay down on the lounge chair and close her eyes. She said she would do it again if we all wanted to go together (I want to do a big family group cruise eventually), but she doesn't think she'd just plan one herself.

I hope you have a great time on your cruise. Good luck on picking one out. And thank you, you're too kind!

Oh, and go Cardinals! ;)

Key West

Today was our early morning. We would be arriving at Key West at 7:30 and were only there until 1pm, so we wanted to get off the ship as soon as we could. We were up by 6, got ready for the day and went over to the buffet for breakfast. Breakfast has always been my favorite meal on the ships, but I have to say I wasn’t quite as impressed with it this trip. Not to say that it was bad at all, just not quite what I remembered. Here’s my breakfast selections.

We were still sailing when we had gone up to breakfast, but by the time we finished we had docked in Key West. We snapped some pics from the ship before making our way off.

And had to get this one before leaving the port area, although the lighting wasn’t the best.

This was each of our first times to Key West. We didn’t book any excursions, just planned on walking around and exploring the city. We wanted to go straight down to the Southernmost Point first, to get that photo op before the line got too long, so we headed down Whitehead Street. This city is so cute! I’d love to go back and have more time to visit. I just loved all the cute old houses.

Lots of neat trees, too.

We walked past Ernest Hemingway’s home and saw some of his infamous cats outside.

The lighthouse is just across the street.