ChrisNCruiser

Hi gang,

I was also on this cruise. Thank you for the Guest Care email address. I'm definitely writing. With 177 days of Carnival sailings, I'm so perturbed about the way this cruise was handled that I may not make it to Diamond (200 nights).

 

Weather issues and itinerary changes are understandable; the way it was handled by Carnival was not.

Hi EBFURR, thanks for the Elation info. Great scoop! We're scheduled to sail Elation in October (knock on wood) and would love to see the pictures. Hope what you saw are scenic Oceanview cabins. Had one on the Splendor once and it was spectacular.

Porting in Charleston? Ick

I was expecting Port Canaveral, so I'll take it.

Nonchalantly announced at the end of the muster drill on the Carnival Pride: itinerary change to Charleston SC, Freeport, and, "weather permitting," Nassau (i.e. probably not happening). Oh well. Weather happens and we'll have a good time regardless :). If anyone is wondering, no word on any kind of credit or future discount, but I'll update my post of that changes.

Oh I agree, but this is my 30th cruise with carnival, and the first time they took roll call. Even if everyone had been there (which they weren't). It still added a substantial amount of standing time. I know I'm whining, but I'm guessing I'm not the only one who has physical trouble standing for an hour packed like sardines. (Believe me, I wish I could stand that long comfortably.)

Just leaving now

on the Jan 29th sailing. Muster drill lasted over an hour standing at the lifeboats. They took "mandatory roll call" for each and every cabin. Quite the *****. People started raging and one guy finally just left screaming. Is this mandatory for all carnival sailings now? Is it a test? Not a great way to start a cruise. I'm all for safety but after having back surgery a few months ago, there's a huge difference between standing for 15-20 minutes and standing for over an hour.

The rooms will only show up on Carnival's website if there's one available - when they ARE available they're listed under "Oceanview." It doesn't happen often, and we really lucked out since it only showed up a few weeks before our cruise. Typically, from what I've heard they're booked a long time in advance.

 

An answer an earlier question, we peeked in other non-scenic oceanview cabins on the Splendor and they didn't have the blue carpet. These cabins are brand new, so they got the Breeze-esque decor.

Hi Cruiselover**,

We had a wonderful cruise and neither the once-a-day-service nor unavoidable pinkness of the ship were serious detractors. That pink really was excessive, though! I'm so glad to hear that you told your cabin steward "I know we can have both, so that's what I'm selecting", and it worked :-) I wish that we had taken that approach. We agree that overall, the service was outstanding - we really loved our dining room staff, and they had our preferences down pat by the second night, even though we had anytime dining.

 

That said, I'm not comfortable with Carnival cutting corners to the point that their cabin stewards are forced to be aggressive; our cabin steward was clearly overworked - he was ALWAYS cleaning cabins, regardless of the time of day - and I don't want to feel guilty about having to push the issue. Next weekend I'm going to write a very careful and professional letter to Carnival concerning our displeasure with this potential new policy. I know it's in the testing stage but we all know what that means - they're probably just figuring out the best way to put a spin on the objections. We're definitely going to let them know that it will impact our future decisions to invite (profitable) third or fourth people to sail with us in the same cabin if we all have to worry about keeping a cabin tidy.

 

A weird thing about the cruise director and entertainment staff: Chloe was absolutely fine - but one of the Entertainment Guys was the cruise director on our previous September cruise on the Sunshine, and we thought he was a lot better, so we couldn't understand why he was relegated to 'Happy Guy Who Dances on the Lido Deck' on this cruise. (He was known as 'Chris from Connecticut' on the Splendor but 'C-Luv' on the Sunshine.)

We were on the splendor two weeks ago; for our cabin, the air conditioning was better than nothing, but the cabin never got as cold as we prefer. That said, the effectiveness of the air conditioning can vary from cabin to cabin on the same ship. For example, we've sailed the Esctasy, Fascination, and Liberty on multiple occasions, and the air conditioning effectiveness has ranged from amazing to "you can bake a cake in it" depending on the cabin.

Hi Pam,

We walked through the Serenity deck a couple of times but didn't spend any time on it while on the Splendor. We LOVE the serenity decks on the smaller Fascination-class ships, but the locations and views don't do a lot for us on the larger ships. In particular to the Splendor (a one-off ship for Carnival), it offered poor views and ventilation. While I love the idea of peace and quiet, when we sail the larger ships we tend to stay on the seldom-used decks right out of the atrium on promenade under the life boat. Less sun, but much more scenic / airy and closer to the water.

 

I'm glad everyone is enjoying the pictures :-) To answer a few questions....

 

ROOM COST / TYPE / QUALITY

We REALLY lucked out getting the cabin. Because it was a new cabin that was built during the March-April drydock, it seems that Carnival didn't open up the inventory until a few weeks before the cruise. From what we have heard and seen, it's really hard to get one of these on a ship that has them, and are usually sold as soon as Carnival releases inventory (12-18 months out). At the time we snagged it we were originally booked in one of the two over-sized Ocean View cabins in the back corners of the Main deck, but had booked it so far in advance that the price of an OV had dropped several hundred dollars as opposed to what we originally paid. Bummed about that, about a month before the cruise we were going to consider upgrading to a balcony since the cost would have been negligible from the original price of the corner OV. As we were looking, we discovered that Carnival had released the inventory on these, and snagged it. The total cost to upgrade from our corner OV cabin was only $60 total. It's NOT considered a junior suite so it doesn't come with early boarding, etc, but as you can see in the pics it's very large - at least as large as a junior suite - but the bathroom is standard size with no tub.

 

We would absolutely consider this cabin over a balcony if we were ever lucky enough to find one available again. We ended up relaxing and spending more time in this cabin than we have for the few times we've splurged on a balcony.

 

ONCE-A-DAY SERVICE:

We boarded the ship determined to get the twice-a-day service until we met our steward. I'm a pretty determined and aggressive person, and yet he still walked away only agreeing to service the cabin once a day :p I don't regret the 'decision' - our steward and his assistant worked very, very, very hard during the cruise - but I do plan on letting Carnival know how we feel about it. It does not make the stewards' lives any easier because they now have many more cabins to service. We were also wondering if they were being compensated appropriately. When we asked, the steward made it clear that we could feel free to grab whatever we wanted off of his cart in the hallway (and we did, like towels). Because we were just two people in an over-sized cabin, we were able to keep our cabin clean and tidy with a minimal extra effort - but we can see this being an issue for three or more people in a smaller cabin, especially the bathroom. Also, we had morning service, but a few times during the cruise he dropped off items at night while we were at dinner (our free Platinum laundry, past guest invitations and gifts, etc).

 

Hope this helps!

Good comparison because they were built directly above the bridge. I forgot to put in my original posting that several times throughout the cruise we could hear the bridge's huge (and loud and squeaky) "Windshield wipers" cut on for about a minute at a time. Unfortunately, this typically happened at night, and even woke me once. No biggie. ...

Hi! - I just sailed in this cabin last week, and it was wonderful!; here's a link to my posting and the pics I took of the cabin.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2353049&highlight=splendor

 

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipM3ESTcciu97_HlJyW-Lrlo5tJrJOmaDjdyG1Jj1tmzA3d4Mutj7Ohv1zeXHnu2VQ?key=eEZDeFZ4cVA4b25Vc3lKbFJaMjY3QURTbDJtd2l3

 

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did :-)

Hi All,

We just sailed on the Carnival Splendor in new Scenic Ocean View cabin 9201, and took plenty of pictures (many staged :p). We were the fourth sailing to have the room available, so everything in the cabin was basically brand new. A link to several pictures is tacked to the end of this post.

 

 

We've sailed on many carnival cruises in a variety of cabin types, so we have some experience for comparison. Here's an overview of my thoughts:

 

- The cabin was well worth the money we paid (about the same as a standard balcony), and based on the size and the view we would definitely consider booking it again over a balcony depending on the itinerary and time of year.

 

- We spent more time in the cabin than we typically would because it was so comfortable; we especially enjoyed having breakfast and late-night snacks in the room. Being on the lido deck made this easy.

 

- the room included an unexpected additional electrical outlet right below the ledge of the two large windows. That gave us a total of three 110v outlets in the room so we never had to break out a power strip.

 

- there was NO sign in this particular cabin that stated that we had to keep the lights off at night unless the blinds were drawn, and our cabin steward said nothing about it. That said, we still kept the lights to a minimum whenever the blinds were up at night.

 

- we moved the two tables and chairs around so make for more floor space, and moved it all back to the original configuration before we disembarked.

 

- My favorite area of the room was a chair we put between the fridge cabinet and the window, with the other chair used as a footrest.

 

- the room never got uncomfortably hot, but it never got as cold as we would have liked, either. There were separate controls for each of the two air ducts.

 

- We were able to briefly peek into the comparable cabin on the other side (9200) and it included the exact same furniture: the bed, sofa, two tables, two chairs.

 

- Despite our rehearsing in advance, we wussed out and only selected one of the two room service times (he was PERSISTENT), and now that it's all said and done we're OK with it, with reservations. We selected the morning time, and the latest the room was supposed to be cleaned was 12:30; he was usually finished with our cabin well before then except once. He clearly had too many cabins to service, and while the room was always very neat and tidy when he was finished we didn't get the towel animals a couple of times, and twice the bed was made kind of funky (think short-sheeting), even though it looked fine.

 

Here's a link to the pics:

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipM3ESTcciu97_HlJyW-Lrlo5tJrJOmaDjdyG1Jj1tmzA3d4Mutj7Ohv1zeXHnu2VQ?key=eEZDeFZ4cVA4b25Vc3lKbFJaMjY3QURTbDJtd2l3

 

Thanks for reading!

I've been on 26 cruises - all on Carnival, and the most recent on the Sunshine last October. (We had also been on it twice before, as the Destiny.) While ship isn't flawless (the weird layout of the comedy club sucks), we enjoyed it so much that we will definitely sail it again. Most of the ship felt brand-new; the only area that felt older was the front half of the lido deck pool area. The ship IS more crowded than a typical Carnival cruise but it never resulted in long food lines, and we thought it just added to a more festive atmosphere. Hope you enjoy your cruise :)

Hi there,

Thanks for your offer to send out Fun Times for the five-day on the Sunshine. I'm taking a five-day on Sept 27th and would love to see the Fun Times. If your offer still stands, please email them to newpherchris at yahoo dot com. Thanks! :-)