cruisenewbie1

Yeah, we went around 1:30 and they said that everyone signed up online and that the list was full and the waiting list was a mile long. He may have misunderstood me. He did have to call someone to check on it.

We were on Breeze last week and booked this tour at Excursion Desk as soon as we boarded... probably about 1:00pm-ish. It wasn't full yet at that point. It lasted about 3 hrs and was very interesting

Went to sign up for this on our cruise last week on the Breeze. Was told at the desk that I should have booked online as they were all full up with a waiting list a mile long. I wonder if I was lied to. I was on pretty quickly with FTTF.

PART 3: Dining

• Room Service - We set out the room service card the first night for the next morning. This was the only night we did this and it came about 10 minutes after the time we had requested. No biggie. We did order room service 2 other nights for late night snacks. The first night was on Tuesday night and it took a long while. They apologized profusely and said they were swamped. DW and the kids ordered a snack another night while I was out and they had nothing bad to say. We always tipped a couple of dollars at least.
  

• Breakfast - We did Sea Day Brunch on the first sea day and it was delicious. I had the Huevos Rancheros while DW had the Salmon. We had done did put the kids in the kids club. It was good. DW did say she would have liked more sauce. We did the Sea Day brunch again on the next to last sea day and again, it was delicious.
  
• I had the Blue Iguana canting burrito one day. It was excellent. I didn't order what I wanted exactly thinking we would all share it. It was meant to be sort of a pre-breakfast appetizer.
  
• The rest of the time we ate breakfast in the lido. We would either take the kids for breakfast, drop them off at the kid's club and then we get our food later or we would take them there first, then eat and afterwards go get them for breakfast. We always found something we liked. There were 4 stations serving the same thing with 2 stations cooking omelets. There was also a station for pastries and fresh fruit cut up. There was always plenty of cold milk in cartons except for 1 day, we got there late and we got the last carton of chocolate milk and they weren't putting out any more. The dorks had to share it. They weren't happy.
  
• Someone on another page mentioned the scrambled eggs. They said they were powdery. I didn't taste this. I liked the eggs and normally I am not the biggest egg fan. They seemed more like liquid eggs.
  
• I had an omelet one day. It was delicious and the only reason I didn't ever get another was that I didn't want to deal with the lines, even though they were usually short.
  
• We got plenty of bacon. Always got more if we asked for it.
  
• I don't drink coffee but the wife said it was good, though she does doctor it heavily.
  

• Lunch - 1st day, we had Guy's burgers. My only complaint here was that you couldn't see the menu sign until you were ready to order and there was a ton of people in line behind you waiting on you to order and giving you the look of death. I got the plain cheeseburger both times I went there. They were good.
  
• Only had the Pig and Anchor once. The meat was flavorful but the sides left something to be desired.
  
• Never had the Blue Iguana for lunch or the Mongolian Wok so I am of no help there. Sorry.
  
• One day i did get the Tandoori Grill and it was delicious, beyond delicious. Probably one of my favorite places.
  
• I never did get Pizza either. They can really do better here. They don't make them fast enough and I never felt like waiting around for them to get one going. From what I could tell, they were of a good size.
  
• We got the dorks hot dogs from the deli twice and they seemed well made. DW got a Reuben once and wasn't really impressed.
  

• Dinner - OK, here is where I am going to lose some of you so be prepared. We had early seating at 6:00 pm. Our servers were Sugar (hey that is what he told us to call him. His real name is Sudarmanto. DW reminded me that he was from Indonesia. His 1st assistant was Juan and he was from the Phillipines. His 2nd assistant was Aleksandru and was from Serbia I believe. Really nice guys and they did do a good job. We usually got there at 6 or within 5 minutes after. The last night we were 10 min late due to dropping the dorks off at kids' slub. This last night it took over 20 minutes for them to acknowledge us. It turned out that the reason was they had pulled Aleksandru up to the lido to help there and so Sugar was shorthanded. They all loved our kids and were upset that they weren't there after the 2nd night. Even the Maitre'D and his assistant asked about the kids. I was very impressed with that. They had on the first 2 nights brought our kids banana splits which they loved.
  
• Appetizers were mostly delicious. DW had the Chilled Vietnamese roll the first night and she said it was ok but all it had in it were noodles, almost no vegetables. I never had a problem with any of the appetizers that I ordered. I had originally planned on running the ship out of shrimp cocktail but after the 1st night, never ordered them again.
  
• Entree's were where they lacked any kind of pizzaz. We were able to find something every night but they weren't all that great. DW had the flat iron steak the first night and didn't like it. It was gristly (sp). She ordered spinach side dish and it came out cold. I had the Mahi Mahi the first night and while it was decent, it wasn't great. Hard to explain. I got 2 lobster tails on 1st elegant night. Good but not great. 2 nights I had pasta dishes and they were excellent I wasn't disappointed. The desserts were at best an 8/10. The cheese cake was probly the best thing I had.
  
• On Belize night we went to the Farenheit 555 steak house.It was worth every penny. We each got 2 appetizers instead of an appetizer and a salad. The chef sent out this little tasting item made entirely of parmesan cheese. It was nummy. I had been dreaming of the Surf and Turf for years but when they described t, saying it came with a 4 oz portion of the filet I changed my mind and got the 18 oz Rubbed ribeye. It was all delicious. Wish I had the money to eat there every night.
  

Someone on another page said that the water on their ship was bad. I never had a problem with it on ours We didn't buy the soda package and had 2, 12 packs of water delivered to our stateroom. Our goal was to bring those water flavoring additives on the ship. However we didn't put them in the suitcase and we left them in the car. We could have kicked ourselves. I had insulated cups for the both of us and enough flavoring for her. I drank water most of them time. It was delicious. I always forgot to drink the bottled stuff. We ended up bringing a case home

PART 2: Cabin

CABIN:

We had booked stateroom 2306, a cove balcony on the port (left) side) This was the stateroom that we were going to get when we were supposed to be on the Dream last year. I really wanted it again this time and was lucky to get it. To be honest we were nervous with the dorks and a balcony and on the 1st day Dork 2 threw something overboard, no not DS. We got onto her about this and after that they couldn't go out there with anything in their hands.

This was a good size stateroom, maybe a little smaller than our balcony cabin on the Dream in '08 but not sure about that. It has the 2 beds into 1, the couch which made into a bed and the bed that came down from the ceiling. The kids were comfy. It came with a flat screen tv and plenty of closet spaces. Personal note: I wish that in the 1 closet there were side out drawers instead of 4 shelves.

The bathroom was a decent size and I got what I expected from previous cruises. DW did the unpacking and did a great job of finding a place for everything.

It was a little warm in the room at times but not miserably so and it may have been that we were hot when we walked into the room. We kept it as cold as we could.

The bed was comfortable and we reallly enjoyed the duvet. We brought some of our own pillows and DW didn't like the pillows they had but I wasn't bothered by them too much.

We did try to keep everything picked up and not leave a mess for our room steward. Only exception was the towels. Not too much room to dump those.

Speaking of towels, we loved ours. My personal opinion is that the rougher they are the better they are. Shampoo and body wash weren't high end but they did the job well. We brought conditioner for DW's hair as it is so thick.

The TV worked and the kids loved the cartoon channels. Never saw a movie from start to finish on the 2 free movie channels.

Part of the reason this room appealed to me was that I thought (wait for it) we would take the stairs more. Oh, I had such grandiose ambitions. See, we are rather fluffy and while I did start taking the stairs more at work, nothing was going to prepare me for 8 or 9 flights of stairs multiple times per day. We did make the rule then that if we only had to go up 2 or fewer floors, we would take the stairs. That eventually worked down to going from deck 2 or deck 1 or 3. We really did have the best of intentions. Well I did, DW was more realistic.

Now for our stateroom steward. Enrico and his assistant Gede. We never had to worry about the room being clean. DW did tell them only 1 service a day but we needed towels and ice in the afternoon. They didn't do this most days but it turned out well. Enrico brought DW an extension cord for her CPAP and some water for it as well.

We did get lucky in that this was one of the cabins that had a gap overhead between 2 lifeboats. The only downside was that there was a camera right out side our stateroom. I feel really sorry for them if they had it focused on our balcony.

We had pre-ordered 2 12 packs of water delivered to our stateroom before arrival and it was there waiting. We ended up only using 1 case. More on that later.

That is an understatement.

Sounds like you enjoyed it!

 

 

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Cheerio and pip pip hooray everyone.

My family of 4 just got off of the Breeze this past Sunday and I wanted to write a review. I have though long and hard about what to say and the format in which I am going to write it out. I think that I am going to wing it and go from there. Please feel free to ask questions and I will do my best to answer.

About us, we are a family of 4 from the Little Rock AR area. It is myself (Head Dork), my DW of 11 years, my 8 yr old DS (Dork 1) and my 7 yr old DD (Dork 2). It was my 4th cruise, 3rd on Carnival. My DW's 3rd, 2nd on Carnival and the kids have never cruised before. It has been 9 years since we have seen the deck of any ship.

We left Little Rock at 3 on Friday 10/06 and made it to Nacogdoches that night.

We got up the next morning and used some of our fuel points to top off the tank. We got into Galveston a little before noon 10/07 and thought we would take a chance and see if our hotel room (Days Inn on Seawall Blvd) was available. I can assure you now that it wasn't. Well we drove downtown and DW wanted to ride the trolley and do some 'splorin. We at lunch and then spent almost 2.5 hours riding the trolley. Definitely got our fill.

By this time we were ready to go to the hotel so we returned and our room was ready. The kids wanted to swim and as it was 300% humidity, we quickly agreed. We killed an hour in the pool before getting ready for dinner.

Before we left, i had joined Joe's Crab Shack club and received a coupon for a free appetizer. DW wanted to go there as they had a play area to keep the dorks occupied. (Can you guess what happens next?) Well we get there and we joke around with the maitre'd and they realize that with the dorks we wanted somewhere where we could see them play outside but they quickly shut that down saying the play area was closed. Now the dorks didn't handle this well but they did overcome and adapt. We already knew what we wanted and got our order in. It was good food and wew were definitely stuffed. After dinner I suggested something from Ben and Jerry's. To give the rest of the family they did put up the appearance of a good fight before finally agreeing to stop. After that, we went to the hotel and chillaxed while I went and dried our bathing suits downstairs in the laundry area.

The next morning 10/08 (cruise day, yay!!!!!) we got up and the kids were raring to go. Just an afterthought but the day before we had received an email from Carnival stating to delays on the previous cruise that we needed to delay our arrival to check on by an hour. Back to my forethought. While in the little dining area we were treated to generic cold cereal, one waffle maker, spoiled yogurt and milk. I went to Mickey D's and got some sausage biscuits. We checked out and then made a pit stop at Walgreens to get some last minute supplies.

We had prepaid for parking at Indoor Cruise Parking for the week. We got there and parked quickly, here where things slowed down. I had it in my fat head that things would move quickly and once my family was on the bus, they would take off, uh no!!!!! We had to wait for it to fill up. Once that happened we took off like a herd of turtles. Traffic was crazy. It took longer than I would like but then I was slightly impatient as you can imagine. Once we got to the port, they unloaded us and off we went to find a porter. even though I tipped him he didn't put the orange FTTF sticker on our bag like he promised. Porter 134. I will remember that #. We went to where people were lining up and once I realized there was a separate line for FTTF, things prococeeded much faster. We proceeded through check in and got to the desk to deposit funds. I put enough down to get started (used cash and gift cards the whole trip) After that, they were boarding and our happy hineys proceeded onboard. It was about 1230 at this time so we proceeded to our stateroom,dropped off our carry on's and headed up to find some grub.

Now I admit, on the first day I wanted Guy's burger for lunch and I got it. It was a good burger and fries and I was now happy. This iswhere the details get fuzzy. I don't remember everything in order that we did. I do remember we asked about Dr. Suess breakfast and was told that they were already full. i also asked about signing up for behind the scenes tour and was informed that we were able to book this excursion online and that it was full. No big deal. My loving DW felt really bad that I didn't get it but I wasn't. No one was hurt as a result of me not getting it so no biggie. Live and learn for next time.

NOOOOO!!!!! I have been waiting for that Chesecake for 2 years. Not fair. 1 week to go. They couldn't wait 2 more weeks.

hummer dude, I wish I knew. We are leaving 2 weeks after you so unfortunately you will find out before me.

We are sailing on the Breeze in 2 weeks. Money is a factor but the wife is wanting pictures. Will the pictures remain there all week so we can decide at the end how much our picture budget is or do they delete them on a regular basis?

Surge protectors only protect against high voltage spikes like you get on shore from blown pole transformers or lightning strikes. Neither of these things will affect your electronics when onboard a ship. The power transformers onboard do not drop from 10,000 volts to 220 volts like the pole transformers do, and they are a different type that do not fail like the pole transformers. Due to the floating ground on ships, lightning, even when it actually hits a ship, will not enter the electrical system like it does on land. I have been on several ships hit by lightning, and not one piece of electronics has been damaged, except for ship's radios, as the antennas tend to attract the strikes, but each antenna is separate so only some radios get affected.

 

The ship has thousands of pieces of electronics onboard, many more critical than your cell phone, like the navigation equipment, or the engine room automation that keeps the lights on, or the fire detection equipment, and there is not one surge protector either required or installed on any of these critical systems, because they are not required.

 

If you search either my posts, or do a CC search for surge protectors or suppressors, you can find posts that I or others have made that describe the dangers of surge protectors on ships, and even the USCG Safety Notice regarding them.

 

I have taken to calling the use of surge protectors onboard ships as just as much of a silent killer as heart disease, because it can strike at any time, causing a fire in your cabin, and will normally strike without warning, on a surge protector that has operated fine on past cruises, and is operating fine right up until the instant it fails.

Question, Since you seem to know a lot about this, I am going to pick your brain. Is there any one type of power strip that you recommend? Thanks

When are you sailing?

 

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We are leaving on October 8th

When are you cruising? Is that Coz, Belize, Roatan? Can you take pictures of your Fun Times?

We are cruising in 2 weeks. Correct, on the itinerary. I will be happy to take pictures of the fun times.

Hey, me again. posting a reply to bring it back into play. If you have any questions you want answered about the Breeze, let me know and I will do my best to get you an answer.

Does anyone know if they allow those little water flavor bottles on board such as Mio? I haven't seen anything about them. They are more convenient than the powdered bags

Thanks

MandyMooToo,

I tried looking up how to contact Carnival Customer Service but it was all phone numbers. Do you have an email contact for them?

Here is Carnival's rule copied directly from their FAQ page.

• Electrical devices such as fans, power strips, multi plug box outlets/adaptors, and extension cords (without surge protectors) are allowed on board when used with proper caution. However, if such devices are determined to pose a hazard, they will be removed and returned the last day of the cruise prior to debark.
  

We are departing out of Galveston and I am curious, Who is making the decision? Security? Does the room steward look at it and make the decision? I am bringing a 4 inch personal fan, mainly for the white noise.

Is there any consistency with their rules?

With the new photograph system in place, did they lower the prices any? I can't understand why they are so expensive.

Think of the cost factor alone. I counted 25 ships in the fleet. Assuming 800 rooms per ship and a cost of $20 per coffee maker, you are looking at $400,000. Plus you then have to factor in extras for ones that break. The steward would have to ensure they are kept clean. The coffee supplies in each room. Cost wise there is no upside for them to do it. None. It won't attract new passengers. It takes up valuable counter and plug space in the cabins. I for one sure as heck don't want it. ( By the way, my calculations were pure guesswork and it could be higher or lower than that but I hope you get my point)

From the title it is hard todiscern what this thread is about but I wanted to post and ask this questionfor those who will be sailing after me.

My wife and I are sailing on the Breeze later this yearwith our 2 children. They will be 8 and 7 at the time of sailing. We aregoing to be putting them into the kids club as much as they want to go. Whileresearching this cruise one of the things that we had a difficult time findinganswers to were activities for the kids.

Now that I am done with the long introduction, here is myquestion. For those of you who will be sailing after us, do you have anyspecific things regarding the cruise that you would like us to look into?

We aren't taking any ship sponsored excursions so that issomething we can't help with and we do plan to stay on the ship in Belize. Ifyou have any questions regarding the kids club, the photo packages, thestateroom (we are getting a cove balcony), quality and temp of the meals. Ipromise that I will do my best to get answers to your questions and respondupon our return.

We don't plan on purchasing any internet minutes. We do plan onpurchasing the HUB app package. We do have fttf and I can comment on that ifyou want. We are driving down the day before and are parking off site. Parkingwas reserved months ago and I will tell you how that goes and where we parkedafter it is over with. We do plan on going to Nachi Cocom in Cozumel and LittleFrench Key in Roatan (provided finances hold out). I hope to do the behind thescenes tour (again money). Not going to buy gold by the inch or a new Rolex.Love food but don't drink wine and we feel that is a big part of the cost andexperience of the chef's table so we will skip that. We plan on eating mostnights in the MDR with the early seating. Doubt that I will post food porn butyou never know. We are taking a wait and see attitude on how the kids do in theMDR to see if we will take them there every night. Definitely going to theSteakhouse one night. Definitely want to do Guys, (both of them), a Blue Iguanabreakfast burrito. Thought about getting the bottomless bubbles but I thinkthat we will take a couple of cases of sodas on board (store brand diet dew),simply to cut down on the costs. We plan on asking the Room Steward for twice aday service (we do tip on top of the already prepaid gratuities). I plan ongoing into the petri dishes on board (pool and hot tubs) as well as hoping thatI can get a clamshell in the serenity area (pipedream I know). I plan onplaying with the dorks (yes I Love my kids) as much as I can stand them. I ameven going to try out the water slide (hate heights and enclosed spaces). Yeah,I know, not the brightest star in the sky huh? We have an 8 hour drive backhome on Sunday and plan on getting an early start. Reallly thinking about doingself assist. Will see how that goes. There might be a million other things thatI am forgetting but please, if I can help answer your questions or alleviateyour fears, please ask me and I will do what I can to help.

(Dang, that was a long winded paragraph)

Everyone on this site has been extraordinarily helpful inanswering my questions in the past that I wanted to pay it forward in a waythat will help future cruisers.

Due to cost and time restrictions, we have to drive to either Galveston or New Orleans. I just did a mock booking on the only 2 sailings available to me on the same weekend. I have to go with my wallet. With similar type staterooms on similar decks, it was going to cost me $850 more to cruise with RCL. I look forward to trying them one day but for now Carnival earns my loyalty simply based on price.

We are booked in 2306 for October this year. Any pics that you can post of the room would be appreciated. we want to show the kids what the room looks like. Glad that you had a good time.

My family and I will be cruising with you as well. It has been 9 years since our last cruise. We got a cove balcony on deck 2 and I reallly want to take the stairs as much as possible (In reality we will see). I am anxious myself if it as I remember.

Does anyone know the location of this Muster Station? Thanks

We are staying in a Cove balcony on deck 2 on the Breeze. I was trying to determine if we are going to have to haul our luggage up to self debark or if they let you off on deck 2.

Check to see if there is a facebook page started that you can latch onto