Fire6

We are excited to join this cruise. We have not been to any of these ports before. We are also looking forward to spending the weekend in NYC before the cruise (one of our favorite cities to visit).

We have cruised about a dozen times (Carnival, NCL, and Princess) but are taking our first HAL cruise and first transatlantic next spring to celebrate our retirements (Oosterdam from Florida to Rome in April). We are prepared to entertain ourselves on the sea days, but we are curious what entertainment/enrichment that HAL may offer in the 5 or 6 sea days between Florida and our first port. I've tried to search the forum, but haven't had much luck. Thanks!

The deli had the standard Carnival deli menu.

Carnival would not be my first choice for an Alaska cruise. Aside from ports of call, I think each line has different permits for where they can go to see glaciers. Going to Glacier Bay on Norwegian Encore was an amazing experience and much better than going to Tracy Arm Fjord (which I've done on Carnival and Princess). Aside from that, the port calls are all pretty much the same for each cruise line. Splendor is an older ship, and Spirit (which I'm going on in a month) is also old and even smaller. If prices were all the same, I honestly would not have picked either of them but the cabins were almost free with the deals we got...we are basically just paying port fees and gratuities. Norwegian Encore was a beautiful ship and supposedly purposefully designed for Alaska. The overall experience was superior (although I prefer the food on Carnival). I have also heard that Holland America is a great Alaska experience, but we are in our 50's and found Princess to be a bit too sedate for us (and we are by no means partiers), so I'm not sure if Holland America would be for us, as I understand that the demographic skews even older than Princess. I think Carnival's sweet spot is warm, fun destinations and the ships and entertainment are designed accordingly. The Splendor felt a bit like a fish out of water in the Alaska market, but it's still hard to find anything bad to say about being on a cruise ship for a week.

First off, let me say that I have been hesitant about posting this, since Saint Greg did a very detailed review of the Splendor a couple weeks after I sailed. Still, I hope this will be a helpful quick look at the ship and a few of my observations. Saint Greg's review will provide much more detail than I could ever hope to provide, but I am still happy to answer any questions. This was my third Alaska cruise (have previously sailed to Alaska on Princess and Norwegian) and my eighth Carnival cruise. I live in the Seattle area and got a crazy low last minute cruise deal that I couldn't pass up. I am a semi-retired consultant, and my wife still is working, so this was my first solo cruise, as all I needed for work was periodic email access. I booked an inside cabin, but about two weeks before the cruise got an upgrade call and paid to move up to a balcony. Embarkation: My daughter lives about a mile from the cruise port, so her boyfriend dropped me off around 10 am. I had a 10:30 boarding time, but there were people still coming off of the ship and the porters were not set up to accept luggage. It was a nice day, so it wasn't much of an issue, but had it been raining there would have been a very limited area to stay under cover. I eventually started the boarding process about 11, and was on the ship by 11:45. My only surprise was that masks were required in the terminal (luckily I had an N-95 mask readily available to grab from my backpack). Prior to entering the terminal, we were asked to show our completed ArriveCan ap, but it was just a matter of holding up my phone to show the barcode. No one actually scrutinized it. The Verifly ap was optional, but I did it anyway and it made embarkation easy and fast. The only paper documents I had to get out were my boarding pass and passport. Carnival Splendor: Firstly, this is a unique ship for Carnival, as it is really a Concordia class ship. I have not been on a Carnival ship this small in a long time (my last two Carnival cruises were on the Panorama), so that was a bit of an adjustment. The ship is in great shape, but is one of the more garish designs from the Joe Farcus era. There is a lot of pink!. My cabin was clean and I had a great steward who did a once a day cabin refresh (which was fine with me). I remember the old twice a day refresh and the mints on the pillow, but I don't care about any of that and prefer them just being in the cabin once during the day. One thing to know is that there are a couple "secret" observation areas at the front of deck 6 and 7 below the bridge. This is a great area for viewing during the Icy Straight day. There is a sliding roof over the lido deck pool area and it was closed for the entire voyage. I found the area near the pool to be quite comfortable (temperature wise) no matter what the outside weather was. We generally had very good weather (sunny and 60's) up until the last couple of days. Food: One thing that I was disappointed about was that the Carnival website said that the Splendor has a Blue Iguana Cantina (my favorite for breakfast burritos and one of the things I love most about Carnival), but it actually doesn't. I was very happy about the Indian buffet station (unique to only this ship) and ate several meals there during the week. I'm not that familiar with Indian food, so it was a great way to try a lot of different things. I never had a bad meal there. This ship also had a Mongolian grille, but the lines were so long that I only actually ate there one day (and it was a port day where I returned to the ship early). Typically, only half of the buffet was open at any meal, so it can get pretty crowded. Breakfast was the busiest time, as it doesn't start until 7:30 and much if, if not most, of the ship's passengers are not from the Pacific time zone. There were a lot of hangry people when the buffet opened. I found the buffet food to be hit and miss (comparable to my most recent sailing on Panorama in February). This was only the second sailing for the ship and I think the pizza place and deli did not have adequate staffing or training to keep up with the demand. Guy's burgers kept up with production, although the toppings bar was half empty for the entire cruise. I did not eat in the MDR or do any specialty dining. One other strange observation was that at any given time, about half of the drink dispensers were out of service. They provided pitchers of the various drinks, but it makes you wonder after two years of downtime why a simple drink machine wouldn't be in working order. Cruise Director: The CD was Andy. I'm not someone that notices or cares about the CD, so I really didn't pay much attention to him. Entertainment: There were 5 different music acts (aside from the main players), but I really only spent much time with three of them. The house cover band was quite good, the violin trio was good, and the most amazing band was the "Lily Duo" who are a male and female pair from Brazil. I went to most of their acts (atrium, casino, and Red Frog Pub) and really enjoyed them. There was also another singing duo that I didn't enjoy, and also a solo guitar player. I did not go to the piano bar or any of the comedy shows. I don't like to be too critical, but I tried to go to two of the three main show performances and they just weren't very good. The first performance I went to had people getting up and walking out within 20 minutes. I felt bad for the cast. I don't know if it was because it was only the second week of sailing, or if it was some issue with the sound system, but I couldn't stay through either of the two performances. Ports: I think the ports have been covered elsewhere. I'll just say that we arrived and left all of the ports on schedule, and none of them were tender stops. Since I've been to Alaska before and was travelling alone, I didn't do anything too exciting at any of the ports. Debarkation: I took my own luggage off the ship. I left my room at 7:45 and waited near the casino until my muster station was called around 8:30. It was a totally painless process. Overall, this was a very good cruise. The ship was in great shape for it's age, and most of the crew seemed very engaged and happy to be back to work. I really have no complaints. My wife and I are going back to Alaska on the Spirit in July for an 8 day cruise. I really appreciate the deals that we are getting from Carnival. I hope this is helpful.

Just to clarify, the Blue Iguana Cantina on the Lido Deck is open starting at breakfast time...it's not just a lunch venue. The breakfast burritos are the highlight of my Carnival trips.