Victory 7/28/07 to St John / Halifax review - Kudos!

Kudos to Carnival Victory 7/28/07 sailing !

Below is a summary of the 7/28/2007 Canada sailing of the Carnival Victory. This was our first Carnival cruise (others on HAL and RCCL). If you have questions, please post and we will answer. We had a balcony stateroom 2nd forward from the stern cabins on the starboard side, eighth deck (immediately below the Lido deck Mississippi BBQ tables). The summary does focus on topics others have raised as issues and bounces this trip off the trip last year on HAL.

Overall evaluation – great value. We would recommend it to others, if they have not done this trip before.

Cleanliness – excellent; much better than one should reasonably expect for 2700+ passengers. No issues at all with the state of our cabin at any point in the cruise. (Thanks, Michael.) Lido tables cleared quickly for the next guest. We maybe saw one used glass or coffee mug in an odd place each day (e.g. elevator floor). Our guess is that the crew cleaned those items up as soon as they saw them. We raised and launched four kids now all in their twenties. Given the number of passengers and their age span, we thought – “Wow”.

Food – Believe it or don’t, but this Carnival cruise had more consistent food quality than the HAL non-extra charge dining options from the Alaskan cruise we took last year. (The HAL extra cost restaurant was great.) Our steaks were cooked to the right temperature for each of the eight people at our table over multiple meals, except for one steak. All “hot food” was served at least warm (count those passengers again) to our table. People ordered multiple starters and entries at each sitting and Eddy got them correct. The deli sandwiches (port side Lido) were very good; room service sandwiches and the grill (MS BBQ) were better than we expected given our HAL experience. After one bite, we decided the pizza was not worth the calories. Free sushi was available (we ate as an appetizer) at the Casino bar, across from the band “Simply Friends” in the late afternoons, Even my DW, who “never” eats sushi, enjoyed it.

Entertainment – Again, across the board more energy than HAL. Only HAL’s comedian was better than the either of the two guys on the Victory. Carnival dancers participated in most of the shows and we both liked the costumes.

Dancing for passengers – Needs improvement, Carnival. “Simply Friends” was good, the “intersection of two hallways” dance area location was inappropriate for dancing and people flow. Switch the acoustic location (Black and Red Seas) or the Ionian room that had a dance floor with the casino location. You might find that people actually get up to dance, get hot, and buy a few more drinks. On Tuesday night, there was a mini coup d’etat going on in Club Arctic. The older folks organized to request music 50-80’s music rather than let the younger kids get their hip-hop / rap fix. Maybe make both sets of people happy by using two areas with dance floors or switching styles in the disco as the night progressed. Making the disco play 50 -60 music while the shows were going on was not optimal scheduling

Lines / people queues – Okay – Generally we had no issues with controlled lines, such as embarkation or buffet lines. Just do the math on the time to service a customer and the number of customers. Quite frankly, it took the taxi longer to get from NYC Penn station to the pier drop off point than to get from there to on board the ship. Our train arrived at noon and we were eating on the Lido deck by 1:15 pm. Some passengers just don’t get the concept of waiting for their turn in orderly lines, e.g. the Captain’s cocktail party. Maybe Carnival should take a look at how Disney handles / manages / enforces people flow to prevent line cutters.

Cabin – our balcony cabin was very nice in terms of size. Sufficient clothes hangers. Bed was very comfortable. Shower stall only, no tub like we had on HAL. Couple of electrical outlets satisfied our needs. Used our own hair dryer. Noise of chairs being dragged across the floor of the BBQ place directly over our cabin quickly became background noise ignored by both of us. However, it could bother some. Our GPS could not get a signal on our balcony due to the overhang of the Lido deck. All things considered, we would not pass up a good deal on deck 8 because of noise, but given our druthers, we would go down to deck 7. Our cabin had a great location near the stern, with the closest elevators / stairs leading down to the Pacific dining room where we were seated. Did not watch TV.

Excursions - On this cruise, there was a lot of fog. See the two pics below taken at different times in St John. We’d suggest you book excursion for later in the day. However, even then the fog was still a factor. In Halifax, the fog rolled in and out.

Things to do on ship – we found that there was enough things to do on the ship.

Staff friendliness – Almost every cabin stewards greeted us each time we walked past. And on the food lines, it is amazing what saying “please” or “thank you” to the server does to put a real smile on their face. And the women at our table looked forward to the table-top dancing waiters! (Let’s see free style dining do that!)

Passenger friendliness – Our table mates were great. Meet a couple of nice people via roll call board. Vast majority of passengers very friendly; many family groups. Mutual consideration let us dance and people move through the hallway by the best dance band on ship. A few passengers did not understand the concept of orderly lines.

Would we take Carnival again? Yes - going in November. DW hopes there are dancing waiters on that cruise!

Makes me think I'll be delaying any HAL decisions in the neqar future!

Thanks for the read! Did you go to Malcolms "SILENT FILM SKIT"?

Did not see Malcolm's silent film skit. We went to every show and nothing sticks in my mind that I would title as that. He did participate in the "legends" show on the last night.

HAL's extra cost restaurant was excellent. Not much more of a cost ($20/ head in 2006) and definitely worth the difference, in our opinion. We do eat out alot and because of the competition in our area, there are very good restuarants for not an extreme cost.

Dancing was better on HAL (our hobby). But the energy level on Carnival was higher. Carnival could have been rated great by us if they had "Simply Friends" in a bar with a dance floor.

BTW, Mr Pete, we did enjoy your post about the Victory. It was fresh air after all the negative posts at the beginning of July.

Thanks! :)

Mr. Pete:

do you have copies of the capers by any chance. i;m on the victory september 3 for five nights.

thanks

jerry

Jerry,

No, but I think I see you got them on another thread.

Glad you had a great time.........we took this cruise in July, our 4th Carnival, 2nd to Canada..........last year we were on deck 7, at the stern....best balcony we ever had!

This year there were many of us, including my parents....they had never sailed on Carnival, and from the moment they checked in, they were comparing it to Royal Caribbean, and how much friendlier, casual (yet not too casual) and energetic Carnival was......they said they were a bit apprehensive because of all they heard......but they were so thrilled......especially how family oriented the cruise was (and our group had several grandchildren, my son being the oldest, almost 22 with his g/f, then ages 15, 12, 8, 3 and 5 months)

Thanks for your review.......

Karen - we were a bit concerned too. Had done RCCL and HAL, heard stories about excessive drinking on Carnival (we enjoy drinking, but let's not feed the fish!). Decided to do this trip in preparation for a family celebration that will happen in Nov 2007 just to see what Carnival does. We loved the energy on Carnival (but HAL and RCCL did have a better setup for dancing than the Victory had).

Glad you guys had a great time.

we sailed in June...totally agree with you about the band "simple friends" in the casino area..they deserve their own lounge!!! Carnival, are you listening?????

they were great and alot of people enjoyed listening to them , however, not too many could get up and dance due to lack of space and this area being a "throughway" for guests...

other than that, we had a great cruise!!!! glad you did too!! :)

Marsha

Glad you enjoyed your trip, MarshaBear. It is nice to hear others echo our desire for a better location for the dance band. I do believe that Carnival listens, because other people were commenting about the lack of sushi. it was available everyday (maybe not the last) on our trip. So someone must be listening (they would be crazy not to review these boards as market research).

We take the Fantasy in Nov, 2007. According to the current reviews that I am reading, the dance band there is located in the Cat's Lounge that the deck plans show as having a dance floor. We hope it does not change.

Have fun on your October cruise!

Here are the pix from your sailaway.

Can you spot yourself?

http://good-times.webshots.com/slideshow/560250920lcEETt

no. we were on the starboard side of the ship waiting for the Statue of Liberty to come up.

Can anyone comment on the Irish Seas venue? On my previous trip on the Victory, I had a blast in the piano bar setting, but I haven't heard much about it on these boards recently. I'm wondering if the talent is drawing the people in or if it perhaps is used differently these days?

Thanks,

Donna:o

Can anyone comment on the Irish Seas venue? On my previous trip on the Victory, I had a blast in the piano bar setting, but I haven't heard much about it on these boards recently. I'm wondering if the talent is drawing the people in or if it perhaps is used differently these days?

 

Thanks,

Donna:o

Just returned today - Peter Kraft was in the Irish Seas bar. He had a good playlist and had a regular crowd.

he has a Myspace page where you can hear his music. I thought he was great :)