Overdue review of the Sunshine.

[scpirate]

Was it hard to get into the shows or comedy club? 

[schazzy]

21 hours ago, scpirate said:

Was it hard to get into the shows or comedy club? 

 

We only tried to get into the comedy show once, we showed up about 20 minutes before the show and there was a line of people filling the hallway all the back to almost the library. Knowing how small the space was in the lounge, we just turned around. This was first cruise since 2017 that we didn't go to the comedy show, it was disappointing.

 

We don't go to the playlist production shows, so I don't know about them, but we did go to see the illusionist one night and it wasn't hard to get in and get a seat.

Edited October 17, 2019 by schazzy

[grandmarnnurse]

12 hours ago, schazzy said:

 

We only tried to get into the comedy show once, we showed up about 20 minutes before the show and there was a line of people filling the hallway all the back to almost the library. Knowing how small the space was in the lounge, we just turned around. This was first cruise since 2017 that we didn't go to the comedy show, it was disappointing.

 

We don't go to the playlist production shows, so I don't know about them, but we did go to see the illusionist one night and it wasn't hard to get in and get a seat.

We found that getting to the Comedy Shows at least a half hour early works, but it is pretty crowded even by then. We try to catch all the comedy shows. We weren’t that thrilled with the playlist shows. After cruising both RCCL and NCL and viewing their Broadway caliber shows, these are just, laughable. But don’t get me wrong, we prefer Carnival cruises. Way more fun, and the various other entertainment makes it all worth while. We will be cruising with family on our next cruise in February on the Glory, so I suspect we will be watching playlist shows with them. Just not very good, in my personal opinion.

[NCTribeFan]

I very rarely go to the comedy shows but I do sometimes enjoy the Playlist shows.  I've seen some that I thought were very good, some not so much.  But that's been the case on all my cruises on all lines.

 

Do the cabin bathrooms have magnifying mirrors?  I can't remember.  I'll have to bring one if not and I have a feeling that they do not.

[zencruisers]

I am enjoying your review and pictures. Thank you for taking the time to share.

 

[schazzy]

11 hours ago, grandmarnnurse said:

We found that getting to the Comedy Shows at least a half hour early works, but it is pretty crowded even by then. 

 

On our 2 cruises previous to the Sunshine, showing up 20 minutes or so before was good enough most of the time to get in and find a seat, even if it's in the back. The Sunshine was a different story. 

 

11 hours ago, grandmarnnurse said:

We weren’t that thrilled with the playlist shows.

 

We're not fans of them either, and like you said, there's much better entertainment options on board. 

[schazzy]

8 hours ago, NCTribeFan said:

Do the cabin bathrooms have magnifying mirrors?  I can't remember.  I'll have to bring one if not and I have a feeling that they do not.

 

I don't remember honestly, I asked DH and says he thinks there was one but not 100% sure. I did a Google image search and some of the pictures marked as being on the Sunshine show one on the wall next to the towel racks.   

[schazzy]

Alright, back to the review, I believe I was discussing dining. Like I said earlier, we enjoyed the MDR this time around, the majority of the food was good, only things that weren't good was one flatiron I got was overcooked and tough, (in all fairness on that, I think Ronaldo may have thought I said medium well instead of medium rare or the kitchen gave me the wrong one) and DH got a piece of chicken that wasn't to his liking, but no big deal, Ronaldo quickly replaced both dishes with much better ones. Didn't get many food pictures, but here's a few we did take:

 

 

Next I'll go over Lido dining.

Edited October 19, 2019 by schazzy

[schazzy]

Okay, on to Lido! I have to say right off the bat that we were not fans of the "Comfort Kitchen". We have enjoyed the lunch buffets with the "Taste of Nations" rotation of different cuisines on previous cruises, but the "Comfort Kitchen" was pretty much a mix of items that really didn't go together and it was really not that good in our opinion, but the salad bar and the new cakes desserts were good. But thankfully, there were many other lunch options. Guy's burgers and Blue Iguana were good of course, we liked the new deli menu, pizza was good as always, and the lunch at Cucina was good, I even liked their kinda odd take on lasagna. 

 

We did dinner on Lido on the second Elegant night, and like lunch, the buffet was disappointing. But we instead made a good dinner of salads and hot deli sandwiches. 

 

Also, we took advantage of the seating in the Havana bar area that was almost always uncrowded when we dined on Lido. 

 

We mostly took breakfast in Ocean Plaza, but we did go to Lido twice for omelets that were good as usual and the line at the time we went moved pretty quickly as they had omelet stations set up at both Cucina and JiJis and would be cooking up to 5 omelets at a time. The other breakfast stuff was the usual breakfast stuff we've had on previous cruises and it was all fine. 

 

I think the only thing left in the dining category was I had some sushi from Bonsai sushi one evening and it was very good.

 

I'll be back tomorrow with our overall feelings on the ship itself. 

[NCTribeFan]

12 hours ago, schazzy said:

 

I don't remember honestly, I asked DH and says he thinks there was one but not 100% sure. I did a Google image search and some of the pictures marked as being on the Sunshine show one on the wall next to the towel racks.   

 

Thanks.  I'll try to remember to pack one just in case (but will probably forget it in the hotel room; I seem to have left a dozen around the world by now!).

 

I'm not a buffet person.  Even for breakfast, it's either an omelette or a breakfast burrito or huevos rancheros.  Lunch is deli, burger, burrito, or, for this cruise, I'll probably have the pasta bar.  I also enjoyed sitting back in the Havana bar area.  I don't think I had breakfast at Ocean Plaza on Sunshine but did several mornings on the Horizon TA.

 

Did you do brunch?  I'm looking forward to trying the new brunch menu.  That's about the only time I eat in the MDR outside of dinner.

[SurfCat]

Do you recall if the bar was open in the Havana bar during the day?  

[PhillyFan33579]

30 minutes ago, SurfCat said:

Do you recall if the bar was open in the Havana bar during the day?  

When we were on Sunshine earlier this year it was open during the day every day of the cruise. We went there every morning for a mimosa, Bloody Mary, etc. 

[schazzy]

2 hours ago, NCTribeFan said:

Did you do brunch? 

 

I think I was trying to block it from my memory or I really just didn't want to acknowledge it, so that may be why I failed to mention it earlier . We went once, on the first sea day and it was awful. It started with basically being ignored for what felt like forever, then finally our waiter came over, acted like he didn't really want to be there, let alone wait on us. 

 

We ordered juice we never got, not offered any bread items like in the past, food finally came and was wrong in several ways and cold.

 

At this point we were already not happy about the service, so this was just the final slap in the face, we just got up and left the table. I made sure to let the hostess know on the way out about our experience, they apologized profusely and offered for us to have another table and waiter, but we declined, at this point we were no longer in the mood for brunch. 

 

On one side, I feel kinda bad we didn't give them another chance, but on the other side we were just so put off by the experience that we didn't want too. 

 

2 hours ago, NCTribeFan said:

I'm looking forward to trying the new brunch menu.

 

When we were there, it was still the old menu, I don't know if they have the new one now or not.

[schazzy]

1 hour ago, PhillyFan33579 said:

When we were on Sunshine earlier this year it was open during the day every day of the cruise. We went there every morning for a mimosa, Bloody Mary, etc. 

 

Same here, I really liked getting the Cuban coffee in the morning.

[grandmarnnurse]

28 minutes ago, schazzy said:

 

I think I was trying to block it from my memory or I really just didn't want to acknowledge it, so that may be why I failed to mention it earlier . We went once, on the first sea day and it was awful. It started with basically being ignored for what felt like forever, then finally our waiter came over, acted like he didn't really want to be there, let alone wait on us. 

 

We ordered juice we never got, not offered any bread items like in the past, food finally came and was wrong in several ways and cold.

 

At this point we were already not happy about the service, so this was just the final slap in the face, we just got up and left the table. I made sure to let the hostess know on the way out about our experience, they apologized profusely and offered for us to have another table and waiter, but we declined, at this point we were no longer in the mood for brunch. 

 

On one side, I feel kinda bad we didn't give them another chance, but on the other side we were just so put off by the experience that we didn't want too. 

 

 

When we were there, it was still the old menu, I don't know if they have the new one now or not.

We had a complete opposite experience with Sea Day Brunch. We had excellent service twice on that cruise (the Breeze in March) and the food was always correct and hot. I’m actually looking forward to going again on our next cruise in February. But I should note that we rarely eat in the buffet ever. We prefer the MDR. I wish they offered lunch service in MDR as well. 

[NCTribeFan]

My experience with Brunch, on several different ships, is that it is very irregular.  I've had really good service and food; I've had really poor service and food; I've had a combination (either good service but poor food or poor service but good food).  And there doesn't seem to be any consistency even on the same sailing.  Our last sea day on the Horizon TA, our group of about 11 went to brunch.  The assistant waiter was so awful it was entertaining.  He was so happy and having such a great time but it was a total mess!  One thing, though, is that it always seems like service is excrutiatingly slow, even when they don't seem to be that busy.  But I found that back when it was "regular" breakfast and lunch in the MDR.  I just am not inclined to spend so much time on my sea days sitting around waiting for food when there are so many instant options available.

 

But I'll give it a try next week, at least once, just to get my drink and see if I find anything on the new menu I like.  I was a big fan of the huevos rancheros at brunch (and the cheese grits) so we'll see.

 

Sorry you had such an awful experience.  And don't feel bad about leaving.  Nothing ever improves if no one complains when it's warranted!

[TrinaLC]

4 hours ago, schazzy said:

 

Same here, I really liked getting the Cuban coffee in the morning.

I did not see Cuban coffee on offer - we are back on Sunshine next month, can someone be specific where we can find it within the Havana area?

Edited October 19, 2019 by TrinaLC

[schazzy]

7 hours ago, TrinaLC said:

I did not see Cuban coffee on offer - we are back on Sunshine next month, can someone be specific where we can find it within the Havana area?

 

They had it at the bar in the Havana area, they have an espresso machine on the side that faces the aft windows.

 

Here's the menu, I'd get the Cortado for my second shot of caffeine in the mornings after my latte from the coffee bar. 

 

https://www.carnival.com/~/media/Images/explore/onboard/bars/menus/havana-bar-menu.pdf

[schazzy]

@grandmarnnurse & @NCTribeFan,

 

Yeah, we have had previous brunches that were really good, although pretty slow actually getting the food. This time was just plain bad. I know we'll give it another shot on the Elation next year, hopefully it'll be better and maybe they'll have the new menu.

 

 

8 hours ago, NCTribeFan said:

Sorry you had such an awful experience.  And don't feel bad about leaving.  Nothing ever improves if no one complains when it's warranted!

 

This is true! 😊

[schazzy]

Okay, so now that dining's out of the way, I'll go into our impression of the Sunshine.

 

 Overall, while we did enjoy some of the features of this ship, like the Ocean Plaza area, the Havana bar and the various dining options, we just were not fans of the layout that sometimes made getting around the ship difficult and how it just felt that even though it was the bigger ship, it felt smaller and more crowded than the Fantasy and Spirit class ships we have cruised on previously.

 

Basically, we found ourselves agreeing with several other CC member's opinions of the ship. Don't get me wrong, for the most part we had a very good cruise with a lot of fantastic crew members who took very good care of us and we had plenty of fun, it just wasn't our favorite ship so far and we just probably won't be booking another cruise on a ship of the Sunshine class anytime soon. 

 

I really don't know much more I can really say, and honestly after several months, some of the details are getting a bit fuzzy, so I know I'm probably not doing as good of a review as I originally planned to do.

 

Although the Sunshine is no longer doing the itinerary we did, I'm still going to go over the ports we visited, which were great, all but Grand Turk were new to us, and we enjoyed them. I'm going to finish getting some pictures together and start on that tomorrow! 

 

 

[NCTribeFan]

It will be interesting to see how I feel about the ship after next week.  I sailed her shortly after she was remodeled and was surprised that I liked her as much as I did because there were lots of complaints about the changes (much like we're reading from a lot of people about Sunrise and expect we'll read about Radiance).  Adding more cabins can only make things more crowded.  I did like the layout and after I sailed Vista, I felt that Sunshine was just a smaller version.

 

Nothing in Carnival's fleet can compare to the Spirit class ships.  They have a MUCH better space ratio (because they were never intended for Carnival and have a very different layout; HAL's ships are very similar).  So looking forward to that B2B Med/TA on Legend sailing 1 year from today!!

[schazzy]

Well, I still haven't been able to recover our Grand Turk photos, but we just went to Jack's Shack and had a beach day. We arrived there just before the Conquest pulled in, so it wasn't too crowded yet and had no trouble getting a good spot on the beach and 4 chairs with umbrellas for $20, we expected to pay $40 from what we read previously, so after feeling like we got a good deal, we had no problem using the other $20 to buy some cold drinks and to tip the young man who set up our chairs and umbrellas. Had a great time swimming and laying under the umbrella enjoying the view and chilling out. 

 

Next was San Juan, and I must say, we really enjoyed it! We started by getting a Taxi to take us to Chocobar Cortés where we enjoyed some yummy desserts and bought chocolates to bring home.

 

 

DH and I had planned for us to walk around and explore, the In-laws had planned to just get a taxi back to the ship as it was coming up on their nap time 😁, she asked our waiter about getting a taxi. He did even better than that, he offered to call a local guide, whom the restaurant is partnered with, who could take my In-laws on a short tour and then back to the ship on his golf cart shuttle. Basically, it was one of those deals where there is no fee, just tip the guide what you feel appropriate.  

 

Well, they decided they could do that, and later they told us that they loved it and glad they didn't just go back to the ship! Their guide took them around Old San Juan for about an hour, stopping to pick up and drop off other passengers, and was very informative about all the places they saw and he had a great personality and sense of humor. 

 

We did our walking around, going first right down the street a bit to the San Juan City Hall where we picked up some maps of Old San Juan and took a couple of photos of the inside.

 

 

Then right across the street we went to the Plaza de Armas:

 

 

Then we walked back towards the port, exploring and stopping at a few shops and a couple of open air markets on the way.

 

 

Next up, St Kitts and St Martin!

Edited October 20, 2019 by schazzy