Carnival Paradise B2B

[Mic101680]

Greetings! Currently onboard Carnival Paradise for the second leg of a B2B. I can't find the recent posts where people had questions, so here we go.

 

Port of Tampa has been easy to navigate. I parked in the Channelside Garage right across the street, which is $15/day. You can prepay online, print out the pass, and show it to the attendant as you come in. They exchange it for a different ticket, which you need to keep to get out of the garage. They had no problems linking both my parking passes into one ticket. It's a short walk across the street to terminal 2 and 3, so we just rolled our luggage with us instead of doing a drop off first. Porters met us outside the building and took our luggage with no issues.

 

Longest wait to board was getting through the security scanners. We arrived right at our arrival appointment time of 11:30, and it took about 30 minutes to get through. VIP/priority boarding appeared to be a little faster, but not by much.

 

Once through Security, there was nobody in line at the check-in desks, so we showed our passports, breezed through this process and walked right on the ship a little after noon. Yay!

[Mic101680]

Lido deck was crowded, which was expected as this was a full/sold out sailing. Food was pretty standard for embarkation day. We just went for dessert as we had a big breakfast at the hotel that morning. Not sure if it's just the Paradise or what, but ya'll have overhyped the funfetti cake - the cheesecake layer was delicious, but the cake part was dry and the icing tasted like nothing. I was disappointed 😞

 

After dessert, we sat at the Red Frog Rum Bar, got drinks, and people watched. (Note that yes, the Tervis cups are available at both Red Frog and Blue Iguana for $11.50, which includes any frozen drink. The cups are 16oz and refills were $10.50 - same cost as the 12 oz drinks). Both the Lido deck bars had daily specials, which were typically $1-2 off whatever the drink of the day was. I didn't notice an6 happy hour specials.

 

Once the sail away party began, we decided to walk around and get acquainted with the ship, which is nearly identical to the Ecstasy, which we just sailed on in October. Our room was ready, but our bags weren't there yet. We noticed right away that the beds were not separated and that there was barely enough toilet paper for 2-3 uses, but the room steward was nowhere to be found. We decided to just drop off our backpacks in hopes of running into someone later, and went back on the upper sun deck to enjoy the scenery as we pulled out of port and sailed out of Tampa Bay. The plan was to have a chill cruise, and we were off to a great start.

 

We had your time dining, so when we finally got hungry (after sunset), we went back to our room to change for dinner in the dining room. Felt it was odd that we still hadn't seen our room steward yet, but then again, we came and went at oddish hours. We still needed toilet paper, but the beds had been split at this point. Off to dinner we went.

 

Dinner was good, service was good, but we did notice some major inconsistencies. Both of us got the brisket, which was surprisingly flavorful and tender. My travel buddy was missing the mashed potatoes on her plate, so was brought a second to replace it. Good thing she just scraped the potatoes onto her existing plate instead of allowing the server to swap the plate entirely - the brisket on the new plate was chewy and tough, even if the flavor was still good. We shared it, but our first plates were far superior.

 

After dinner, we walked around some more, swiped a spare roll of toilet paper from one of the public restrooms and headed back to the room. Good thing we did because the room steward still had not stocked the bathroom, but had left his card on the desk. 

 

Our room was an interior on deck 7, right behind the art gallery area. First night was a little noisy, next 3 nights were fairly quiet, and the last night sounded like someone was trying to break through the wall. Clearly this was where luggage was being brought up and down the decks for room delivery. I was fine with the noise, but it bothered my travel buddy some.

[pirate4me2]

Enjoy your B2B!!!

[Mic101680]

I won't go into deep play by plays for the rest of the cruise, but we did enjoy the itinerary. First day was a sea day, second was Nassau (which I wouldn't have gone ashore if I was alone as I've been here quite a few times, but my friend had never been, so we booked the Must See Nassau excursion, which we both enjoyed), third was Bimini (gorgeous island - would definitely visit here again, but is very much a beach/resort pool type of place as there just isn't much to do outside of the excursions), and last was another sea day. We did book Chef's Table for the last night, which was excellent (we didn't like 2 of the courses, but everything else was fantastic and I highly recommend the experience).

 

Overall impressions of the Paradise is that we enjoyed our time. Service was a bit slow in some areas (particularly bar service, which seemed to also be a bit disorganized when compared to our previous sailings), the food was inconsistent in the dining rooms, and the desserts on the buffet were mostly tasteless and/or disappointing. Pizza, the deli, Guy's Burgers and Blue Iguana tacos were always consistent and were pur go-tos. (There is a for-fee sushi bar outside the casino but we didn't try it as neither of us eat much sushi). We didn't see our room steward at all until 8:15 this morning when he came by to see how many bags we would be moving to my new room for the B2B. He cleaned the room, but we were swiping extra towels from the steward's carts as we came in for the evening as we were only given 1 each/day. I've never had this experience before with the room stewards, so hoping this was just a one-off.

 

My travel buddy had to fly home, so she took the cruise shuttle to the airport. It was easy for her to find, but disembarkation was a zoo and it took awhile for her to get off the ship. 

 

The B2B process was great! I met in the piano bar with the other B2B cruisers, and they had coffee, tea, juice, water, and an assortment of pastries for us while we waited. We received our new sail and sign cards, were escorted off the ship with some of the crew who were either going home or switching ships, showed our passports to the customs/immigration officer, and were able to walk right back on the ship. Mimosas aplenty were waiting for us at the atrium bar, we took a group photo, and then we're free to do as we pleased. We had about an hour or so before the first passengers for the new sailing were allowed to board, so I just found a nice spot in the quiet to sit and read and catch up on some personal business/emails/messages until lunch was ready. 

[Mic101680]

13 minutes ago, pirate4me2 said:

Enjoy your B2B!!!

Thanks! It's been great so far!