Carnival Celebration May 18-26, 2024, A Non-Review- Coming Soon

[mamiamjo]

Also received an invitation to the Diamond/Platinum Gathering 

[mamiamjo]

Back to the standard Vodka/Starry Zero from casino bar

[mamiamjo]

Casino hosts working to make it fun😎

[mamiamjo]

Another Vodka/Starry Zero from Kadek

[mamiamjo]

Watched Evolution in Center Stage for a while 

[mamiamjo]

Going to bed a little early (relatively) at 12:30, stopped at 10 drinks. 

Last day tomorrow 🥲 so don’t want to sleep in all morning. But I tell you I’ve slept the latest I have in years on this cruise! Very relaxing 😊

[mamiamjo]

After lunch this morning came back to the cabin to find 

 

also received a carnival picture frame 

[wrcjr98]

How was your last day?

[mamiamjo]

Sorry the last day and today weren’t live, but we did get home a few hours ago and I plan to update the last cruise day, debarkation experience and maybe a few overall thoughts over the next couple of days. Thanks for your patience 😎

[mamiamjo]

Day 8- For our last cruise day we decided to spend some time on deck. We played miniature golf (spoiler alert, I lost 🥲 ).
 

 I wanted to ride Bolt but when I checked there wasn't anything available until around 5:00 so I didn't ride (Maybe next year on Jubilee). I will say however that if anyone is interested in riding they should check the app a few times as later that same day ride times became available, but unfortunately we were doing other things at the time.

Edited May 28 by mamiamjo

[mamiamjo]

For dinner that evening we had a reservation at Rudi's Sea Grill at 7:30. This turned out to be a great time as it gave us the chance to watch the sunset while having dinner. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 28 by mamiamjo

[mamiamjo]

We usually do self disembark but DW tweaked her back while on Bonaire so we decided it was best not to risk having to carry the suitcases down 10 flights of stairs in the morning (if the elevators were full), and changed our plan to let Carnival take our luggage which means we had to pack our bags while leaving out what we needed for the morning. I always fear I'll forget to leave out something that I'll regret the next day.😬

It also included trying to pack our alcohol bottles in our checked luggage in way so they wouldn't break in the luggage getting off the ship nor on the airplane. For that purpose, I had brought a couple of double layered bubble wrap travel bottle bags from Amazon.

 

 

The Grey Goose bottle fit in the bag just fine (although with it's long neck, it was a bit tight), but due to the shape of the Tequila bottle the bag wouldn't work. I was kind of afraid of that so I had also brought some separate bubble wrap with me just in case I needed it!

In addition to protecting the bottles from breaking, we had to make sure our bags were still under the 50lb limit which took a little bit of shuffling items from one bag to another and also carrying some shoes and such in our carryon bags. While a little nerve racking, everything worked out just fine. 

We each had everything we needed in the morning, both bottles made it home in one piece and both our bags were kept under 50lbs, so no extra fees! 😀

Edited May 28 by mamiamjo

[mamiamjo]

Disembarkation and Travel- As all good things come to an end, it was time to go home 😢

For the first day in over a week I was awoken by my alarm at about 6am. Looking out the window, I saw that we were already docked in Miami. (This picture was taken slightly later once the sun came up) Well, I wasn't standing on my head, but I can't seem to get this photo right side up (sorry) 😉

Edited May 28 by mamiamjo

[mamiamjo]

When I got up, I noticed that my Carnival App had sent a notification that the Casino is Now Open! At first I figured this was sent last night some time, but looking closer I see that they sent it at 5:28 am. Don't they have enough of my money🤣

Edited May 28 by mamiamjo

[mamiamjo]

Debarkation was very smooth and surprisingly quick!

We were supposed to report to the theater on deck 6 by 8:00 to wait for disembarkation. We left the cabin at 7:49 and were surprised to get an elevator that was only half full. 😎

Our timing was perfect, as when we got down to deck 6 they were already letting guests disembark from the theater. They had two lines going out and told the people getting off the elevators to merge with the second line which we did. The line moved pretty quickly and we were on the gangway by 8:04.

 

We proceeded to get our luggage. I checked for signs of leaking liquor bottles, but was relieved to see that both bags were still dry 🙂

 

We got in the immigration line for those traveling with a passport, no issue or need to show our passports since our faces matched our profile and we were outside the terminal at 8:17 am!

Edited May 28 by mamiamjo

[wrcjr98]

I really enjoyed your live review!  Thank you for taking the time to do it, and I hope your wife's back is better.  She may need another vacation!  

Can't wait to follow along on your Jubilee cruise, should you decide to do another "live"!  

 

[mamiamjo]

1 hour ago, wrcjr98 said:

I really enjoyed your live review!  Thank you for taking the time to do it, and I hope your wife's back is better.  She may need another vacation!  

Can't wait to follow along on your Jubilee cruise, should you decide to do another "live"!  

 

We had a great time! My wife is feeling a bit better, thanks for asking and following along!

We really enjoyed most aspects of this cruise and are looking forward to Jubilee! I’ve thinking about how to get another cruise in before then but we still have 3 land vacations already scheduled so not sure if we can get to another cruise or not (maybe a 4 day cruise😉)

 

[Jed12345]

7 hours ago, mamiamjo said:

When I got up, I noticed that my Carnival App had sent a notification that the Casino is Now Open! At first I figured this was sent last night some time, but looking closer I see that they sent it at 5:28 am. Don't they have enough of my money🤣

I saw that also and wondered the same thing!

[mamiamjo]

38 minutes ago, Jed12345 said:

I saw that also and wondered the same thing!

I hope you guys had a great cruise as well 😎

[mamiamjo]

Overall Impressions: First of all let me say that we really enjoyed our cruise and the ship overall. The following are just some of my observations (both "good" and "could've been better").

Embarkation: When we arrived Embarkation seemed very disorganized without much clear direction given. It took us about 53 minutes from arrival to boarding (I know I said 44 minutes previously, but I just double checked the time stamps on my photos and I obviously made a math error before) 😔

 

While 53 minutes doesn't sound too bad if it also included a wait in the lounge to have your boarding group called, but we did not have to wait, they were already boarding Platinum when we arrived. The check in and security portion only took about 15 minutes which means that it took 38 minutes to get from security to actually boarding the ship. Part of this was undoubtedly timing but it seemed that there was a lack of direction given and people were lining up in the wrong place and others that were waiting for their group to be called blocking the line etc. Embarkation Grade- Could of Been Better.

[mamiamjo]

The Ship, Size, Layout and Crowd: Overall we enjoyed the ship very much with a few dislikes.

Being our first Excel Class ship it did take some time to get familiar with what was on which deck etc. I did spend quite a bit of time going over deck plans before the cruise and had the deck plan on my phone to refer to quite a bit as well which did help. 

We really enjoyed having all the options that the excel ships provide and we were surprised to find that with all the different venues (bars, restaurants, show rooms etc) the crowd naturally dispersed and the ship didn't feel too over crowded, except at Embarkation.

 

We used the elevators a lot more than we normally would. We realized that when you have to go up 10 decks to your cabin, you might not want to take the stairs 😅There was some wait usually for an elevator but nothing terrible. As I mentioned previously there is some kind of AC issue going on in the forward elevator lobbies and hallways on several decks of the ship. The temperature ranged from a bit warm to noticeably hot and humid with condensation build up dripping from the ceilings (see pictures in my review).

 

We did not really like the casino layout very much as it seemed to be stretched out into too narrow of a space. There is only 1 craps table jammed up against a wall/window and some of the slot machines are jammed into a corner or backed up to a wall etc. making them hard to get to.

 

Celebration Central is a good concept, but deck 8 was not a good place to watch from as it was too loud. Deck 7 was a bit crowded with the hallway going right through Celebration Central. We didn't even try to get seats for anything on deck 6.

Ship, Size, Layout and Crowd Grade:  Good -

[mamiamjo]

Spa/Fitness Center: We really liked that we had the Spa Balcony Benefits of having access to the Thermal Suite with the heated loungers, steam and aroma therapy rooms and experience showers (I did use it twice and DW used it 3 times). We also like having the dedicated direct elevator.

The Fitness Center was good but it would be better if we could get to it with the Spa elevator as well. It also seems from our experience, that they need more weight machines and cable stations and could probably take out some of the treadmills to make room. I visited the fitness center 3 times (once to see what they had and twice to work out) and all three times at least 90% of the people were trying to use the cable, weight machines or dumbbells, making some of those areas crowded with nobody using the cardio equipment. As a matter of fact for all 3 visits put together I only saw 4 people total (total, not 4 at one time) using either a treadmill (and there are 28 of them) or an elliptical (there were 13 of them) and nobody was using the stationary bikes at all.

DW also had a massage which she enjoyed but just a head's up that they add an automatic "service fee" to the bill and they didn't let her know so she ended up double tipping.

Spa/Fitness Center Grade: Good

Edited May 29 by mamiamjo

[mamiamjo]

Spa Balcony Cabin: We were in Spa Balcony Cabin # 17283, which we enjoyed overall.

Location: We loved that we were close to the elevators and that the cabin was very quiet. As I mentioned in the review this was probably the quietest cabin we've been in ever. No real noise form the hallway or elevators. No noise from the Lido deck (maybe because deck 17 doesn't open to the outside). We loved having access to the Spa Elevator and being just one deck down from Serenity.

What we didn't like as much regarding the location was that deck 17 doesn't have direct access to the outside. We would have to go down to 16 or lower to get to the mid ship or back of the ship. This wasn't a real problem but something to get used to. Like to go to Guys Burgers we had to go down to 16, go outside then take the stairs back up to 17 to get to Guys. If we wanted to watch a Dive In Movie or some of the deck parties from above the Lido Deck, it made more sense to just watch from 18.

Cabin Layout: I was originally concerned about the layout with the bed in the middle of the cabin. In reality, it wasn't as bad as i feared. Still the cabins are noticeably narrower than what we are used to and it is a bit tight trying to get around the bed all the time. I definitely wouldn't want to have more than two people in that cabin layout as it was still a bit congested. The good news was that I only hit my shin on the bed frame a couple of times. 🙂 

Bathroom: We both thought the shower with shower door was an upgrade over the old shower with plastic shower curtain. The bathroom was a bit tight though, if both people needed to be in there at one time.

TV: The TV was pretty big, but to tell you the truth, we turned it off when we got into the cabin and it stayed off the rest of the cruise. Also with it on the wall with the narrow walkway between it and the bed, just made it seem a bit even more crowded.

AC: As I mentioned already there is some kind of AC issue going on in the forward elevator lobby and hallways on several decks and especially deck 17. I don't know if that affected the in cabin AC temperature or not, but imagine it could have. The AC was just OK but never seemed to really fully recover. We kept it at max cool and it never seemed to get quite cool enough. During the day it was ok but we do like it a bit cooler at night when we sleep. I basically had to sleep with just the sheet and still woke up a few times from being too hot.

I still wonder if this is a maintenance issue or if the design causes the issue in that part of the ship. It makes me question our cabin choice for our Jubilee cruise 🤔

Spa Balcony Cabin Grade: Could've Been Better

Edited May 29 by mamiamjo

[mamiamjo]

Restaurants: Overall we really enjoyed the various food option on this ship. We had Your Time Dining which is pretty standard for us now a days as we really like the flexibility and options it provides. In no particular order here's what we thought of the different restaurants on board...

MDR: We only ate in the MDR twice. Once for Sea Day Brunch and for the second Elegant Night. It seems from this and our previous cruises that the SDB has gone down a bit in service and quality. This cruise we saw a longer than anticipated wait for a table only to find that there were many tables not being used, so I can only surmise that the issue is staffing and not capacity. The service for brunch was also slow. Slow to get our drinks, place our order and receive our food. Also the quality of my Steak & Eggs was not the best. My eggs were way over cooked (supposed to be over easy) with almost crispy whites and mostly dry yolks. The steak was similar to the striploin offered at dinner, but nothing special.

For our Elegant Night Dinner, it did take 90 minutes to get a table, but it was peak dinner time on lobster night so that really didn't surprise me. The service this night was much better than brunch and the food was really pretty good. We enjoyed it 😎

 

Lido Marketplace: We tried the buffet for lunch and dinner and weren't really impressed. It seemed that the choices were very limited and the quality was so-so. I tried the roast beef from the carving station on two days and it was very tough and not too flavorful both times.

The best thing I found at the buffet was the Gelato station 🙂 Especially the coconut and the salted caramel flavors!.

 

Shaq's Big Chicken: Overall we enjoyed Shaq's and especially their fries which we like better than Guys Burger Fries. The chicken was pretty good, but didn't see the need to have every sauce be a version of BBQ. Even the ranch was BBQ Ranch. How many BBQ sauces do you need? We liked the Omelet but the biscuit tasted like cardboard or some other weird material, not like any other type of biscuit I've ever had.

 

Guy's Burgers: Guy's tasted the same as on other ships and we did enjoy it for lunch. I would like to see them make their fries like Shaq's though. Don't get me wrong, we liked them but not as much as we liked Shaq's

 

Time Fries: We liked having the options that Time Fries offered but with limited hours and having only one option each day kind of limits it.

 

Chi-Bang: We only tried it for dinner, and it was ok, but not as good as our local Mexican or Chinese restaurants. I would probably not eat here if it were to become an upcharge restaurant.

 

Fahrenheit 555: The steakhouse was very good as usual and we really enjoyed it

 

Cucina del Capitano: This restaurant was as expected. I don't particularly care for pasta and I'm not the biggest Italian food fan (unless you count pizza), but the Chicken Parmesan was good and the Tiramisu was very good (but small). The Spinach side though was more of a pureed spinach than what I had expected, but it tasted ok.

 

Rudi's Sea Grill: We were both very pleased with Rudi's. The service was great, and the food was very good. Add to that watching the sunset while eating dinner and it really made our evening. 

 

Miami Slice & Deco Deli: We enjoyed the pizza and the deli on two occasions each and liked the food and especially how quickly the lines moved and we were able to get served. Much better than the other class ships we've cruised

 

We never made it Emeril's, Java Blue or Blue Iguana on this cruise and didn't even miss them which just speaks to all the different options they have.

Next year when on the Jubilee, we'll need to be sure to add them to our list.

Overall Grade: Good+

Edited May 30 by mamiamjo

[mamiamjo]

Bars & Lounges: Overall we really enjoyed the plethora of bars including several themed bars on this class ship. With that said however, we didn't even come close to getting to all of them. 

I tend to prefer to order from the bar itself rather than using a bar waiter/server as I find it's most often faster that way. The exception, on this cruise was in the Punchliner where we did use a server. DW also used a waiter while playing in the casino (although I did not) and she found the service to be a bit erratic at best.

 

The following are my thoughts on my experience at the bars I ordered from. I had no problem getting a drink directly from any bar within 5-12 minutes. Now, I do tip $1-$2 for each drink order which I find helps get us better service. Not surprisingly, I received the fastest and friendliest service from the bar that I frequented (and tipped) most often, which was the Casino Bar. Ravi was the best bartender that I encountered there, but there were quite a few that were also quick and friendly (sorry I need to do a better job of recording all their names).

 

I really enjoyed the Watermelon Crush from The Watering Hole, but sadly, we never made it back there after embarkation day 😞 . Maybe due to our cabin location, which was on 17 Forward, we just didn't really make it back to the Deck 8 Aft section very much at all after our initial tour which means we also did not get a drink from the bar in Summer Landing.

Another bar on deck 8 that we did not use was the Havana Bar. It was closed for a private function (wedding I think) as we embarked and was used for trivia and other functions on a couple of days that we went by there so we missed this one as well.

 

I really liked the decor and vibe from the Red Frog Tiki Bar. It was crowded on embarkation day (as expected with only one Beach Pool area bar) but I was still able to get a drink (Hula Girl) within 12 minutes. Later during the cruise and on port days it was less crowded and easier to get a drink even faster. I enjoyed the second level (deck 17) better as the view of the Lido deck was better from up there.

We also liked the Serenity Bar, but we only got a drink once from there

 

The Aquaria Bar was nice for when we were watching something at Celebration Central but I'm not totally sure what their hours are.

 

The Alchemy Bar is one of my usual favorites but we really only made it there once as we waited for dinner one night. This is probably due to the way things are spread out and the fact that they have Latitudes and Golden Jubilee themed bars one deck below. Fahrenheit 555 has a great bar set up on this ship as well as it is visible and accessible to anyone walking down the hall in that area. We used it once plus the drinks we had when were having dinner at 555F. 

 

I also liked the theming of the Golden Jubilee and the Latitudes bars on deck 6. I especially liked the Pimm's Cup from Latitudes which reminds me of the Cucumber Sunrise from Alchemy.

For whatever reason, we did not make it the Tropicale Bar nor the Piano Bar on this cruise (maybe on Jubilee). Another bar we missed was Bar 820. I did look at their menu and nothing really jumped out at me at the time.

 

So as you can see, with all the variety of options we missed quite a few bars but we still had plenty to drink and we had a great time. We received very good service from each we bar we did visit and we are looking forward to visiting some of the ones we missed on the next Excel Ship we sail (we have Jubilee currently booked for next year).

Edited June 1 by mamiamjo