Carnival Bookings?????

[Stanley]

Cruisingagentone and other Celebrity Cruisers,

 

We are new to cruising. Only 1 Celebrity Cruise so far. With all this discount/no discount stuff going on we thought we may look for another line to use for our next cruise. From the things that I've read, Carnival just can't compare with Celebrity. We're in our 50's & 60's, would not be traveling with kids, don't mind dress codes, and drink moderately. We would have no idea if Canival or any other line would be good for us. Any suggestions?

[ajpack]

Stanley....We've been on 2 Celebrity cruises and have 2 more booked. We're in our mid-fifties and from what I've heard Carnival can get pretty roudy. At my age, I'm not into pool games and wet t-shirt contests. We were on RCCL in 1998 and even now that seems a liitle too lively! Give me a quiet deck where I can curl up with a good book and enjoy the scenery on sea days. I don't want to hear a loud band with a conga line around the pool.

 

Do you have any info about Princess? I've heard Holland America is nice.

 

Anne

[plvogel]

It depends on what you like. In general, Carnival has a more Vegas-like atmosphere (lots of glitz and neon), and a younger demographic, but many people obviously enjoy Carnival. I, personally, have little interest in Carnival, but certainly wouldn't turn down a cruise if they offered it for free or REAL cheap!!

[teedee]

I am in my late 40's and I have quite enjoyed my Carnival cruises, admitedly not nearly as much as Celebrity though. I think that if you booked on one of their newer ships you would be fine, they do not have the rowdy reputation that some of the older ships do. I agree with the poster who suggested Princess, I haven't sailed with them yet, but they seem to be a quieter type of cruise than Carnival.

Terri

[halos]

Stanley,

I have sailed 3x with Carnival and enjoyed those cruises. My advice with Carnival is to

1) Find a newer ship to sail on

2) Spirit class ships are wonderful.

3) PLEASE cruise off season. Carnival is a family ship and during the summer and holidays there are WAY too many kids on board. Most of which are un-parented. :mad:

4) It is only as 'rowdy' as YOU make it. If there are pool games going on, you can choose another pool. We avoided the family pool and hung out at the adult pool and were thoroughly relaxed and pampered all week.

5) The food is wonderful and the service is great...but you won't be escourted to your cabin with a glass of champagne....it's definitely not as upscale...but that doesn't mean yu won't have a great time. Give them a try.

You might be pleasantly surprised.

[chessbriar]

Based on what I have read, your best bet is to check into Princess first and then Holland America. They are not quite up to Celebrity standard, but both offer a very good product based more on service and less on the party atmosphere.

[Peanuts]

I have been on "several" Carnival cruises and have enjoyed every one of them. Carnival is "Las Vegas" with lots of glitz and neon but it also has a lot of activity. As far as "rowdy" in all the cruises I can't say that I saw that. If you do go with Carnival I also would suggest you book on a new ship. We did the Miracle in Feb 04 and it is my favorite ship so far. Princess is also a nice cruise line so the choices are endless.

 

We booked the Summit for something different. Different ports (Aruba) and a different cruising experience. Like you we did our home work and decided on Celebrity. Will we go back to Carnival of course. We love the activity on Carnival and the age group. You will find children of all ages from toddlers to elderly!!:rolleyes:

[lstrong]

I loved the Carnival Spirit this last May. Wonderful service, wonderful food, lots of space, lots of balconies, large rooms. I agree with some of the above posters - choose a "Spirit Class" ship and avoid summers and spring break and you will enjoy Carnival. We are in our 50s/60s and love cruising.

[traveller99]

Stanley, I've sailed 2 Celebrity's and am booked for June 2005 on the Horizon to Bermuda. I just returned 2 weeks ago from the Golden Princess - So. Carib Itinerary. It was very nice - The ship is big, but not crowded. Food was good, as was the ship's service. Check them out, you'll probably do OK.

[joannie]

Just stay away from the 3 or four night Carnival Cruises.

 

They have upgraded their product in all categories.

[Stanley]

Thanks for all the advice. We did love our Celebrity cruise but would like to try something else as well. We're near Houston and it seems NCL and Carnival sail from Galveston & Houston quite often. Celebrity's Galaxy will be here this fall for the Panama Canal cruise.

 

Thanks again.

[DrKoob]

I have not sailed on Celebrity yet but we are booked on Infinity for Panama Canal on Halloween. We have cruised on Carnival, a short cruise to Western Mexico out of LA. (Prior to that we had done HAL to Alaska and loved it.) We actually felt unsafe on Carnival. Here is the review I wrote at that time. Hope it helps.

 

Jim in Redmond, WA

 

General views:

 

First I should state that the travel agent who booked this cruise for us cautioned us against booking on Carnival as she felt that we might find that the party atmosphere was more than we might enjoy. I can say now that we should have taken her advice. Not because of the party atmosphere but for numerous other reasons. Below is a blow-by-blow account of what we like to refer to as the cruise from hell.

 

OK, it wasn’t that bad. We flew from Seattle to LAX on Monday morning with no major hassles. We were met by the Carnival folks at the airport who efficiently got us on buses to the ship where we didn’t have to stand in line for too long before we were allowed on the ship. Embarkation was handled very well. From there on, just about everything was downhill.

 

You should know that we had cruised before to Alaska with Holland America on the Westerdam, which is owned by the same parent company as Carnival. I will use that as a comparison for this cruise. What a difference!

 

The first sign that this would be a bad experience was the lifeboat drill. All passengers were informed that there would be a lifeboat drill at 4:30 pm (the ship was set to sail at 5:30) Much was made of the fact that there would be no smoking or drinking at the drill and that we were to proceed to our muster stations at that time.

 

Upon arriving at the muster station we found that the members of the crew who were supposed to be running the drill were not willing to take any initiative in controlling the groups. We were about halfway back from the crew members (part of the Cruise Director’s staff) making the presentation and giving directions of what to do in case of emergency but we could not hear a word that was said due to the party that was going on behind us. Numerous passengers were already inebriated and many had drinks in their hands the entire time. On Holland America, roll was called to make sure that all aboard were in attendance and a crew member checked each and every life jacket to make sure that we knew what we were to do in event of an emergency. On the Ecstasy, I may as well have stayed in my cabin. No one would have known or cared and I would have known just as much as I know now as I could still not tell you what was said during the drill. It was just window dressing for the Coast Guard. This is totally unacceptable in our post 9/11 world.

Food:

 

When we first boarded the ship we were hungry after flying for 5 hours. The ship advertised that they had 24 hour pizza available and that sounded good to me. Right up until I ate it—cold. From the pizza guys’s hand to my hand and sitting at a table in the dining room took all of 90 seconds and in that time, it was cold. Shades of things to come.

 

This was not the only case of cold food. The first full day out of LA we decided to have breakfast in the dining room where we could order what we wanted and have it served to us at our table as opposed to the buffet upstairs.

 

Everything we ordered that morning (with the exception of some very weak coffee—you can get espresso but you have to ask for it, it is not on the menu) was cold. I ordered eggs benedict, which should have been singular as they brought me one very overdone poached egg on a cold English muffin with a congealed hollandaise sauce on it. The sauce literally looked like a candy coating when you cut into the egg. I had also ordered toast, which came cold as well.

 

Dinners in the dining room most nights were mediocre. The first night was the best and the appetizers and desserts seem to be the best part of any dinner. High marks to the escargot and the Grand Marnier soufflé. The folks at our table ordered a variety of main courses during the week and no one ever seemed to be very impressed. As an example the lobster I had on the second night out was one tough lobster who had been in one too many fights. My wife had the pork that night which she found very dried out.

 

FYI: On a four day cruise there is one formal night, the second one out and the rest of the nights are classified as "casually elegant." None of this is enforced as even on the formal night there were people at our table in khakis and Izod shirts.

 

We ate the rest of our breakfasts and lunches in the Panorama Grille and the omelets were not bad but the lunches left much to be desired.

 

Service:

On Holland America we had been dazzled by the service. From our asst. waiter in the dining room to our cabin steward, every minute the staff was at our beck and call. On the Ecstasy, it almost seemed like the staff was doing us a favor to wait on us. It is sad to say that the best service we got all week was from the man who made our omelets on the buffet line.

 

Two incidents come to mind. The first was that fact that each night our waiter would tell us tales of woe about how poor the working condition on the ship were, how little money he made, how he hated his job. Made us feel really good about spending money on the cruise and we always felt like he was angling for a bigger tip.

 

The second situation kept happening all week long with our cabin steward. Whenever he would service our cabin he would just make himself at home. We always found the TV tuned to the Spanish language channel (and many times it was left on) when we returned from dinner or breakfast. And many times our personal things had been moved around even though they did not need to be. The final straw was the third night when we brought another couple from our dining table down to look at pictures we had purchased. When we entered the cabin, it was very evident that he had just left and had used our cabin’s bathroom to defecate. The toilet was dirty and the smell was overpowering. I am sorry and I don’t want to sound like an snob, but this is wrong. Needless to say we could not invite our friends in and had to turn on our fan and just get out of there.

 

The Worst Part:

 

That about covers the cruise right up until we got to what my wife and I call our "worst travel day ever!" During the disembarkation talk on the day before we arrived in LA our cruise director (who spoke very fast and sometimes unintelligibly with a cockney accent) received a note that he read to us that informed him that "Upon arrival in LA, all passengers would have to be check by the INS (prior to this cruise only foreign born nationals were checked by INS and we sailed in March 2002) before anyone could disembark." He told the group, "This won’t be a problem." And it wasn’t—for him. For everyone else, it was a nightmare!

 

They decided to set up the 6 INS agents who would check the passports of the 2000+ passengers in a small lounge at one end of the ship. They then announced that everyone should get in line at a specific time and wait to present their papers. And then everyone associated with the ship disappeared. (except for the Vegas review dancers, dressed in sport coats who hardly spoke English who were seen running around doing nothing.) There were times when we felt very unsafe and that no one was in control of any situation. People would cut in the very long line and others would threaten them and yell at them with fist fights almost breaking out a number of times. No one from the crew was anywhere in sight. The lines grew so big that people were lined up in stairwells and even though we were docked at the pier at this point, if there had been a fire, surely many would have perished as there was no way to get through the huge crowd.

 

After we got through the INS part of the line (2+hours) we were told to wait in a lounge to be escorted off the ship after the INS inspection was done. The lounge we were directed to wait in had an occupancy sign that read a maximum occupancy of 100. I personally counted more than 160 people in that lounge. Not only was it crowded but there were people sitting in the doorways and again if there had been a fire or emergency, the consequences would have been horrific.

 

We were in a group that had early (prior to 1:00 PM ) flights from LAX. The majority of the folks in that group (about 100) missed their flights as the advertised time of disembarkation of the ship in LA was 8:30 AM and we were finally allowed off at 11:00 am. And we were in the first group off. Many of those folks ended up paying huge sums of money (which I am not sure if they can get Carnival to cover) to change their flights.

 

We fully realized that the INS inspection was not the fault of the Ecstasy crew but we were appalled at how they handled (or did not handle) it. No supervision, no direction, no communication, no nothing from 7:45 in the morning until 11:00 AM when someone from the crew finally came to lead us off. We felt totally unsafe throughout.

 

I want to also note that the area we were waiting in on line and after were designated non-smoking but since no one was there to tell people they could not smoke, they lit up anyway. Being highly allergic to smoke meant I got a whopping headache that took hours to go away.

 

I should say that since we had a 12:50 PM flight, we did make our plane but just barely with a lot of help from the security people at LAX. We do feel though that we will do our best to avoid LAX at any cost when flying into LA. Normally going to that area we fly into Ontario or Orange County, much better airports line and crowd wise.

 

To sum all this up, yes, we will cruise again but NEVER on Carnival. Not because of the party atmosphere but because of their lack of supervision and that for the first time in years of traveling, I actually felt unsafe.

[Sky Sweet]

We only sailed Carnival once, and that was on the Carnival Destiny from New York to Canada in August 2000. Even though the ship was only a few years old at the time, it looked much older because ot its deferred maintenance. The only good thing about that cruise is that we did not have to fly to take it. Its cuisine was mediocre at best and the ship was so understaffed that our waiter was too busy to refill my coffee cup at dinner. Very few people observed the dress code for formal night. Kids were running all over the ship without a parent in sight. The following summer we took our first Celebrity Cruise, which was on the Infinity from Vancouver to Alaska. Since that time, we have only sailed on Celebrity Ships because Celebrity is our favorite cruise line.

[ajpack]

I never really thought about the safety aspect, but it reminded me of the lifeboat drills on RCCL and Celebrity. They had a roll call on RCCL and you had better be there!! On my 2 Celebrity cruises, there was no talking among the passengers. My sister in law's life vest wasn't fastened properly, so one of the crew stopped her and fastened it correctly. What a difference between Carnival and RCI!

 

Anne

[kwsunset]

As an ex-Celebrity cruise director, I can tell you that Celebrity takes lifeboat drills very serious. If you stay in your cabin, your attendant will find out and escort you to your muster station. The safety officer on board takes his job very seriously. The captain, as you know, will go and review the lifeboat stations and if passengers talk or are unruly in any way, the individual responsible for that post will be disiplined. No joke to the staff and crew. Michael

[hajekfam]

Michael - I know that Celebrity takes the lifeboat drill seriously. We went on two cruises before hubby had his hip replacement surgery (he delayed the surgery so that we could go on the two cruises) and he sat in the back of our muster station, When they announced that we were to proceed to the lifeboats, we right by the exit - but he remained seated so that he could go out at the end of the group and not have to stand for any great length of time (anything over 5 minutes was too long). As the passengers passed us on the way out, we had several crewmembers come up to us and tell us we needed to proced to the lifeboats - we explained his problem and they were fine with us waiting until the end of the group and exiting the room with the last crew member.

I know how seriously they take the drill as we did not get off in most ports and loved watching the crew practice a more rigorous drill and take the life boats down in the water and circle.

[starsjohn]

While Celebrity remains upscale in our experiences, Princess offers a good cruise per dollar spent. Princess runs everything in a good general manner, not standing out in any department as exceptional good or bad.

 

On the one Carnival trip, we felt unsafe due to mean pax, drug selling, and using. Many people cut in lines, threw trash overboard, and finally a big lounge brawl with alcohol glasses flying. The old Jubilee was also in need of a major refit.

 

John

[nealberk]

If you must do Carnival I suggest you stick with the longer duration cruises, cruises not going to Mexico, go on the newest ships, and stay away from summers and holidays.

 

With that said, I should second the suggestions that you might want to try Holland America. Check out my websites for a comparison of HAL and Celebrity and to see what I thought of Holland America.

[margaritagal]

We were on only one Celebrity cruise & it was about 2 years ago. For us (early 50's) it was a little too sedate. It appeared at though the ship 'closed down' about 11:00 P.M. & there was absolutely nothing going on past that hour. This was my vacation, for goodness sake, and I at least wanted to stay up until midnight and dance! Possibly, even though we are now mid 50's, we are too immature (and I don't mean that sarcastically) for the upscale lines.

[halos]

On the one Carnival trip, we felt unsafe due to mean pax, drug selling, and using. Many people cut in lines, threw trash overboard, and finally a big lounge brawl with alcohol glasses flying. The old Jubilee was also in need of a major refit.

 

John

 

Don't even go there.

I found a thread on THESE boards a while back about the smell of pot wafting through the halls on a Celebrity ship.

In the 3x I have sailed Carnival, I have never experienced that.

[nmarsh]

We have sailed on Carnival three times; we never felt unsafe and have always had a great time. We are in our 50s and are not into wild parties. We found that we could join in the fun or not. However, we do not cruise during school vacations or spring break. We did once attempt to cruise in October and never made the ship due to a huricane, obviously not Carnival's fault. Even then, Carnival tried to help us when we were stuck between flights. We have never had a bad cruise experience.

Have a great cruise.

[MrPete]

I'm not into pool games and wet t-shirt contests.

This sounds more like Fort Lauderdale of years ago, and not a cruise.

 

I have cruised Carnival's old ships, new ships, for as little as 2 days and as much as 12 days, and never seen any of this stuff over 16 years of cruising.

 

Don't trash. Try it all. One of these times I intend on sailing Celebrity, as I hear the food is the best. I want to try Royal Caribbean and Princess for the opportunity to experience something new.

[NiniB]

Stanley, if you are trying to sail out of Galveston stick with X's Galaxy.. if you cant make that one the other good option would be RCL's Rhapsody.. Both of those would be excellent,,, :D

 

I have been on all of the ships that run out of Galveston with the exception of the Galaxy,,, although i would still recommend it strongly over the other lines, based on X's quality of service.

 

Carnival's Elation is not a newer/larger ship. i did have a good time on my cruise, it was my first cruise and the food,ect was ok.

 

I would never recommend Norweigan's Sea to ANYONE,, worst cruise, everything from the food to the service was awful.. AND we had BED BUGSSS..... :eek:

[dickinson]

I have never sailed Celebrity so I can not comment about the cruise experience however I can say that all my Carnival cruises were wonderful. We are in our 50's and don't drink. We travel during the off season when most kids are in school so that the ship is not over run with them. On our last cruise we had tablemates who were 70 years old and been on 9 cruises of various cruiselines. They said they enjoy Carnival the best because it is "fun". they too were not big drinkers. Do not get turned off by any cruiselines because of what you read on here. You don't know the people to know whether you value their opinion or not. Also everyone's perceptions are different. I have read reviews of the same cruise where one reviewer had a horrible time and the other reviewer loved their vacation. If you have a bad time on one cruise, don't blame the cruise line as none are perfect to everyone. Give it a second chance if the opportunity arises.

[Stanley]

Again, thank you all for taking the time to respond. It's a lot to consider and think about.