Because my personal version of hell is the lido deck on a typical Carnival Cruise (a Justin Beiber concert movie on the big screen, unattended kids running everywhere and monopolizing the hot tubs, people with overloaded plates competing for scarce lounge chairs, etc.) after becoming empty nesters my wife and I thought we were done with Carnival. The Spa decks on some of their newer ships have caused us to reconsider that decision. We tried a Spa cabin on The Carnival Dream last summer thought it was wonderful so we thought we would try another on The Carnival Splendor. We had another great time. Some highlights of our trip:

Prior to the cruise we drove to Long Beach the night before and stayed at the Best Western Golden Sail. They have a package where you get a room, breakfast and get to park your car for a week for abound $150. They have a cab pick you up from the hotel and give you a voucher for the cab ride back after the cruise. The rooms are old and need updating but they are clean and comfortable. The fact that the cabs pick you up right outside the cruise terminal makes this very convenient.

We found the Spa Cabins and the Spa to be similar to what we found on The Dream. The Spa Cabins give you full use of the Spa Whirlpool and several steam room, heated stone bed rooms and such. We found it quite relaxing. We used the spa every day of the cruise. One disappointment was the Serenity deck area on the Splendor is not nearly as nice it is on the Dream. It is small and the drone of air conditioning units is overpowering over much of the area. There are no covered lounge chairs. It was OK, got us away from the madness and chaos on the lido deck, but was disappointing after experiencing how wonderful the Serenity Deck was on the Dream. All that said we enjoyed the room and the accommodations over all and would do it again in a heartbeat. Read more