Carnival Splendor Review

4.0 / 5.0
1,476 reviews

A mixed bag...

Review for the Bahamas Cruise on Carnival Splendor
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ARHMiller
2-5 Cruises • Age 30s

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Sail Date: Jan 2014

I sailed with my husband to celebrate an anniversary. This was our 4th cruise and our 2nd on Carnival. Our prior Carnival ship, the Paradise, was smaller than the Splendor, but even so we managed to have a great time. We still had fun on the Splendor, but we had to work really hard to do so!

We arrived at the port at 12:30 for embarkation, and found ourselves waiting in decently long lines. It was our first time sailing out of Manhattan, but we were told the lines and chaos was typical of sailing out of Manhattan. Our embarkation experiences in Bayonne, NJ, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale were all far superior to sailing out of Manhattan. It took us over an hour to make our way through the lines just to wait in the waiting area to be allowed to board the ship.

We were also unimpressed with the ship. As previous reviewers have noted, the ship's layout is bizarre. There are several decks that you cannot walk through from one end to the other, and are forced to go outside or up or down a deck to access the other side. It took the better part of the trip to figure out where things were located and how to get from point A to point B. It wasn't simply the size, as we've cruised on a couple of larger ships, including Oasis of the Seas, and didn't find the layout to be a problem on those ships. We were also very disappointed in how little they had planned for sea days. It's winter, people! You can't expect folks to hang out by the pool, and therefore not need any activities! We actually had several inches of snow our first sea day and they closed off the top decks, so we couldn't access outside activities even if we wanted to. And still, there was nothing but those ridiculous shopping seminars, spa seminars, and trivia. There wasn't even a lot of live music during the day, although we did enjoy the Big Band Jazz they had for an hour in the afternoon. Having sailed with Carnival once before, I was expecting more activities and a fun environment, like we had on the smaller Paradise. No dice. We rarely even saw our cruise director, Eli. He seemed nice enough, but he was NOWHERE to be found. And after we sailed with Richard Spacey as our cruise director on Explorer, we had higher expectations. In fact, the entertainment staff as a whole was lackluster - the DJ just sat there staring into space while he played an uninspired Top 40's playlist; the employee leading the deck games was downright nasty to a couple of kids; everyone just seemed bored. One exception was Donkey who led the salsa lesson and seemed to be having fun. But, the staff seemed bored and so did the passengers!

Cabin Review

Room was worn and looked in need of repair. The balcony door did not shut easily, and we had to tug a few times on the handle to get it to fully close. The carpet was stained in places and the drain in the shower overflowed into the bathroom almost as soon as you turned the water on, regardless of whether the ship was at sea or at port. We were told there was nothing wrong with it, but I'd beg to differ. On the bright side, our cabin steward was phenomenal and the view from our balcony was great!

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