Carnival Triumph Review
Carnival Triumph; How It Compares to Norwegian Star and Crown Princess
Rating by category
Additional details
Almost exactly 2 years ago, my mother-in-law surprised us with a family cruise on Norwegian Star. This was myself and my wife's first cruise and we fell in love. That 7-day cruise was January 2013, our next was 7-day as well during March 2014 on the Crown Princess and we just got back from a 5-day on Carnival Triumph. We purposefully went on different cruise lines each time in order to figure out the line we liked the best. (Money is an issue so the most luxurious lines aren't on our radar)
As a lot of you know, early 2013 Carnival Triumph had some major issues. May 2013 it was dry-docked for a month and updated. The Triumph received $115 million in improvements, including additional backup power, better fire-safety technology, and the addition of several new bars and restaurants. We really enjoyed these additions (more on this later).
Embarkation and Disembarkation have been a breeze on all 3 ships we've been on. For NCL (Norwegian) and Carnival, we had priority embarking/disembarking because we had suites. For Princess, we were in general population but still got on and off the boat just as fast. Unfortunately, this was literally the only "perk" I found with getting a suites with Carnival. If someone had the "Faster to the Fun" pass, there was no benefit beyond a slightly bigger room.
Cabin Review
Ocean Suite
The cabin was an Ocean Suite w/ a slightly larger balcony (65 sq ft.). The room itself was relatively nice. Larger than a normal room, had a makeup area, 2 closets, and a jacuzzi tub. These were the main differences I noticed. The beds were all the same (fairly certain I've slept on concrete softer than them, by the way). Unless you're 5', 100 lbs or comparable, the width of the jacuzzi tub will be an issue. Not to mention, it will take over half an hour to fill the tub enough to even use the jets (my wife gave up after 20 minutes). The bigger balcony was nice, but looking back, it was not worth the extra money I spent upgrading from a balcony to the suite. The room overall didn't feel much bigger than our room on Princess and can't even come close to comparison of our suite on NCL (though we didn't have a balcony).