Carnival Paradise Review
Rating by category
Additional details
We were looking for a fun, quick, and relatively cheap cruise out of Tampa to start the new year, and that's exactly what we got.
Arrived at the port New Year's Day around 11 AM. No crowds at all. Thought maybe I had wasted money on the valet parking until it started to rain just as we got out of the car. From curbside to onboard (FTTF) took us about 20 minutes total, and maybe 10 of that was waiting for them to begin boarding. When we went onboard, everyone told us we would have to wait for our room despite the FTTF. We went ahead and opened a door and walked in to drop off our carry on bags and our room was ready and our bags were already there! We were upstairs with a drink in our hands looking for bowl games within 30 minutes of getting there. Only problem was they had just a single game on (at that point, they were only showing ESPN). Oh well.
Bar service was attentive and pretty good for the most part with one or two exceptions, as it was throughout the cruise. Food quality was as bad as I had expected but no worse. If you go on this cruise for the food, you are kidding yourself. The pizza area in the buffet was typically crowded, and they seldom if ever had more than one person working there, which did not make sense at meal times and late nights. You could easily wait 15 minutes for a slice of cheese pizza. There seemed to be some sort of leak at the stern area of the buffet, and they had a pretty large area back there roped off for cleaning or something for most of the trip.
Cabin Review
Ocean View
Some cabins still have CRT TVs, but ours had a small 19 inch flat screen. The beds were ok, but a little low and not too comfortable for my liking. Pillows were decent though. There was plenty of room to work around the bed (twins pushed together to form a king). There was a window looking out over the wake. Lots of storage, but we did not have much with us to fill it up. Everything worked from A/C to toilet to sink to shower to the one outlet near the desk (which isn't saying much except when it doesn't work it really is an issue). We expected less, and we pleased with the room. I know some are concerned when booking a stern cabin about the vibrations. We did not have any problems with that in this cabin except when turning around to dock in Tampa. We were up and ready to go by then anyway. There was some pitch you could feel, but not much roll, and from what I hear, other areas of the ship experienced a lot more movement. I would book this cabin again.