Carnival Inspiration Review

4.0 / 5.0
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Easter week

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Carnival Inspiration
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ron57nie
First Time Cruiser • Age 60s

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Additional details

Sail Date: Apr 2009
Cabin: Interior

For clarification purposes my wife and I have 20+ cruises and are in our early 50's, we have cruised on RCCL, Carnival, Holland America, and NCL as well as a few older lines. Our Easter week cruise on the Inspiration was excellent and we had a good time. I do not inflate scores so a 3 was good a 4 great and a 5 one of the best. After 20 or so cruises you have certain expectations and for the most part all lines meet these expectations, occasionally they exceed them, and of course at times they don't meet them.

Our embarkation in Tampa was great. We had spent the night in Ocala, driving down from NC on Good Friday. We stayed at the Best Western, which we had booked on Priceline for a $40 total fee, much cheaper then anything in Tampa and about 80 mile drive away. The hotel was great as was the heavy continental breakfast. We left Ocala around 9 am and got to the port around 10:30am. A little earlier then we hoped but we had seen a lot of traffic the day before and we wanted to get a jump on it. We parked at the pier and it was $60 for the 5 nights, and literally a 5-minute walk from the ship to our car. We often stay at a hotel that offers park and cruise but we wanted to get a early start at the end of the cruise so we opted to park at the pier. It's easy to eat up 45 minutes waiting for shuttles to fill and travel time so our 5 minutes saved us considerable time.

We got thru the check in early and had to wait until 11:30 to board the ship. We immediately went and ate, then proceeded to the pool. We wear our swimsuits under our shorts so the change is easy and we were among the first to enjoy the sun. This cruise was a spring break cruise and we were sure we'd see many kids coming aboard and we were not surprised. We were told there were 2600 people on this cruise that lists 2000 as capacity, and over 1000 were minors. That said they were fine for the most part, the exception to this was the pool area where anarchy ruled. The pool had way to many people in it, jumping wildly with no real supervision. Kids running in the wet splash zone looked like an accident waiting to happen, but in truth I never saw one. There were many children making use of the hot tubs and the slides and adults were seemingly banished from their use. No problem for us but it might be for some. The pool calypso band was quite good and did most of the old standbys.

Cabin Review

Interior

Cabin 4c

ample size, very quiet, new bathroom, 2 bunk beds, a/c not great, no hairdryer

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