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INTRODUCTION
Okay, so I'm in my late 30's, a white collar professional (marketing for a Fortune 500) and am not a snob, but don't want to rub elbows with the trailer trash either. We cruised with our kids, all 5 of them ages 17 years through 9 months. We also traveled with my parents (who came in handy at times with the aforementioned kids) and my sister-in-law, sister-in-law's boyfriend, and my neice. Needless to say, we had a rather well represented cross section of humanity just within our own group of 12.
I've never cruised before, but have traveled to Europe, Hawaii, around the USA, etc. This review, then, will be as much a review of cruising itself as it is a specific review of Carnival and the Splendor.
WHY WE WENT WITH CARNIVAL
I should point out that, even though I have never cruised before, my parents have probably cruised about 20-30 times on many different cruise lines, so I'll be peppering some of my review with some of their perspective.
When we were first planning a cruise we thought long and hard about which cruise line to go with. It came down to Princess, Royal Caribbean, Carnival, or NCL. In the end, we went with Carnival because they were the only line that will actually take un-potty trained 2 year olds into their "Camp Carnival" program. The other lines want the kids to be at least 3 and potty trained.
I was somewhat apprehensive about this choice as I've heard over and over how Carnival was the "bottom of the barrel, yadda yadda." But, when I asked my dad what he thought he said: "There's nothing wrong with Carnival." His opinion, and the fact that the Splendor is a virtually new ship along with the Camp Carnival factor decided us.
Ironically, though, the Camp Carnival factor turned out to be irrelevant as my little ones cried like banshees when we tried to drop them off...oh well...
My two year old had a strange love/hate relationship with "Funship Freddy" the Carnival mascot. He was both terrified of Freddy, and strangely fascinated by him at the same time. We finally got him to muster up the courage to take a picture with Freddy later in the cruise.
THE SHIP
The Splendor is an almost brand-new ship. As such, it's really in immaculate condition and when we were in port, parked next to NCL, RCCL, and Holland America ships, ours was as clean and sharp as any.
You'll quickly figure out that deck 5 is where all the action's at. It has the "Fun" shops--if shopping is fun for you, the casino--surprisingly large, and many of the bars and clubs (cool bar, morocco lounge, the piano bar, the red carpet dance club, the our house bar, etc.). Level 5 is the center of the action. I know I spent any free time I could carve out at the poker table there.
Many have made mention of the pink decor. Having read this, I was prepared for a pink extravaganza. But fear not, while the atrium and the stairways and elevators are mauve-ish, the rest of the ship is perfectly tastefully decorated. The hallways and staterooms are quite nice with neutral decor and wood trim. My parents had a balcony room and it was awesome. In our case, having to pay for 7 people, we went cheap and got an inside stateroom.
Speaking of the staterooms, I've heard that Carnival's are among the larger of them, yet I was still surprised that they were so small. The bed was very comfortable, though.
FOOD AND FOOD SERVICE
We ate in the main dining room (The Gold Pearl) the first two nights. The food was "good" but not necessarily great. Our waiters did a fine job and were very nice, but having heard so many stories over the years of how amazing the service was on some ships, all I can say is that they met my expectations, but did not exceed them.
The bar waiter in the main dining room, though, was pretty great. His name was Ahmed or Ahmad and he would remember what you drank, spend extra time saying hello to the kids and was generally the nicest crewmember I had contact with.
My only complaint is that the food service in the Gold Pearl was a tad slow. I note another review on this site where someone compained that they felt rushed through dinner. Boy, in our case, things took too long. With a squirming toddler to my left, I would rather things moved a little more quickly. For this reason, we took a few of our dinners in the Lido Cafe.
The Lido, by the way, is basically Hometown Buffet. Some of the food is actually quite good (the Mongolian BBQ, for example) and some is not so good. For instance, I never got a waffle or piece of french toast that was above room temperature. Over the course of a few days, you figure out what works for you and what doesn't. The omlette bar in the mornings was great.
In addition to the main dining room and the Lido there's a pizza bar and a grill serving hot dogs and hamburgers by the Lido pool. In the back, by the "Liner Lido" pool there's a sandwich bar. I never tried the sandwich bar but it looked pretty good. You can also order room service 24 hours a day. There was a sushi bar opened on deck 5 for a bit it seemed one or two evenings.
The bottom line is: if you can't find something you like to eat, then you have to be the most fussy eater on the planet. No, you won't find 5 star restaurant gourmet quality cuisine here, but the food is fine to good and there's plenty of it.
SERVICE AND CREW
Out stateroom attendant, John, did a great job, was always very friendly yet down to earth. Since he knew my 2 year old liked Fruit Loops, whenever we would see him in the hallway, John would say "hi Fruit Loops!" to my son, who would laugh at the joke.
The bar staff was fine, not amazing. They would usually thank you by your first name (after having obviously read it off your card). They were okay, did not really exceed my expectations. But, hey, they're just serving drinks.
Most of the cleaning crew would say hello and ask how you're doing if you passed them in the hallway. I only had the slightest negative experience with a random waiter on our last morning. We were eating breakfast in the main dining hall (something we had never done before). The waiter, Roland, asked my wife what she'd like for breakfast. Well, my wife wasn't ready as she was dealing with our infant son so she asked him if he could start with someone else, to which he replied: "It's the same breakfast every day." I thought that this was rude and very uncharacteristic of the crew. Obviously this guy was either having a bad day, or shouldn't be in the job he has. There's nothing wrong with that, I would be a pretty terrible waiter too.
The casino staff were fine. The manager, a bulgarian guy who's name is pronounced "SweetsLove" but is spelled some other way, was pretty cool and would always come over to chat with the poker players and even brought us blankets because the area of the casino in which the poker table sits is abolutely FREEZING. If you plan on playing poker, be sure to wear a sweater and, no, I'm not kidding.
GAMBLING
Speaking of the casino, I don't really gamble other than poker, so it's hard for me to comment too much. I will say, though, that the casino is fairly reasonable. I've spent many, many hours in vegas casinos (I've probably been to Vegas 30 times) so I know the deal. With $1 roulette, $5 black jack, $3 face up black jack (you can see the dealer's hole cards, but all pushes result in a dealer win), and nickel machines, anyone who wants to gamble fairly cheaply can do so. And, as I mentioned earlier, the casino is a bit larger that what I expected. Just remember that the casino is closed while in port for legal reasons. Also be aware the the casino is one of the few places that people can smoke, so if that bothers you then be warned.
SMOKING
Since I broached the subject in the last paragraph. You are fairly limited as to where you can smoke. The casino, the "Our House" sports bar directly adjacent to the casino, the Robusto Cigar Bar (which is usually completely empty), deck 10 aft--just above the "Liner Lido" (not to be confused with the regular Lido pool) adults only pool, the Red Carpet dance club, the piano bar, and I think that's it. As for me, I don't smoke regularly at home or at work, but am one of those people who, when on vacation might sneak a smoke while drinking a beer or whatever. Just don't tell my wife.
FELLOW GUESTS
I was a bit worried that with Carnival's reputation as the "low price leader" in the cruise industry it would be trailer trash and drunken frat boys galore. In truth, there was no "typical" cruiser. There were people from every demographic one could imagine. Old, young, white, black, latino, asian, you name it. Plenty of families with kids.
The other guests were fine. Yes, I would say that the average person was middle to working class, but there were plenty of people with money, one of the older guys I played poker with was fairly well off, from what I could tell. Unless you're a snob, you won't have too much of a problem here.
Having said that, I would be interested to see what a RCCL cruise is like just to see if there's much difference in the people. From what I can tell, it might be just a notch up in the class of passengers. But Carnival's perfectly fine, just everyday people.
As for Holland America, we had some friends on the Veendam and they were in port in Puerto Vallarta the same day as us. They said that if you were 65 you'd be among the younger passengers. No one was in the casino because people that old don't want to gamble, and when their teenage daughter (who was one of the only teenagers on the ship) won at bingo all the old people booed her. Yikes. Glad we didn't go with them!
KIDS PROGRAMS
I think we're uniqely qualified to comment on this as we had kids in almost every age group. Let's start with the little ones.
Carnival, unlike most other cruise lines, will take two year olds and up into their Camp Carnival program. You will receive a special cell phone (as yours won't work on ship) that the camp counselors/babysitters can use to call you if necessary.
For younger kids (under 2 years old), they offer baby sitting services during select hours, but you have to pay for them. The rate is $6 per hour. Now, come on! Where can you even get a half competent 14 year old nowadays to babysit for $6 per hour? And the girls in the Camp Carnival babysitting area are very sweet and really try to do a good job. It wasn't their fault that our little ones just didn't want to be away from mommy and daddy. Oh well...
For my 12 year old step-daughter and 13 year old neice there was "Circle C" while the 17 year olds had "Club O2."
The older kids had a blast. Here they were, with their own room, on a ship with all the food they could eat, a place where they could participate in some activities and meet other kids their own age, and run generally amok 24/7. Hang out at the pool, do karaoke, etc. etc. They had a lot of fun, to say the least. In fact, I'm sure they had more fun than mom and I.
MONEY
I really thought we'd spend more than we did on this trip. To start with, we had two $200 room credits applied to our account. So there's $400 bucks in our pocket to start with. We then purchased 3 "Fountain Fun Cards" for unlimited sodas, one for my wife and I and two for the kids. That was about $130 for all three, I think.
For drinks, I really expected them to stick it to you as you're in a captive environment, but they don't. A dometic beer is about $5, imported $6, and foo foo drinks can be more, as much as $10. But this is what you'd pay in a club in LA, so I wasn't to bothered by it. We had, maybe, 30 drinks total at an average of $6 a piece. So that's a couple hundred bucks.
For gambling, I actually came out ahead by $75 and my wife broke even. Whereas I had expected to burn a few hundred gambling.
In the ports, we spent maybe $150 on shopping, and taxi rides, etc.
Put it this way, when we were done with our cruise, our bill came to about $150 after the room credits and the few bucks I applied to our "Sail & Sign" account from the poker winnings. Other than that, I took $300 cash out of the ATM before boarding for spending money and spent half of that when I went scuba diving in Cabo.
If you don't drink, do excursions, or gamble, and you're not in any urgent need of t-shirts or mexican blankets, you really won't need much money. How much you spend will be a function of these things.
ENTERTAINMENT
Well, not much to say here. The first night I went to the main showroom with everyone, my 2 year old loved it and was dancing in the aisles. As for me, after 3 or 4 cheesy song and dance routines, I made my way out to do something else--like play poker. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the the performers are hard working, talented, people. It's just that they have to create shows that appeal to the greatest number of people possible. As for me, cheesy cabaret stuff is not my thing. I did hear, though, that the comedian later in the week was pretty good.
THE PORTS
The ports were sadly kind of a letdown. This isn't Carnival's fault, and you can read about the ports in a million other places, so I'll be brief.
In Puerto Vallarta we took a taxi downtown to do some shopping. After passing the MacDonald's, Subway, and Starbucks, and seeing 10,472,663,677,373,636 shops selling blankets, t-shirts, and knick-knacks, I'd had enough. We wen't back to the ship and I enjoyed a rare pleasure: sitting on the deck with the ship half empty, reading some Michener, and drinking a few cervezas while watching the sun set.
Mazatlan...where to begin. We thought it would be cool to go to a hotel and sit on the beach, let the kids play, and relax. We found a guy in the shopping area right where you get off the ship selling "day passes" the the El Cid.
Now, I've heard of the El Cid and understand it to be a reputable place. So, for $35 for a day pass with unlimited drinks, food, and basic water activity rentals (kayaks, etc.) I thought it was a pretty good deal. Besides, the kids would be free, we were told.
So, 10 of us piled into a taxi and went to the hotel, where the guy at the desk said that the kids would not be free. I was pissed and explained that this was riduculous, here were 6 adults ready to spend some money with them and they're going to fight us over $40 bucks? They would not back down even after admitting that they had been wrong.
So, we took the taxi BACK the the port, did some shopping, and went back to the ship. DON'T waste your time with the El Cid people, they have no concept of customer service.
Cabo San Lucas...ironically, the best of the 3 ports yet the place where you'll get the least amount of time. I decided at the last minute to go scuba diving there. I literally just got off the ship, went to Manta Scuba (who were great, by the way) and went out with them (there were about 10 divers total). We dove Pelican Rock and the Point. Awesome. I don't recommend my approach of waiting till the last minute, I only did it becasue I was getting over a cold and was not sure how I'd be feeling. Otherwise, you're better off just signing up through the ship's excursions desk as the price was a touch less and you at least get the guarantee of going. In my case, had I gotten to Manta Scuba a half hour later I would have missed out.
My wife did the dolphin encounter and really loved it. Cabo was great!
We felt that, of the 3 ports, Cabo was the only one that we'd actually come back and spend time in.
SUMMARY
Overall, we were very pleased with our cruise and I would recommend it to anyone. Carnival exceeded my expectations as I had heard so many bad things about them. I will definitely consider them when planning my next cruise.
I think the bad rap they're received may be due to the past. Ditto for RCCL's stellar reputation. Having spoken to several people (like my parents) who've been on many different lines, it seems that things are getting a bit more homogenous. You can have really bad food on a Royal Caribbean ship and great food on a Carnival ship.
My feeling is that RCCL might be the exact center of the cruise universe, with Carnival occupying a slightly more affordable niche which appeals to families and younger people. Let me add, though, that even this isn't entirely true. NCL was selling this same cruise same week for 199 the week before we sailed, and Princess was 3 something, meanwhile, we paid over $400). NCL has their Freestayle dining, which looks interesting, and Holland America and Celebrity are for sedate, older people. My parents like princess all around the most, but my dad's 66, so...
Unless you're Frasier Crane, you'll be fine with this cruise. The ship is brand new, the prices are reasonable, things aren't too stuffy, and the service is good. Take a shot and have fun.
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