Carnival Sensation Review
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My wife and I made our first cruise on August 16th onboard the Sensation for a 5 day Western Caribbean cruise. We flew into Tampa early on the 16th and took a quick cab ride to the port. There is a set price of $20 from the airport to the port/downtown area which is clearly posted on the cab window. The driver was friendly and got us to the port in around 15 minutes. When we arrived to check-in around 11:30 the line was rather long but moved very quickly. We were assigned to boarding group 7 and had to wait for around 1 hour before going onboard. The waiting area is kind of cramped but everything went very smoothly.
Once onboard we dropped our carry on bags in our stateroom and went for lunch at the Seaview grill. The lunch buffet was good but nothing spectacular. After lunch we explored the ship for awhile before pulling out of port. We returned to our stateroom which was larger than we expected. The room was very clean but we did discover a problem with the shower as lt didn't drain and we wound up with a flooded bathroom. We called the pursers desk and a maintenance person came while we were out but unfortunately didn't fix the problem as we found out the next morning. We let our cabin steward know about the problem the next morning and he let us know he would get it corrected. Once again a maintenance person returned and this time he fixed the problem. The pursers desk called that evening to make sure we the problem was corrected and even went so far as to deliver a nice note apologizing for the problem along with a bottle of wine.
Being our first cruise, we had chosen the early dining time and were assigned to the Ecstasy dining room but made the mistake of arriving for our 5:45 seating time at 6:15 and found a dining room closed sign. The maitre'd (Dino) informed us that you should normally arrive by 6:00 but that it wasn't a problem and his assistant showed us to our table. Our table staff (Bakul and Ricky) were superb and went out of their way to make dinner great. Every meal was delicious although the portions were a little on the small side, but if you wanted more to eat all you had to do was ask.