Carnival Paradise Review
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This was our third cruise, our first Carnival Cruise (previous 2 on Royal) and first inside cabin. We decided to do a 4 night, 3 day Mexican cruise on the Paradise as it was my parents 50th wedding anniversary, who live in Vegas, and since my mother has a fear of flying it was a short drive to Long Beach. We also took my daughter and our new son in law who were married on that previous Saturday.
EMBARKATION -- We arrived around 2:00 P.M. and were pleasantly greeted by the porters who helped us take our luggage off the roof of our vehicle. Check in was a breeze, there were no real long lines and since we used the online Funpass registration, they had us all checked in a matter of around 10 minutes. Security was tight in the terminal, we were asked for ID when we entered the building, when we were going on the escalator, when we got to the top of the escalator (couldn't figure that one out) and after we walked across the gangway onto the ship. Since it was my parent's anniversary and my daughters honeymoon, we prearranged on line to have their rooms decorated and gifts waiting, this was money well spent, Carnival really did a fantastic job with the decorations. Both my parents and daughter & son-in-law got extremely emotional as we entered each of their rooms. But the biggest surprise we had, was all our luggage was outside our rooms. I have to say I was really impressed normally we don't see our luggage until after we've set sail and have eaten dinner.
After inspecting our room and putting our clothing in the dresser it was off for lunch in the Paris Restaurant. I was really impressed with the food on this ship, for lunch they had carved turkey and I about fell off my chair when my 140-pound son-in-law came back with two big turkey legs. Shortly after eating, the captain announced muster, we got our life jackets and proceeded to the Normandie lounge. Muster lasted approximately 20 minutes. Leaving port was uneventful as it was raining and the temperature was in the low 60's. Weather on this trip was not very good as it rained 2 out of the 3 days. But we didn't let it spoil our fun.