Carnival Valor Review

4.0 / 5.0
1,524 reviews

2nd on Carnival--1st to Western Caribbean

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Carnival Valor
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JAYinNC
10+ Cruises • Age 70s

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Sail Date: Nov 2011
Cabin: Balcony

I hesitate to write this review because it mirrors very much the last Carnival sailing we made two years ago. If you want to go back in the Carnival archives and find my review of the Carnival Victory for November 2009, you would get much of the sense of this review. Our second sailing on Carnival confirmed my earlier comment that I would never intentionally sail Carnival. We prefer a more traditional cruise experience as opposed to the Fun Ship concept that is characteristic of Carnival and Norwegian. This will be confirmed with our sailing in April 2012 on Regent to the Mediterranean.

So, you might ask, why take this cruise? As was the case two years ago, we "won" this cruise as part of an incentive with my business. As such, our hosts provided us with balcony cabins, all transportation and transfers, two private cocktail parties with food and entertainment (one night we "owned" the disco for an hour), on board credits to cover tips and more, a soda card, and a special dinner at Scarlett's Steakhouse. Thus the many perks by our hosts turned the experience -- which would have been a 3-3.5 under normal circumstances -- into a 4.5-5.

We flew down from NC on the day of embarkation with our group totalling about 38. Due top available flights to meet a 4:00PM sailing, we arrived at the cruise terminal EARLY...11:00AM. And while our check in in the terminal went quickly, we then had to wait until after NOON to board the ship. Thus a word to the wise...don't plan to get to the ship until after NOON if possible. We did board, explored, had some lunch, and then explored some more. We were able to take possession of our cabin around 1:45, and our luggage was all delivered by 6:30PM.

Cabin Review

Balcony

Cabin 8B
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