I went with a family of seven on a cruise to Cabo in January. The Carnival Spirit was a nice ship but we were a little disappointed with the overall experience. It all started a week before the cruise. Carnival called us and asked if we would like to upgrade to 3 balcony rooms with interconnecting doors on the back of the ship and on the main deck that was near all the activities. We decided to ...
Embarkation (1/1/11)
We drove to the ship from Las Vegas and stayed at the San Pedro Doubletree. They let you park for the week as part of a room package and deliver you in their van to and from the pier. Tip the driver, who works very hard at getting you close to the curbside porters. My only complaint was that the porters seemed overwhelmed and you do not get a claim check for your ...
The ship was nice for it's age (10 years old) but time had left its mark on her. Most notably was the noise and vibration from the engines. I guess I have no one to blame but myself for not doing my homework beforehand. The cruise we scheduled was apparently the last cruise before the ship's scheduled dry dock date. Therefore the vibration and noise were about as bad as anyone would imagine. I can ...
We sailed the Carnival Spirit round-trip from Los Angeles (San Pedro) to Hawaii 12/02/11-12/17/11. We had sailed the same ship 12 days from Honolulu to Vancouver in 2004. This was my 13th Carnival cruise and 31st cruise overall.
Generally, we had a good time. We met some really nice folks, enjoyed our Cruise Critic get-togethers, loved most of our port time and had a great vacation. ...
We can't blame the cruise line for the bad weather, however we have been on smother riding trains than this ship. In the MDR even in smooth seas there was always vibration including the silver and china (as if the screws were out of balance). We could even feel the vibration in our cabin at night (mid ship deck 6). It was obvious the staff has been cut as the dining service really ...
This part is going to be mostly about the ship. The review of the ports are below.
Let me start out that over all we enjoyed our trip. We LOVED Hawaii and hope to go back. We felt that for our first visit this was the way to see some of the best of what the islands had. Definitely not enough time on them, but gave us a good taste of what they had to offer.
I'll start with the not so good ...
We have always wanted to do this cruise. We were booked on the NCL Spirit out of Tampa and cancelled without any penalty about six months prior to the cruise date. We had booked a balcony and as the prices dropped we up-graded first to an extended balcony and then hit the jack pot and ended up with an AFT extended balcony on the Main deck (number 4), just above the Anytime part of the main ...
I would like to share my experiences and thoughts about my recent cruise with Carnival.
This was a significant celebration for me as I turned 50 years old. Achieving this stage of my life commanded an extraordinary trip. In my plans, I wanted to do something exciting and new, therefore, a 15 day Carnival Cruise to Hawaii was a perfect. The main reason for choosing Carnival was for its ...
This was my first cruise, and to be frank I wanted to go with Holland America but the holiday cruise I wanted was booked and I could only get a late booking with Carnival. I was traveling alone and single over the holidays, so knew this would be an interesting experience to say the least, since I was aware of Carnival's reputation of being geared more toward families, cheap cruising, and "fun." ...
My husband and I took this cruise to avoid the holiday same ol same ol. We left the 23rd of December and returned January 1st. It worked! All in all we had a very good time. We were lucky to meet some new friends that I believe we will have for years to come. In fact we have all booked another adventure together on Holland America. Having said all this let me move on to the problems ...