Carnival Breeze Review
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This was my wife's and my first trip to Europe. We chose the Breeze because of the itinerary and found a whole different face of Carnival from previous cruises - and not a good one. I'll get to the whole itinerary issues later. Let me start with the ship.
The Breeze is a beautiful ship, modeled much like the Disney Wonder and Magic boats in decor but a lot like the older Carnival ships in layout. The food was the typical pretty decent Carnival fare (except the eggs in the buffet - ugh!) and had some fun additions like the Guy's Burger Joint (probably the best free food other than dinner) and the Blue Iguana Cafe. There were lots of upcharge food areas, too (an Italian restaurant for $12 pp, a steakhouse for $35 pp, a pretty decent sushi bar ($1-$12 depending on what you ordered), a dessert place ($3 for ice cream??), and Red Frog Pub which we did not try because none of the $3 appetizers appealed to us. The entertainment was sporadic (three times they cancelled shows and they had issues with the comedians, but that was due to the itinerary issues) and at times non-existent (basically, there's not much going on between 5-7:30). The staff was friendly but poorly trained in some areas (e.g. the girl in the Library Bar had no idea how to work the self-service wine machine - and she was the only one on duty).
We had a cove balcony which was probably the best thing about our trip. The balcony was on deck 2 and had a great view of the water and was fairly well protected from the weather. One night we had 50 knot winds and 20-25 foot waves and it was pretty cool watching them from the balcony. The balcony does have an outer steel door which was closed when we had to take the rough seas broadside which prevented us from using the balcony during those 2 brief periods. The room was larger than previous Carnival rooms we had had and had plenty of storage. The thermostat just says "warmer" and "colder" and it didn't seem to respond very quickly either way. Our steward told us the last night of the cruise that the ship doesn't have heat, just AC either on or off and that's controlled by the thermostat. We had some cold nights, but the comforter was certainly adequate for keeping us warm in bed.
Cabin Review
We had a cove balcony which was probably the best thing about our trip. The balcony was on deck 2 and had a great view of the water and was fairly well protected from the weather. One night we had 50 knot winds and 20-25 foot waves and it was pretty cool watching them from the balcony. The balcony does have an outer steel door which was closed when we had to take the rough seas broadside which prevented us from using the balcony during those 2 brief periods. The room was larger than previous Carnival rooms we had had and had plenty of storage. The thermostat just says "warmer" and "colder" and it didn't seem to respond very quickly either way. Our steward told us the last night of the cruise that the ship doesn't have heat, just AC either on or off and that's controlled by the thermostat. We had some cold nights, but the comforter was certainly adequate for keeping us warm in bed.