Carnival Inspiration Review
Rating by category
Additional details
We recently came back from a great 4-day cruise. Faster to the Fun (FTTF) is worth every cent -will never, ever go on a Carnival cruise again without it. Arrived at the terminal just before 11 and took about 5 minutes to check in. Without FTTF, I’d estimate it would take 15-20 minutes based on the size of the line. We started lining up to board about 11:40 and were on board a little after noon. We immediately went to Shore Excursions to sign up for the Behind the Fun tour. Again, so worth every penny – I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about what goes on behind the scene. It’s $55 per person and is an amazing tour (more about that later). We ate at the Blue Iguana for lunch -- very yummy. DD went to Guy’s Burgers and said it was very good as well.
We purchased Cheers for us and Bottomless Bubbles for the kids (2 17-year-olds). For us, Cheers was totally worth it and we definitely got our monies worth. As a side note, please remember to tip your waiter/bar staff because the Cheers program has really taken away many of their tips. We asked some of the wait staff we had gotten to know well and learned $1.00 would be a reasonable tip. They work so hard and get paid next to nothing (heard it’s about $300 a month, not counting tips). As far as Bottomless Bubbles, that was a waste of money for our kids as I don’t think they had more than 4 sodas the whole trip. Definitely buy the bottled water through the in-room store if you like to take bottles of water to the gym or on excursions. It was only $3.99 for 12 bottles and beats hauling the bottles on the ship.
We went on this cruise because the kids wanted one last cruise before aging out of the kids’ program (and we couldn’t afford a longer cruise, because after all, we have two kids in college now!) They made so many friends and loved the cruise. They didn’t do much at Club O2 outside of meeting people the first night. After that, most of the time was spent hanging out with their new friends outside Club O2 but it’s a great way to meet kids initially. One friend from the ship has already made a trip from Arizona to Northern California to visit DD.
Cabin Review
Interior
I read a previous post about hearing crew on nearby stairs in this room. I only heard steps once (last night) and to me it was obviously the crew was deliberately trying to avoid the steps to not make noise. I did hear loud noises while docking for about 45 minutes to an hour (estimate -- when you're awaken from a dead sleep, your time estimates may be warped). DH thinks it’s from the ropes they pull out when docking. I’d recommend wearing earplugs or keeping them right next to the bed so you don’t have to get up to find them. I didn’t do that and just suffered through the noise. If you’re an early riser, you’ll never hear it.
Temperature control was a challenge. It was hot without the vent open (took us a day to find it -- look above the bed) and cold with it open. Pick your poison and plan accordingly.
Outside of that the cabin was fine -- a little bit of a challenge to get around with two pull down beds but that more about me not wanting to buy FTTF for two cabins so I'm blaming myself. If you want ease free access around the room with 4 people, pay for two cabins. Considering the cost, one cabin worked fine for us even with my slobby daughter!