Carnival Valor Review
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My wife and I are in our late fifties and we have cruised 4 previous times--3 on Princess and one on RCI. Accompanying us were our 2 adult sons who had never cruised before. We chose Carnival because of the price and because we thought it might be a more lively and fun cruise for our sons. Frankly, my expectations weren't very high, as I had categorized Carnival as a low end, party only cruise line. I was pleasantly surprised and we enjoyed our cruise very much.
Embarkation and debarkation were fine. Nothing remarkable about either. The usual lines to stand in, but nothing too terrible. Carnival's website says you can bring on a bottle of wine and as many as 12, 12 oz water or soft drinks per person in your carry-on bags. The 4 of us each had a bottle of wine and a soft drink or 2 and had no trouble. I saw people with 12 packs of soda or water and they had no trouble. The pleasant surprise was that we were never charged the $10 corkage fee that the Carnival website said we would. We brought a bottle of wine to dinner on 4 different nights, set it on the table, our waitress asked if she could open it for us and she did, and we were never charged any fee.
We were pleased with our cabin and cabin service. We thought it was a foot or 2 wider than Princess or RCI cabins. The bed seemed a little wider and there seemed to be a little more space on either side of the bed to come and go. Everything worked well in the room and bathroom. Our only complaint about the room was the noise. We were on deck 6, directly above the back of the Ivanhoe Theatre and we could hear everything happening in the theatre. I expected some degree of noise, but nothing to this extent. It didn't bother us too much because we usually went to the late show and nothing happened in the theatre after 11:30, but a couple of mornings when we planned to sleep in we heard loud music from the theatre at about 7:30, although there was nothing scheduled to take place in the theatre at that time. I certainly would not want to be above the casino or lounges where the noise level stays high well into the night.