Sunshine 2/24/17 sailing review w/some photos and link to menus

Hi! We had a great cruise aboard the Sunshine for the 8-day eastern Caribbean itinerary which included Grand Turk, San Juan, St. Kitts and St. Maarten. I got lots of helpful information from this site before our trip, for which I thank all of you. I was asked to give my opinions about the cruise, so here goes.

Pre-Cruise and Embarkation:

We drove to Port Canaveral and spent the night before the cruise at the Country Inn and Suites. We had booked their cruise/park package which gave us a king room, breakfast, shuttle to and from the cruise terminal, and 8 days of parking for $203. (AAA rate) This hotel obviously specializes in taking care of cruise passengers, and they did a great job. Instructions said to call 24 hours before arrival to be assigned a shuttle time, and when we did so we were given the first shuttle for the Sunshine which was 11:15. We had staggered check-in time of 11:30, so this worked perfectly for us. The hotel had a large meeting room called the "Celebration room" where you were to report with your luggage 15 minutes in advance of your shuttle. The luggage was loaded into a trailer which was pulled behind the small shuttle bus. They called you to your shuttle by name, so there was no mass rush and chaos when the shuttle was ready, which I appreciated. The shuttle left the hotel exactly at 11:15, and it is less than a mile to drive to the cruise port. There was not much traffic as only two ships were departing that day. The driver made sure that we knew that we were sailing from terminal 6, but when we returned it would be to terminal 5. He pointed out where we would meet him at terminal 5 as we drove by it.

Once we reached terminal 6, the luggage was unloaded and handed off to the porters, and we walked right in to be processed and receive our Sign and Sail cards. At 11:30 they started calling for diamonds and platinums to board. We were seated in zone 17 and we were called at 12:10.

Because my husband has mobility issues, I had emailed Carnival's special needs department to ask if we could attend the safety muster at the indoor location. They replied that they had made a notation on my account, and for us to check with guest services upon boarding. So that's the first place we went; there was no line, and we were told to report to muster station E which is in the Liquid Lounge. By the way, it is the only indoor muster station on the ship. All other muster stations involve standing outside on Deck 4. When you reported to your station, they checked you in electronically with your S & S card. The entire safety instruction drill took about 20 minutes.

The lido deck was quite crowded for lunch--even in the Havana Bar area. I guess lots of people read the tip on here that said that was a good place to go in the event of overcrowding. ;) We were able to find seats at the bar, so we just had their Cuban bites for lunch, since they were right there. We had meat-filled empanadas, little pies filled with pulled pork (these were made even tastier with the onion/garlic tomato-based pepper sauce on the side) mini Cuban sandwiches, and little filled coconut pies. A few desserts and some ice cream from the buffet completed the meal.

At 1:20 they announced that our cabins were ready.

Our cabin - #1574 ocean view on Deck 1

We booked this cruise only six weeks out so cabin choices were limited. We stayed in an ocean view on Deck 1, and it worked out great. It was close to the aft elevators which took us directly to the lido, ocean plaza and main dining room. Being that low, we felt little swaying and rocking, and it was very quiet.

When our room steward came to greet us, he offered choices of morning or evening service, or both. And he gave me a form to check off my choice and sign. He asked if I had any other special needs or requests. I asked him if he could fill my small, soft-sided cooler with ice each evening so that I could chill my bottled water, as there is no mini-fridge in this cabin. He made sure to do that all week.

Later that evening, two tickets were slipped beneath our door that invited us to the Cruise Critic Meet and Greet which was scheduled for 1 p.m. the next day in the Red Frog Pub. Carnival provided juice, tea, cookies and several door prizes. We chose a "ship on a stick" to give my granddaughter. A slot pull was organized and the whole group went to the casino to see how that came out. It was a lot of fun.

Dining choices

Everyone was right when they said there are great dining choices on the Sunshine! There were lots of breakfast options. I'm not much on breakfast, but my husband enjoyed the omelette stations that are set up in the Havana Bar area where the Italian and Asian restaurants normally are for lunch. Here he was able to get his fried eggs over easy with toast, with not much wait time.

Our favorite lunches on the ship were Guy's Burgers, the corned beef and pastrami combo from the deli, fish tacos and chicken tacos from the Blue Iguana, and the huevos rancheros from the Sea Day brunch menu. One sea day, we didn't go to brunch til 12:30 and the bread basket had popovers instead of croissants and pastries. I hadn't ever had a popover before, and they were quite good.

On the first sea day, we went to the cooking demonstration at 11:30 in the Steakhouse Restaurant. I did not realize that we would be tasting everything that they demonstrated, and it was a four-course meal! We hadn't been gone long from our breakfast at the Sea Day brunch, but we managed to taste everything anyway! They gave you a booklet with all the recipes, and it was a fun way to fill about an hour.

This is the first cruise where we chose Your Time Dining, and we really liked it. We are accustomed to eating dinner early at home, and so we went to dinner most evenings at 5:15. When you do YTD, you check in with the host in the Ocean Plaza on deck 5, and when your table is ready you go down to deck 3 to the dining room. We never had a wait of more than 4 people ahead of us, and we requested a table for 2 every night. We were always sent immediately to the dining room, even when we requested certain servers a couple of nights. This is likely because we ate early. I can't speak as to how long the lines may have been for YTD later in the evening.

We found the American Table menus to be quite good most evenings. It was interesting to try some of the things from the Port of Call menus that were offered as extra choices. I posted a thread with photos of all of the menus here:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2467076

following :) on the same, but with magic in june

Was there a cost to the cooking demo?

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Was there a cost to the cooking demo?

 

 

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There was no charge for the cooking demo. But the restaurant is small, so you will want to go at least 30 minutes early to get a seat. The chefs prepared mushroom cappucino soup, spinach and bleu cheese salad, an entree with chicken and potatoes, a side dish of five cheese macaroni and cheese, and tiramisu for dessert. Servers passed around tasting portions of each one.

edited to add: they did not offer anything to drink so you will want to bring a drink with you.

Booked Sunshine this morning for the Canada/NE cruise in September. We were on the Destiny a bunch of times, so I am excited to be going back to our "first Carnival ship." Thanks for sharing your cruise with us.

Entertainment:

In addition to the daily Fun Times, on the first day we received a listing of all of the main entertainment for the week. We especially enjoyed some of the comics that appeared in the Limelight Lounge. Azeem and Jason Blanchard were the best! As others have said, the lounge is quite small so you can't usually wait til the last minute to arrive. On the nights where there were two early shows, they usually did not make you leave the lounge after the first show if you wanted to also see the second one. But after the second show, they cleared the lounge and you had to line up again to come back for each of the later shows. This was so that more people would be able to see at least one show. The only night we could not get a seat at all was for the 8:30 show on the second elegant night. For some reason the lounge was full to standing room only at 8:00.

The Motor City show in the Liquid Lounge featured Motown hits and was very good. It isn't apparent on the listings that Jackson Rayne is a magician. We didn't attend his show, but we went to his magic workshop on the last sea day. He taught the group a couple of card tricks, and he was quite good. We were sorry we had missed his big show earlier in the week. The Love and Marriage Show is like the Newlywed Game, and is always hilarious. Emma did a great job hosting this one. My husband attended the first part of the Liars Club show but left early as he found the comedy to be a little too raunchy.

There were fun activities out on the lido deck several times during the week. There was one called Last (wo)man Standing which was a scavenger hunt that required a lot of audience participation, and was fun to watch. And then of course, there's the Hairy Chest Contest which is always funny. But this time it had several rounds to it as they narrowed down the contestants with various challenges until they got to the final two. For the final event, they had to be dressed up as beauty contestants by the spectators--since it's all impromptu, the results were quite funny.

Thanks for the review.

Enjoying your review and your photos.

Thank you for the great review!

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Good review. We were on the January 21st sailing and agree with everything you wrote. However, we found the ship was very overcrowded and wouldn't sail on her again, only for that reason.

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Thank you so much for posting about your cruise. You have provided so much helpful information. I would have never thought to go to the cooking demonstration but my husband and daughter love cooking shows, so we just may do that. And who knew you got to sample the food! I was interested to hear about them putting an invitation under your door for the meet and greet. I thought they just posted something in fun times. How do they know who to invite?

I loved your review. My husband is the one who came in second in the Hairiest Chest contest. Lots of good laughs!

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We will be in cabin 1443 which is in the general vicinity as yours. We have never been on deck 1 before. We are usually on deck 8! :eek: Did not want to book a balcony for a Canada cruise (fog issues in the past) and DH refused to let me book an inside and deck 1 and 2 were the only OV'es left. I decided on deck 1 because it will make it feel like we're "almost on the water." Did you have any issues with being so low on the ship? TIA. Cabin looks very spacious and I love the new doors!

OOPS! I just checked the deck plans and you were mid ship whereas we are more front. I picked the closest front cabin nearest mid ship that was available. I would still like your opinion about deck 1 tho! Thanks! :)

Subscribing...will be boarding Sunshine in less than 2 weeks :-)

OOPS! I just checked the deck plans and you were mid ship whereas we are more front. I picked the closest front cabin nearest mid ship that was available. I would still like your opinion about deck 1 tho! Thanks! :)

We liked Deck 1. It was very quiet. It's also convenient on port days as the gangplank is generally on deck 0; easy to maneuver one flight of stairs and not have to wait on the elevators.

First Port of Call: Grand Turk

We did not make arrangements for any kind of excursions for Grand Turk, as we were dedicating this day to the beach. The port area is very nice, with free loungers and pool use. Very convenient to return to the ship for lunch if you choose to.

2nd Port: San Juan

We did not dock in San Juan until 1 p.m. The main thing that we wanted to do here was to see the town and visit the old forts, which are part of the National Park system. There is a double-decker hop on/hop off bus that you can purchase tickets for; however, it stops running at 5 p.m. local time (4 p.m. ship time) and costs $30 per person. Since we wouldn't get much value from that, we decided to try the free trolley. We had read numerous tips on here and another sites about walking down a stop or two from the pier area in order to be able to get a seat on the tram. On this particular day, this strategy did not work. We were the 4th and 5th people in line, and had to wait for three trollies to come before finally being able to get seats. There were only about 5 seats available, so lots of people were still left in line waiting when we drove away. Since there was about a 15 to 20 minute wait between each trolley, it was wasting a lot of time, and several groups opted to walk back to the pier to get taxis instead, or to just walk it on their own. Of course, the same problem happened when we were leaving the fort: we got one of the last few seats on the last trolley of the day. And then, it didn't take us all the way back to the pier. The driver pulled over at a trolley stop and made everyone get off because they were quitting for the day. Fortunately, it was only about 3 blocks downhill to the pier. So, I guess you get what you pay for. In retrospect, I wish that we had taken one of the many taxis lined up at the pier that were offering a one hour tour around town for $10 each, and just gotten off at the fort and walked back.

I was interested to hear about them putting an invitation under your door for the meet and greet. I thought they just posted something in fun times. How do they know who to invite?

We registered for the event on the Cruise Critic site. If there are enough signed up, then Carnival schedules the meet and greet. It was posted in the Fun Times, but we also got the invitations delivered to our room.

Glad you are back to continue the review! I hate to hear that about the free trolley in San Juan as that was my plan. Do you happen to remember how many other ships were in port with you that day? We are the only ship scheduled to be in port that day so I wonder if that will help.

I loved your review. My husband is the one who came in second in the Hairiest Chest contest. Lots of good laughs!

 

 

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He was great! If I heard correctly, you all are from Mississippi? We are too. So we were rooting for him.

St. Kitts

After looking over several options and reading many reviews about various tour operators, we chose to tour with Thenford Grey on St. Kitts. We took the Grand Tour of St. Kitts, which is $55 per person and lasts about six hours. We registered in advance online, and did not have to pay anything until the day of the tour. We were very happy with the services and tour provided by this company. It was easy to find the tour representatives in the port area, there was a shaded area to wait in for the group to assemble, and we were quickly led to our vans for the tour. There were 11 in our van. Our guide was Calvin Brookes, and he did a great job. He was an excellent driver, and I also appreciated the fact that he used a microphone so that everyone in the van could hear him well.

From the port area, we were driven around the capital city of Basseterre for an overview of the history of the island. After leaving town we headed through several villages along the coast, stopping at a scenic viewpoint where we got out for photos. Calvin showed us the fruit of an overhanging almond tree, pointing out how dense the pod was in order to get the nut out for us. Then we drove on to the ruins of Romney Manor, which at one time was a sugar plantation owned by Samuel Jefferson, the 3x great grandfather of Thomas Jefferson. It is the modern-day home of Caribel Batik. We spent about 35 minutes here. Our tour price included the entry fee to the grounds, where there were beautiful gardens on the edge of the rainforest. There was a brief demonstration of how batik is done, and time to shop and/or enjoy a snack or local beer in the outdoor patio area.

Then we drove on to the Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park. The narrow, curvy road to the top has several switchbacks, and it was amazing how the various tour drivers were able to manipulate around each other and through the narrow gates to get us to the top. We spent an hour here. On the lower level there is a visitor center with an orientation film and gift shop. There are also restrooms and a snack shop. To get the best views requires climbing the steps to the top of the fortress.

St. Kitts, continued:

From the fortress, we drove back to the opposite side of the island to spend a little time at the beach. On the way we stopped on Timothy Hill where you can get a great view of both the Atlantic Ocean (on the left of the photo) and the Caribbean Sea (on the right.) Of course, since this is a popular pull-out for tours, there are some locals selling items from booths, and a very enterprising fellow who has a donkey wearing sunglasses, who he named Bob Marley, and a monkey named JoJo. He charges $5 to have your photos made with them, and he was doing a fairly good business.

The beach that Calvin took us to was just on the other side of the hills you see in the above photo, and was a rather rustic one. The beach was really narrow--just enough room for one row of lounge chairs. There are mongooses in the area, and monkeys that come down from the hillsides to be fed later in the day. We saw plenty of mongooses, but no monkeys while we were there. A few people were swimming. There were signs warning about the large number of sea urchins in the water. The Shipwreck Beach bar was not much more than a shack, but we enjoyed the hour that we spent here. (Note: the guide would have stayed longer, but left it up to the group, and the majority voted for just an hour.)

Glad you are back to continue the review! I hate to hear that about the free trolley in San Juan as that was my plan. Do you happen to remember how many other ships were in port with you that day? We are the only ship scheduled to be in port that day so I wonder if that will help.

There were only 2 ships in port that day, so I was really surprised that the trolley service was so unreliable. I heard the park ranger tell another visitor that some of the trolleys were not running that day. Not sure why. So hopefully your experience will be better.