!!! Carnival Victory !!! ^_^ The Ultimate Review and Complete Pictorial Guide!!!

Introduction

Hello everyone, and welcome to another Gambee review. It has been exactly one year since my last cruise review aboard MSC Divina (that is not counting Bimini Superfast for a day). Life has kept me busy, between two jobs, volunteer hours, and school, I just have not been able to cruise as much as I would like. But like they say, you have to grow up sooner or later, and I guess my time has come to do so. Anyway, you're not here to hear me whine about my life, we are all here for what I expect to be a great review.

Like I said, it has been a while since I sail, so as you can imagine I have been having cruise withdrawals. We started planning this cruise back in March. The cruise was being planned similar to the Divina cruise. It was a family with the same people (including my uncle with all his shenanigans), in addition of another aunty.

There was one conflicting aspect when booking this cruise. Since this could possibly be my only cruise this year, I really wanted it to be at least a 7 day cruise. Unfortunately, you don't always get it your way. Most in our group had the added travel expense of flight cost, and they simply could not afford a 7 day cruise. So I guess someone would have to give, and that someone would be me. Well, unless I did a solo 7 day cruise, but then I would miss all the family fun.

So after mom gave me a range of days, and a budget, I started looking around. To be quite honest with you, I actually ended up expanding the budget a little. There was no way that my only cruise of the year was going to be a 4 day cruise, to ports that I had already been multiple times (Key West and Cozumel). Fortunately, mom saw my point and agreed that we needed at least an additional day with a better itinerary. Once everything was settled and booked, it was time for the emotional buildup leading up to the cruise.

Let me tell you one thing, and I have to be honest here. I have not been this excited about a cruise since our NCL Breakaway cruise. That means that I was technically more excited about this cruise than I was for the Breeze and Divina. It is all due to that year lapse in between cruises. I guess my other cruises were too close together to really get to appreciate the anticipation as such.

In addition to my excitement, mom actually started a countdown about 150 days ahead of the cruise. She would send silly pictures each day to those in the group. It is beyond me how she found the time and ideas, to actually maintain such a task... Then again some of them were just plain ridiculous, I hope she does not read into this :D.

Cruise Details

The itinerary of this cruise had some fun new ports for us, Half Moon Cay and Grand Turk. Half Moon Cay was really appealing to us, mainly because of everything I had heard about it. White powder sand, clear water, and a long stretch of beach. And let me tell you something it did not disapoint. Likewise, Grand Turk is a good port for snorkeling, and just enjoying a relaxing day by the water. And well Nassau... What can I say about that... Ummmmm, yeahhhh, you figure it out. But overall it was a good itinerary, the only thing that I would rather be different was the direction of the cruise. I much rather have the first day being a Sea Day than the last one. But that is just personal preference.

Overall, a good itinerary, with something new for us.

Stateroom Selection

Those who know me, know that I am a balcony loyalist, or at least I try to. The private outside space is something that I really cherish and enjoy. So I would at the very least try to get a nice balcony for us to enjoy. The only thing is that one balcony would have to do, since the others in the group rather save the extra cost. Nonetheless, I manage to find a balcony that could fit all of us in it. To make things even better, both rooms were close to each other making it really convenient to go from one room to the other.

As you can see, the balcony of room 6424 is about double the length of the average balcony. The caveats with taking this room are the crew stairs running through behind it, and the awkward layout of the room. But I would much rather have the large balcony than a normal shaped room. You can't win them all.

Carnival Victory?

How do I go by this without sounding snobby? OK, let's see. Other than my first cruise aboard the NCL Sky, I have sailed on the newest and largest vessels of each cruise line. I tend to get bored easily, and I love innovation, and technology. So it is clear why I have done so as such in the past. Please note that I work extremely hard to afford these vacations, and I am by no means rich. I just enjoy spending my money where it really matters, making memories with love ones.

So why the Carnival Victory? She is not large at 101k gross tonnage, and not exactly new built in 2000. Even more critical is the lack of the 2.0 upgrades that I enjoyed so much on the Breeze. Like I said, it mainly came down to economics and trying to please everyone in the group.

Ironically, I have had multiple people tell me that I should travel aboard an older Carnival ship. Mainly because I am always bragging about how much I enjoyed my cruise aboard the Breeze. I guess they do have a point, but then again one of the main things I like about Carnival is the energy aboard the ship. Vibe and ambience is something that usually carries throughout a company, or so I hoped. More on this later...

So I guess in a way this was a new experience for us. Cruising without all the frills and thrills, would bring us back to what got us addicted to cruising in the first place. Just us and the love of the ocean.

And like I said even taking all this into consideration, I was overwhelmed with excitement about this cruise!

And then there is this little number…

So um, yeah…… Mom made this poster to go pic up my family at the airport paired with her sailor hat. And yes, she actually went ahead with the plan. I could not tell you how it went, since I decided to stay back. But I can only imagine :rolleyes:. Not sure if you notice, but she used the decals from our Allure door decorations. I had no idea that she had kept them for so long.

My Camera Equipment

Main Camera

My main camera is the Sony Alpha A6000. Overall a great performer, with tons of bells and whistles. I have had multiple cameras throughout my blogging career, and this one is the first camera to fully satisfy my cravings for perfection in picture quality. Furthermore, having those results out of a relatively compact camera is the icing on the cake.

These are my lenses I own:

The Sony Carl Zeiss Sonnar 24mm F1.8. What can I say about this lens? It is great for low light situations and produces very sharp pictures with great contrast. This is a true quality piece of glass that I use often during my cruises, due to a lot of low situations that I find myself in. It is just not very flexible with a fixed focal range.

The Sony Zeiss Sel1670 is a great versatile lens. I usually take most of the pictures with this lens. The lens yields Sharp results, with absolutely astounding vibrant colors.

The Sony E 55-210mm F4.5-6.3 is my only zoom lens. It is a pretty basic lens and nothing really special to write about here. As long as there is enough light it performs pretty well, however, it does tend to struggle when light becomes scarce. Hopefully, Sony will soon release a faster zoom lens, but until then I am very pleased with this one!

The Rokinon 8mm F2.8 Fisheye lens is just a really fun toy to work with. I am a fan of fisheye pictures and this lens produces very sharp results.

Underwater Camera

I purchased the Olympus Stylus TG-2 iHS Digital Camera prior my Disney Dream cruise as well. I have a very high standard for my pictures, and in a way I compare all my pictures to my A6000 camera results. I know this is not fair as the sensor of the cameras simply don’t even compare in any possible way, but still it is just something that I do. Not only does this camera offers good picture quality. But she is also a dream to operate! Everything about her is just PERFECT! I guess you would have to play with it to really see what I am talking about. I highly recommend this camera for those days when you find yourself in a shore excursion on a boat, or snorkeling around in your favorite island. Oh, I forgot the GPS in this camera is possibly the BEST one that I have ever used to date! Not to mention that it has a really fast F2.0 lens. That allows you to shoot pictures with poor lighting without a flash. If you’re looking for an all around fantastic rugged camera that is a blast to use, this is your baby!

The new Kid on the Block - Gopro Hero 4 Silver

I absolutely love this camera! The camera is so versatile, and incredibly fun system to shoot with. The only issue are pictures under low light. But as long as you stay under good lighting the pictures are great.

And yes, I have a selfie stick :p. But it is only to wack people who make fun of me of using a selfie stick! So watch out, it is made of a pretty sturdy metal :D

Software & Image Hosting

For most of my picture editing, I use Lightroom, like I said I am not a pro. I use this software for some light color correction and sharpening. It is also great at compressing 5mb files into 400kb files with minimal quality loss. For collages, I use Picasa and Paintbrush for adding arrows and text to some images. All these images are hosted by Photobucket, I have the 20gb account and pay $3 a month, I don't really need the 20gb, but I do however need the unlimited bandwidth as I use a lot of it.

Budgeting

Wifi

I usually get some kind of internet plan to stay in touch with family, and blog a little. Let it be said that I was really excited about the new internet plan that Carnival is offering aboard some of their ships. This is by far the best value out of any cruise line I have been on. And let me add something, every time I mention getting internet aboard a cruise, I get bashed over it. I am not sure what the big deal is, we all travel with different intents, and lifestyles. I enjoy being connected as does mom and the others in our group. It is just part of the fun. I am sure others enjoy being disconnected, and that is good too. Just be yourself :)

Gratuities

Gratuities aboard a Carnival ship will run you $12 per person per day. That goes along the lines with the rest of the industry, although maybe on the low side. I usually tip more on drinks and food, as I know how hard the crew works at making the cruise a perfect vacation for everyone. We prepaid ours in advance, this is the first time I do so.

Shore Excursions

One of the reasons why this itinerary interested me, was that all the ports had possible free shore excursions. Mainly the option to hit a free beach in each port is a good deal for us. I was still considering doing a separate shore excursion, but I left that decision to be made on board. The main problem with that is that I did not want to go alone on a shore excursion, and spending the set price for 5 just adds up.

Trip Insurance

When I buy trip insurance for my cruises I go to Insure My Trip and shop around for a travel insurance. Here is the thing though. The last time when we were on MSC Divina my mom slipped on the pool deck, and landed really hard on her wrist. We had insurance for that cruise, but we did not use it (for more on that, read that MSC Divina review). Anyway, after that incident, I learned that most travel insurance companies deny claims if you have any sort of alcohol in your system. And since I rarely drink at home, I tend to drink a lot on cruises. That is why on this cruise I did not purchase any travel insurance.

Miami Parking

For Miami parking we use Premire Cruise Parking. Be careful there are two premier companies, and while this one is just ok, the other one is horrible. We had used this one in the past with good results, so there was no reason not to use them again and save a few bucks. The only issue here is that they claim that they only take 4 people in their shuttle. While I am not sure if this is completely true, we had no plans on finding out that day. So I decided to drop them off with all the luggage, and then I would go on my own later on.

Day One

Yay! Another gambee review and this time on a ship I've sailed! Following along :-)

My friend it's great to see you start another one of your fantastic reviews! Looking forward to following along

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Day One

Well, as you can imagine we were incredibly excited to board the ship. Some in the group had traveled great lengths to be here, and the rest of us had waited what appeared to be an eternity for this cruise. I forgot to mention that my mom, uncle and aunts, did a short road trip to New Orleans the week before the cruise. I met them later on towards the end of their trip in Cocoa Beach and Peanut Island. We had a fun time planning the cruise and just spending time together.

Anyway, on to the cruise. As it’s customary with me, I get little sleep before a cruise. I think it is all the anxiety builds up. That leads to a night of weak sleep. I woke up around 4am and just started watching movies until everyone was up. Ironically, I had yet to fully pack since I was working full-time in the days prior to the cruise. Once everyone was up I gathered all of my digital equipment. To be quite honest with you, I can leave everything behind, but if I will leave my cameras then I will go crazy. I was equally eager to try the GoPro since it was a fairly new acquisition for me.

After a light breakfast, you know some coffee and arepa (flatbread made of ground maize dough, very common in Colombian Breakfasts). We started getting ready. I still had my doubts that we would be able to fit every one bag in the car. We each had more than one bag, but thankfully there were only two large bags. We loaded the car and were port bound by 9am. I know way too early. But since I had to drop them off in the port and then I had to drive to our out of site parking lot, we planned to allow a little bit of time for that maneuver.

The drive to the port was uneventful, and we were there way ahead of time.

After dropping them off, I headed to the Parking Lot. The drive to the lot is actually pretty quick. I want to say about 7 minutes or less. You also get to go through the tunnel, which is fairly new. The parking facility is decent. I think mom paid $10 per day. My only issue with the facility is the fact that they only start the shuttles from the lot to the port at 11am. While they are continually running shuttles the other way around. It just makes no sense. I told them just let me into one of the empty shuttle and drop me off there. The guy said that the drop off location was a different location than the pick up one. I told him no big deal, I will walk. He kept giving me unreasonable excuses, and eventually I gave up.

I waited there for about 40 minutes, while they had shuttles continually running. Go figure that one out. Anyway, while I was waiting there was some kind of race around downtown Miami. I never found out if they were legal or illegal, but to me they seemed more illegal. It was mostly high end cars, revving their engines and speeding. Let me tell you something. Those things are loud in the city. The sound waves seem to augment when they bounce off the building. I am very used to high end end cars living in sound Florida, but I have never heard them this loud before.

So at the very least I stayed entertained while waiting for the shuttle to take me to the port.

Two of my dream cars, I have to at the very least rent one some day. I actually researched it already, I need to put about 1k aside for this little venture.

Yay!!! I'm excited to read your review especially since I took the plunge and booked a carnival cruise for next summer in Europe...

Once I made it in the van, I asked the driver about the cars and he had no idea. That is why my though was that they were illegal, although I saw a few cops blocking some of the intersections. When I told my uncle about the races, he was a little bummed. He was dying to see some exotics, and he had yet to see any on this trip. I am telling you, they had everything from Ferraris to Vipers, it was pretty cool.

Checking in was really quick and I was given boarding group # 2. Since my group had group #1, I simply ignored my group and got ready to board on group 1.

These pictures are at a weird angle since you’re not technically supposed to take pictures, but everyone does it anyway.

While we were waiting to board, someone can on the speaker and started some kind of dance in the middle of the waiting area. I have never seen this before. It got everyone in the mood for the cruise. And of course, my mom was attempting to dance with them :eek::rolleyes:. Now that I think about it, I think that I inherited my fantastic unchoreographed moves from her :D

While waiting my family started talking with one of the Carnival employees working there. Note: my uncle and aunts are not a couple. We are just connected in the way that all Spanish families are connected. God that sounded racist, but if you’re Spanish, you will understand what I mean ;), lol. Anyway, while they were talking. I am not sure how this came up. But he asked if he brought enough ******(lol, you will have to figure the word out) to satisfy both women… It was to die for, because he is the kind of person who will bounce from any comment. It was really funny, then he grabbed them both, and hugged them in a polygamy sort of way, lol. The conversation went on, and they were just having fun. But to be honest with everyone. I think he was trying to come on to me. I was just busy trying to get the go pro working, but every time I looked up, he was looking at me in that kind of way. I am not even sure if they noticed. I guess they will know now. Long story short, after all that talking and flirting, he said to us, come here and I will get you through with the VIP group.

And it happened just that way, we were in the very first group boarding the ship. They actually sneaked us past the VIP line, that felt special. Lol, and I did not to pay for the Faster to the Fun ticket, we were off to a great start.

Looking forward to another Gambee review. We sailed on the Victory as our first cruise and enjoyed it. Our itinerary was awesome... Keep 'em coming...

My first impressions of the ship were. Well, how do I put this GREEN!

I knew what the ship looked like before boarding. To say that I was impressed would be a big lie. To be honest it is overwhelming, and not in a good way. There was just too much going on for my personal liking. But it was equally expected. I really like the way that Carnival is now decorating the ships with Vista and the Breeze, much more than the old vessels. But like my grandmother used to say, hey you’re not buying it, so why worry about it.

We immediately agreed to head to the buffet as we usually do. Everyone was fairly hungry and I was particularly eager to check out the buffet selections. After all, my Breeze cruise offered some of the best cruise ship buffet food that I have ever had. And even if the Victory did not have the 2.0 upgrades, I was expecting a fairly good buffet.

I've been waiting for this review, Gambee! Glad I have this to read now.

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Look at that beautiful line, you will see plenty of them!

Second floor of the buffet.

Hello Gambee & Gambee's Mom!:)

Just stumbled across this review by chance and can't wait to dive in to it. Your cruise reviews are one of the best forms of entertainment on dry land. So happy for you to be able to do this cruise. I check your website on a semi-regular basis and didn't see it listed as a "coming soon".

Ellen

Always remember that there is additional seating upstairs if it gets too busy on the main deck.

Ok, so let's approach the buffet. I will do so with ease. The buffet itself is just ok. The food is good for the most part, everything is tasty, without being overwhelming in flavor and spice. The main issue with the buffet is the setup. Get ready to wait in line, because this will be the trend in this ship. I wanted to call it the line ship. My personal recommendation is to get there early when the buffet opens to avoid lines. Personally, I do not do lines. I rather not eat than go on a long line. Maybe this is why I was able to maintain my original weight. Several times I wanted an extra slice of pizza, but I decided to forgo it just because of the line.

I think the core issue is that they have two large setups for everything. So for example, if you want an apple, you have to get on the same line as the person who wants chicken. The only items that are separated are the pizza, chop sticks, desserts, and grill. The pizza line really gets to me. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Expect to wait in line anywhere from 10-20 minutes for a slice of pizza. This never happened on the Breeze. They should just add one more person there, and that would cut the time in half. There is always one person there, and two at peak times. It seems to be a shortage in personnel or something like that. By the way, the pizza is KILLER, SIMPLY AMAZING!!! Which makes it the more irritating that I have to wait in line for so long for a damn slice!

Expect the same line in Chopsticks. The food there is hit or miss, some are really tasty and some are just blahhhh. The only stations that you can access with ease are the dessert and burger/hot dog/fries station.

I will build more on this topic as the review evolves. I am releasing way too much information too early.

My uncle ready to dig in. For the life of me, I will never understand how he is able to mix everything together like that :rolleyes: :D

And here is mine, I got a smoked salmon and creme cheese panini. It was excellent!

Food from chopsticks, fried rice, some seafood and some noodles. It was just, mehhh. I ate it, but this is not a restaurant I would visit at home again. It got better on other days, the soups, egg rolls, and beef stir fry were excellent.

While they talked a little, I decided to head upstairs and take a few pictures. I was there earlier when I went to check out if there was more food upstairs (there is not).

I will probably never sail on this ship but I am going to follow anyway! :) Love your blog, I have already learned alot from it as I prepare for my second cruise.

The aft pool with a retractable roof.

There are plenty of lounges on deck 10.

I headed back to the buffet area, and they were ready to leave and explore the ship.

When researching the ship I noticed that the setup of the lido deck is ascending. I did not care for the setup, when looking on the Internet, and neither did I when I boarded the ship. I much rather a flat lido deck that stretches the length of the ship. Then again this is only an aesthetic and not a functional problem for me, since I rarely go to that area of the ship. The only big benefit that I see from this is that it is truly in theater style to watch movies.

The Jacuzzis by the main pool, under the large screen

Looking upwards is the Serenity area by the water slide.

Then we decided to head up to the serenity area to check it out.

Curiosity killed the cat ehhh?

View from the top.

We did try the water slide.

We never went to Serenity, or at least I never did. I think the main reason is because our cabin was all the way back and Serenity is up on front. That said, the area looked really nice. The only issue I found was that the Jacuzzis were way too exposed to the sun.

Those matts directly on the left get incredibly hot, like burning hot!

Mom waiting with all the bags.

The DJ is stationed below the large screen.

After we noticed that a few rooms were open we decided to attempt to get into our rooms.

My room was FABULOUS! It was an L shape room. In the past I had read that the room was slightly smaller than the regular rooms, but quite honestly it was perfect for us.

The Tv needs to be upgraded, this thing is a dinosaur.