Valor 7/24 - 7/31 Review

The following review will be a mix of opinion and facts. The difference should be obvious.

Pre-sail: We flew into Ft Lauderdale the day before the cruise and rented a car from Alamo that we would return to the Miami Airport Sunday morning and catch their FREE shuttle to the port. The reasons we flew into Ft Lauderdale and not Miami were 1) personal business to take care of North of Ft. Lauderdale and 2) Jet Blue does not fly into Miami, and we love to fly Jet Blue.

We stayed overnight at the Miami Airport Intercontinental Hotel which is really west of the airport. We got "stuck" with the Intercontinental by using Hotwire and choosing a hotel in the "Miami Airport" area, thinking we would be much closer to the airport than we ended up. It seems that the road that the Intercontinental Hotel is on is the Hotwire dividing line between "Miami Airport" zone, and "West Miami" zone. In any case, although it was west of the airport and we were initially upset with the Hotwire pick (because of location), we ended up being very pleased with the hotel because of the location, which I will explain now.....

....right after we checked into the hotel DW discovered that she had left all her make-up supplies at home. While this did not seem like such a big deal to me, it sure was to her (evident by the bouts of crying and cursing (loudly) coming from DW). Fortunately, we were pleased to find out that the hotel is 5 minutes from make-up shoppers heaven, with 2 large malls just up the road and dozens of other drug stores, etc on the surrounding streets. So back to the rental car and off the mall(s). 2 hours and $150.00 later all the crying/cursing was stopped and our vacation was back on track.

Let me tell you, I can only shudder when I imagine what would have happened if we had not flown down a day early and my DW had discovered too late to re-supply that she had forgotten her make-up stuff.

Anyhow, Intercontinental Hotel, great hotel, off the beaten path but in a wonderful location for both shopping and dining (if you have a rental car).

Next morning we returned the car to the Miami Airport Alamo site about 10:30 and after only a few minutes wait boarded the free shuttle to the pier. On the shuttle were cruisers going to RCL, Carnival's Victory & Valor and things went pretty smooth with us first dropping off the RCL people and then getting into the long slow line of vehicles heading to the Carnival ships. The direction of traffic flow takes the shuttle(s) past the Victory first and that is where things slowed down to a crawl. There is a major bottleneck of traffic right past where the Victory stop is and after several minutes of us moving only a few feet we asked the driver to just let us off there and we rolled our bags down the the Valor (only about a 2 minute walk but a 30 minute drive away).

Sorry, but I have to go and do some work....more later...

I believe you have left us hanging....:rolleyes:

No fair. You were getting to the good part . This is why I don't watch mini series on TV.:rolleyes:

did you go to Bayside? It's just a few steps from the HI. We loved it when we stayed there years ago. Carnival used to use it as a pre-post cruise hotel. You were lucky to get it on Hotwire - tried two years ago to get it on Priceline and no luck.

Will look forward to more!

Ruth and Joe waiting to hear the rest.........

Bayside is great........Been there 3 times and stayed at the Holiday Inn all three times...got a group rate of $81....for the trip last week. You can;t beat the location.

Okay, as I was saying before I got interrupted by work, life, etc...

Embarkation: After leaving the Alamo shuttle we walked up to the baggage collection area outside of the Valor Embarkation entrance and handed our bags over to the porter. This can be an intimidating experience as the porters seem to have a continuous rap going on about how they need to be tipped and how they are going to take care of your luggage and should be tipped, tipped, tipped. This sort of makes for an interesting dynamic as the porters will actually fight over luggage so that they can get more tips. Anyhow, even though they really dont do much more than take your luggage from you and throw it into bins there on the pier, descretion being the better part of valor, I figured it was best to just give the guy $5.00. Cheap enough price to pay for baggage piece of mind.

Tip! Have your Valor luggage tags already on your luggage when you get to the porters. This will save you from having to stand around in the sun scrambling for the tags as the embarkation line gets longer and longer there before your eyes.

After dropping our baggage and paying the baggage "insurance" we got into the actual embarkation line which at that time (right around noon) was just starting to back up out of the doors, meaning we and everyone who came after were standing outside in the sun. It took about another 60 - 75 minutes to work our way through the line and on board the ship which was pretty much what we expected after reading the previous reviews.

I should add that after we got into the building out of the sun, and as more and more people started to arrive, Carnival changed the way the line was set up and brought people in a different door into a larger indoor waiting area.

Now, for all you alcohol smugglers......we brought 2 bottles of wine with us that we packed in our checked luggage which we had locks on. No one ever asked us about it and we were not asked to open our luggage to show anyone what kind of alcohol was in the bottles so....it would seem to me, you can pretty much just put whatever kind of alcohol in your luggage that you want as no one is really going to look that closely at it.

So....arriving at noon, we were onboard before 1:30. Not so bad.

Cabin: We had a cat 9A corner cabin on the Empress Deck 7 (Cabin 7445, aft starboard corner to be exact). I will post pictures later of the cabin but I have to say, it was a great cabin. The balcony was huge and the way the cabin was layed out made getting around in the cabin very easy without the usual bumping into each other constantly. I almost hate to say this but, the 7th Deck is the best deck to have a cabin on, at least on the Valor. You are 2 decks up from the Promenade Deck (which is the main shopping, drinking, gambling deck) and 2 decks down from the Lido (which is the main, snacking, drinking, sunning, swimming deck). Also you have buffer decks of cabins both above and below you so there is very little noise.

I am sure it has been mentioned before but if you are bringing electronics with you that require electricity to run or recharge the batteries you better bring a powerstrip as there is only one outlet in the cabin that I saw.

Not too much else to say about the cabin at this time except we had the cabin steward empty all the "Pay" items from the fridge and put them in the bottom desk drawer so we would have room for bottled water, wine, etc. There was more than enough storage space in the cabin so giving up the drawer was no problem.

One funny thing happened with the cabin steward. Following some advice that we had read here, on the first day we introduced ourselves, tipped him $20 in advance and told him we only needed two things, lots of ice in the room and 2 deck chairs on the balcony for sunning. Well, he tooked the $20, and told us he would have to ask his supervisor about the chairs and then told the DW that he brings ice twice a day and if we needed ice besides that we would have to call room service. So much for tipping early to ensure better service.

Guess this is long enough for now......more later.

LOL about the extra up-front tip for the steward. I waited until about Tuesday to drop a $10 tip, and specifically asked to stock extra Coke in the fridge. I'm thinking that the stewards have a limit for what they can put in the refrigerator, because we never got any more-them-standard amount.

Our guy was occasionally slow to bring ice, too. I really wanted to give the guy a chance to give us big-time service, but he fell a tad short. So I didn't add any more after my original $10 (besides the standard auto-tip amount).

Enjoyed the ports of call a great deal. Isla de Roatan and Cozumel were beautiful. Cave Tubing in Belize was great fun. I didn't get to enjoy Grand Cayman as my mom got sick and ended up at Georgetown Hospital. I must say the doctors and nurses were fantastic. Glad to say that she was released and made it back to the ship on time.

My one complaint was the vast number of drunken 12-17 year-olds on the ship. Where they were getting the liquor I can only guess. There actually was an assault commited by a gang of teenagers against a young man. He was pushed down the steps and then kicked and punched repeatedly. Disappointing to hear that Carnival did absolutely nothing except file a report. On land that kind of assault would have warranted charges, but not on a Carnival cruise ship. From what I gathered, Carnival was trying to wash their hands of the whole thing.

I rode the elevator with two kids that looked about 14 years old. They were drinking coffee and talking about how the coffee was sobering them up. My question, where were the parents???

Joe, great review so far. I am looking forward to seeing your pictures. We also have cabin 7445 on the Valor in September. I have been waiting forever to see a picture of this cabin. :)

I hear ya, tweets. Cozumel night was particularly bad, because the 15-17 year olds were getting served off-ship, and then when they all got back on board, it was bad news. Especially because the disco started resticting the under-18 set. It looked like they were all hanging out in the lounge area just outside the disco/caboose area...and I know that fights broke out.

I didn;t see any drunk teenagers..............but I guess I was just in the wrong places...........But I must say...that is where they all hung out in the chairs on the Promenade by the disco.........

General Ship Impressions: We loved the ship and dont understand why people complain/comment about the colors and/or decor. All that was transparent to us as it had no effect on our comfort or ability to eat and drink. The only thing that comes to mind at all is that we thought the decor of the Washington Dining room reminded us of the furniture in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, kinda roundish. Anyhow, if the decor/colors of the ship bother you or cause you any kind of concern you are way to sensitive and probably should not be hanging out on cruise ships (opinion).

Dining: We had the late seating in the Washington Dining Room (8:00PM) which worked out well for us as we didnt have to rush in the afternoon ever and always had time to get to the late show (10:30) after a leisurely meal. As far as the food in the dining room goes, we thought there was a fair variety of tasty things, although the portions were usually rather small. You could order whatever you wanted and were not limited to one from each category (appetizer, salad, entree). Which was good because, like I said, the portions were rather small. Also, if for some reason you did not want any of the entree choices you could always order a Filet Minion with baked potato.

Room service: had a very limited menu and also comes in very small portions. In fact I would recommend ordering 2 of anything you order that comes in prepared portions (sliced fruit, etc). We used room service for breakfast the morning we pulled into Belize and DW tried to adlib a little and requested a bowl of oatmeal. She didnt get it and was told that they are not allowed to provide hot food via room service. So I guess the tip/lesson here is dont bother trying to adlib your room service order. I should add that on a couple of (late) nights I called room service and ordered some cookies which I got fairly quickly and which were okay (although a little smallish). Which brings me to:

Desserts: were pretty unimpressive, especially in the dining room where the selection was pretty limited and the portions were tiny. I ordered ice cream one night and received one very small scoop, more like a tablespoon than a real scoop. I would recommend that anyone ordering ice cream as a dessert order at least two scoops. In my opinion the desserts were the most disappointing food items on the ship, all the more so because on the promenade deck just aft of the casino is a "Pay" coffee shop that sells dessert items along with the coffee drinks and there the cakes and cookies are beautiful and big, at least 4 times the size of the ones you get in the dining room or from room service. Oh and to add insult to injury, the "Pay" cookies, besides being huge compared to the room service ones, were chock full of nuts and raisens and chocolate chips and other tasty things that were pretty much non-existant in the room service cookies.

As for other than dining room eating, I have to say Carnival got it right there. The selection in Rosies was fabulous. You could get "regular" cafeteria food or deli sandwiches made to order, or Chinese food, or Fish & Chips, or Hamburgers, Steak sandwiches, chicken breast sandwiches, fries and Hot Dogs, and not crappy little hot dogs either, but big juicy JUMBO hot dogs. And of course there is the 24 hour pizza, and again not just crappy thin cardboard pizza but nice cheezy pizza with lots of toppings, made to order. Did I say the food in and around Rosies was fabulous? It really was. Oh and there is also 24 hour soft serve ice cream and frozen yogurt (which was great after baking in the sun by the pool). I would recommend that you really take your time and walk around the Lido deck and look at all the different eating options, just to make sure you dont miss out. It really is hard to eat everywhere in the week you are there if you leave the boat at the ports of calls. Unless of course you set your dining dial to "Pig Out" and add meals in between meals.

Guess this is enough for now, next up Ports of Call

Joedog, You are right on about the food. We loved Rosies! Even the decor, cheery, I thought ( although I have a lime green living room!!?!) The deserts in the dining room sometimes were tastless. All our dinners were excellent, my favorite was the lamb. Even my kids loved it. We also liked the duck and prime rib ( which was huge!) Lobster was rubbery as some people had reported earlier , so I wasn't expecting much there. You are doing a great job!

Pictures Joe pictures. I need pictures. :D

Enjoyed the ports of call a great deal. Isla de Roatan and Cozumel were beautiful. Cave Tubing in Belize was great fun. I didn't get to enjoy Grand Cayman as my mom got sick and ended up at Georgetown Hospital. I must say the doctors and nurses were fantastic. Glad to say that she was released and made it back to the ship on time.

 

My one complaint was the vast number of drunken 12-17 year-olds on the ship. Where they were getting the liquor I can only guess. There actually was an assault commited by a gang of teenagers against a young man. He was pushed down the steps and then kicked and punched repeatedly. Disappointing to hear that Carnival did absolutely nothing except file a report. On land that kind of assault would have warranted charges, but not on a Carnival cruise ship. From what I gathered, Carnival was trying to wash their hands of the whole thing.

 

I rode the elevator with two kids that looked about 14 years old. They were drinking coffee and talking about how the coffee was sobering them up. My question, where were the parents???

Tweets66:

Would you mind contacting me re: this experience @ leebarbh@yahoo.com

I need to know if you saw what happened on the stairs

Thanks

Just for you Lynne...

enjoy!

http://community.webshots.com/album/412782896QjOfpW

Tweets66:

 

Would you mind contacting me re: this experience @ leebarbh@yahoo.com

I need to know if you saw what happened on the stairs

Thanks

I can vouge that she did not see it. She was with me when you told me the story.

Any word on what will happen?

Just for you Lynne...

 

enjoy!

 

http://community.webshots.com/album/412782896QjOfpW

OMG! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANKYOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

I have been looking for pictures of this cabin for over seven months now. I feel like a little kid at Christmas. I am more excited than ever now. You just made my day! By the way did I tell you THANK YOU ? :) :) :) :) :)

I was about to ditto Lynne's request for pics.....then I scrolled down further and was just as excited as Lynne I'm sure to see the posted pics. We are booked in cabin 7445 for 10/23. Can hardly wait, and it will be our first cruise! THANKS again for a great review and posting such fine pics! :D :D :D

Thanks for the great review (you are a good writer). I cant wait, 10 more days till I sail her!

I noticed from your great pictures, this cabin still has the "old" style bedding. Wonder when the Valor will be updated. We're on her 12/4/05. Anyone know?

Thanks, JoAnn

I was on the same cruise.....oceanview stateroom and we had the new "duvet" bedding..........

Sailed with ya (should have review out within 48 hours) and agree with the Empress deck and its convinent location. We were there too but right about midship.

I dont know if the teenagers were drunk neccessarily or if they were just being stupid teenagers... crowding outside their disco, I never understood that. Then again when I was a teenager we wore chicken hats and ran around downtown for the express purpose of getting people to look at us so maybe I should not judge :D

Right on about most stuff!!

I loved the food choices but hated the lines. Loved the sushi option. I didn't mind teh small potions because we would order three apps and entrees between the two of us & split it. I loved the bread pudding & gran manier souffle! I also liked the decor. Much better then most CCL ships. The pink in the Dining room seemed elegant to me. I loved the lime green & blue in Rosies, that really is the hot new color palate of the season.

Our cabin on deck 10 had the new sleep system, very comfy. Too bad the door slamming kept us up at all hours.

The teens were out of control!! There were a lot due to the

fact that it was a sweet 15 cruise. Something I will look into next time.

My 17 year old had a 1:30 AM curfew. We caught her sneaking out one night. My kids had their own cabin, which I will re-think next time. We were on the pool deck, which was right outside our cabin & she was running across the pool deck. too bad because she was grouned the last two nights of the cruise. I didn't like what was going on at all with these teens.

All & all I had a great time. Loved the POC's.

didn't care too much for the large ship. I think I will stick to smaller ships or large ones only on off season. We had over 3,500 people on board.

Oh & BTW, our steward wouldn't even empty the fridge for us. I was able to get 4 bottles of water in there anyway.

I would also bring a lot more soda & water with me next time.

brought two bottles of wine right onto the ship with me, np & smuggles a bottle of Bacardi in my suitcase.

I also won't buy drink coupons again. You have to order drinks that cost less then $4.75. Everything we ordered came to more. We had to keep signing for 50 cents and so on. But of course if a drink costs less it's okay. So next time I will just buy stateroom credits.

And, God, why do they have to charge so much for the photos??? $20.00 a pop. Most are 8x10's except the port photos. I spent $120.00 on photos. Could have spent so much more. They should offer some sort of package or something. I think they would sell more.