A SENSATIONAL Time on Carnival Sensation - December 1 to 5, 2013

We are normally West Coast cruisers since we live in Southern California, but decided early this year to combine a 4 day cruise on Sensation with a visit to Orlando's Universal theme parks. My husband, daughter (11) and I were on this one.

We flew out to Orlando on the Friday after Thanksgiving and left from San Diego, since the flights were less expensive than our home airport of Ontario. We stayed at the La Quinta Inn and took advantage of a park and fly rate, so we could leave our car in their underground parking garage. The free shuttle took us to the airport and upon arrival in Orlando, we stayed at the Sleep Inn. Not fancy digs, but comfortable enough for us and centrally located. We had rented a car from Budget to return in Port Canaveral and spent our day before the cruise at Downtown Disney. We had no plans this trip to visit WDW since we had done that in 2004 and our daughter was more interested in Universal.

On Sunday the 1st, we drove down to return our rental car at the Budget location in Port Canaveral. They advertised a free shuttle to the cruise terminal. We did have to wait a little while for the shuttle to pick us up, but that was not a huge issue.

Once we arrived at the terminal, we were escorted into the Priority line and were checked through quickly. (My husband and I are both Platinum and this was our daughter's Platinum cruise.) We were pointed toward the VIP lounge, and boy - what a lounge it was! Three employees to serve just us, and the lounge was well decorated and very cozy. They checked us in quickly, took our picture, gave us our silver cards and sent us on our way. We walked up to the ship and our daughter took photos with a towel animal and a space man (it was Cape Canaveral...) We had been told that our room was ready and that we could go straight to it.

First photo is Sensation and second one is our neighbor, the Disney Dream.

Our room was a Grand Suite, U98. We decided to splurge because it was our daughter's Platinum cruise and we had never been in a suite before. The room was HUGE and we had more than enough room for our belongings. The one thing that my husband and I didn't like was the shower/bathtub combination. He is 6' 3" and I am 5' 9" and both of us had to lean over in the tub to rinse our hair when showering. There was also a huge step getting in and out of the tub to take a shower. It was a small thing, but was not comfortable for us when trying to shower and wash our hair. Our daughter LOVED the tub and especially the Jacuzzi jets. She took a bath every night!

Our closet had loads of room and there were enough drawers for everything we had brought. We also had a larger than normal balcony and had many good conversations with our neighbors on both sides while watching the ship sail away from the various ports.

We went up to Muster Station B for the drill and although people were told to keep quiet, there were some folks who just couldn't follow directions. We had to sit for a while before they would let us go to our lifeboat area. One new thing I noticed was that they did a simulated roll call during the drill to show us how they would account for everyone. After the muster drill, we stayed on deck to watch the sail away. In addition to Disney's ship, RC's Freedom of the Seas was in port. We were hoping that one of them would sail before us, but we were first.

The photo of the building is apparently where the web cam for Port Canaveral is located. My husband is obsessed with watching the web cam and wished that he had set something up to record our sail away.

After sail away, we went back to the room to prepare for dinner. Our dining time was 6pm in the Ecstacy Dining Room. I do have to say that Carnival does an outstanding job of matching families to dine together. We had a family of 4 (2 parents, 2 kids) from Iowa who were only with us for the first night, and our new friends from Virginia - Dave, Carin (may have spelled that wrong - sorry!) and Sadie. We had a wonderful time with them at dinner and saw them around the ship numerous times. Carin was celebrating her birthday during the cruise and we were happy to help with the celebration! I didn't take any new photos of our dinners - sorry.

After dinner, we went wandering around the ship. Our daughter did not want anything to do with Camp Carnival. She's 11 and can't go to Circle C until she is 12, and says that the Camp Carnival activities are for younger kids. We didn't go to the Welcome Aboard Show. I went to the casino and promptly lost $80. I was hoping this losing streak would not continue.

We had never been to Freeport before and had scheduled our shore excursions there. DH and daughter were going to the Dolphin Encounter and I was taking the Culinary class at the beach. When we got to Freeport, we were surprised to see the Costa Luminosa in drydock. We also had another neighbor - Carnival Fantasy.

I left early for my excursion and photos are on another camera, so I will report on the Dolphin Encounter first. My daughter loves dolphins and was really looking forward to this excursion. She was not disappointed. The trainer allowed my DH to take a bunch of photos and my daughter got to help him with the dolphins, so she got more than we expected.

Enjoying your comments and the photos.

Keith

How was the water? Was it to cold? Just wondering cause we are doing this excursion on Feb 3rd...thanks

Glad to see your review and that you had a good cruise. My platinum cruise is on Sensation tomorrow! :-)

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Great review so far! I was excited to see a recent review finally pop up for the Sensation. DH and I will be cruising on the Sensation in 50 days! Not that I am counting or anything :)

How was the water? Was it to cold? Just wondering cause we are doing this excursion on Feb 3rd...thanks

According to my husband, the water was not cold, but not really warm either. Once you were in it for a few minutes, you were fine.

The cost of this excursion was over $100 each but we felt that it was a great deal, especially since our daughter had additional time with the trainer and the dolphins. They did buy photos of each of them with the dolphin kissing them and they also bought a t-shirt for my daughter.

I left out a couple of important food things - I had ordered room service for breakfast since I had to leave for my excursion at 9am and my order actually arrived about 30 minutes earlier than I had asked. That was a nice surprise! Husband and daughter ate at the buffet and no complaints there.

My excursion was the Culinary excursion at Junkanoo Beach. There was a little confusion when checking in because there wasn't enough room on the shuttle for me. I ended up on another shuttle with folks who were doing the beach excursion, which was okay with me. The driver gave us a mini tour of the area we were driving in. We learned a lot about the island and the people who lived there. Before we knew it, we were at the beach and I found my group.

The culinary part of the excursion was in a building with a roof, but there were no windows or doors. Each person had their own propane burner, pot and utensils to use. The food had already been disbursed and the rice was in the pot; the rest of the food was in plastic containers. This tour was advertised as one where we would learn to prepare Conch. I had never eaten it but had been told that it was similar to Squid, which I am not a fan of.

Yolanda was our instructor and she took us through safety first, as we'd be using hot oil to prepare some of the food. We started by adding water to our rice and then prepared the Conch fritters and fried Conch. Once we had completed this, we went out to the beach area to watch "The Conch Salad Man" make his salad. He was pretty entertaining in an off-beat kind of way. He insisted that Conch would make all of us want more sex and he was flirting with one of the single ladies in class. He gave us each a serving of salad and then we returned to check our rice and put together our meals. We ate our meals and then had some additional time to spend on the beach. This tour also included kayaking if we wanted and there were beach chairs reserved for us. As you can see by the photos, it was a cloudy day, so there weren't many people in the water.

Conch was delicious, especially the salad and fritters. Yolanda put out some delicious potato salad and sauces to dip the Conch in. I was not a fan of the fried Conch as it reminded me too much of calamari, which I don't care for. Yolanda was a fabulous teacher and I recommend this tour highly. Be warned though that drinks are extra and they do have someone from the bar area come around to bring you drinks for a price.

On the ride back to the ship, I was able to be with the culinary group and this shuttle driver was quizzing them on what he had told them about the island on the way over. I was at a severe disadvantage, since I had a different driver. I was, however the only one who knew that the population of Freeport was 60,000; I guess he didn't mention it to his group! He also said that the person who owned the 4 KFCs and 4 Burger Kings on the island was single and pointed out his home, which looked like a castle.

For some reason, my photos are not attaching. I will get this figured out and attach them before I continue.

FINALLY - Success!!! This is the propane stove we used for cooking the rice.

Frying our fritters and fried Conch

Our teacher Yolanda with two students

The finished product, waiting for us to consume them!

Our Conch Salad Man

Our meal, consisting of rice, Conch fritters, fried Conch, potato salad and sauces.

This was the beach at Junkanoo after our class. It was overcast but the water was warm and it was nice.

After returning from the tour around 2pm, I headed up to the room to wait for my husband and daughter to return from their tour. We then went up to the Lido around 3:30pm to get a snack (my favorite sandwich - the Mozarrella on Foccacia - YUM) and sat outside to see the sail away. While we were there, we were talking to a cruiser who is coming up on her 100th cruise with Carnival early next year. She usually cruises on Sensation and knew everything about the ship and the employees. It was really neat to speak to her because she knew so much. She said that she and her husband cruise about half of each month (that would be a great way to retire!)

Sensation docked in Freeport.

Our neighbor to the right - Fantasy. You can also see the Costa Luminosa in the backround.

A better photo of our neighbor, the Carnival Fantasy

Thanks for your great review and great photos:)

There are a couple of things we enjoy doing at sail away when leaving a port of call. The first (and no flamers please) is watching the latecomers run to get on the ship. On Splendor, we were on the right side to watch this. But on Sensation, we were on the other side of the ship, so we enjoyed watching the pilot boat lead us out. Obviously there were others who enjoyed this as well as many of our fellow neighbors were on their balconies watching this.

Here is the pilot boat turning away and one of the workers is waving to us. The person driving the boat was honking the horn.

And off they go.......

This was also at the dock at Freeport.

When we returned to our room, we had our platinum gifts waiting for us. Pretty cool bags, as we were thinking we would get the Carnival baseball caps this time.

That night, we went to dinner and had no plans, other than to catch the show at 9pm. I forgot what the show was called but the dancers were good, although the female lead singer was not all that strong; she was hard to hear most of the time. This was the only show we attended during the cruise. Oh, I also lost an additional $120 at the casino, but my husband was lucky at playing poker and won it back for me. He continued to win big that night so I took some of the money for safekeeping and went back to the room. By that time, our daughter wanted some ice cream, so I went up to the Lido deck to get it. After that, it was bedtime.

We had not made any plans for Nassau. When we took our Disney cruise in 2004, we went to Atlantis and spent part of the day on the beach and part of it seeing fish. Since I understood that Atlantis now costs something to do anything there, we did not want to visit. And since we had done our excursions in Freeport, we decided to get off the ship and walk around. I wanted to do a little shopping as we usually buy magnets and Christmas ornaments in the ports we visit.

My husband Ray is holding up the Bahamas sign.

Prior to getting off the ship. we saw the crew doing a lifeboat drill.

Our ship in port.

My daughter and I are walking towards the shopping area. A Royal Caribbean ship was also in port.

Shopping!

The area right off the ship was enclosed and had lots of little shopping areas. Once we left the building, we were approached by lots of people, wanting to braid my hair and my daughter's hair, or wanting to take us on a city tour. We decided to take a ride in a horse carriage around the town. It was $15 each and took about 45 minutes total.

Photo of all of us, minus the horse

The town was pretty much as we remembered it from 2004. The only thing different was that most of the stores were boarded up and closed. Our tour guide said that since the hurricanes, the only businesses that have survived are the gift shops and bars. We gave the tour guide a $10 tip for taking us around and he was very appreciative.

Atlantis from a distance

When walking back to the ship, this gangway was sitting over to the side. We decided it would be good for a photo opportunity.

And here are Carin and Sadie (our dining room table mates) waving at us from their balcony.

The Sensation bell. My husband likes to take photos of bells on the ships.

Atlantis from the ship.

Nassau

On our way out of Nassau

We had a delicious dinner again and I took our daughter to the video arcade for a while. My husband was playing poker again and just couldn't lose. After another ice cream snack, it was off to bed for daughter and I.

Our towel animal friend

The next morning, we decided to have breakfast in the MDR. They were serving off a new menu and I decided to get something other than Eggs Benedict, which is my usual. I got the Filet Minion and eggs and it was delicious! My husband got the pork dish and my daughter had pancakes.

After brunch, I headed to the casino because I had a 2 for 1 entry in the slot tournament. I entered twice but my score was not high enough to qualify. It was fun, though.

After losing at the slot tournament, I tried my luck again on the penny slot machines. Surprisingly, I was winning. This is unusual for me and especially on cruise ships. My husband was still ahead from his poker playing and we ended up bringing home more money than we brought. We were also able to make a significant payment on our Sail and Sign card to bring the balance down. Believe me, this is very unusual for us on a cruise.

Usually we attend Tea Time on sea days and our daughter wants to participate in Beary Cuddly. This time, we went to the art auction as my husband had bought some artwork on his last cruise with our daughter. I didn't see much purchasing going on during the auction but my husband did pick up a painting by an artist that he really liked. He made an appointment for later that evening to pick it up and we went to our last dinner in the MDR.

During the day, we could see what we were told was Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in the distance.

Here is our daughter with our head waiter, Su. He was fabulous, along with his crew.

Later on, we went down to make arrangements to get the artwork that my husband purchased. He ended up buying some Thomas Kincade artwork, in addition to what he had already purchased. And of course, he couldn't resist having his photo taken with one of the Park West employees.....

It was time to pack up and get our luggage outside before 11:30pm. Afterwards, we played a little more in the casino but both of us stopped around 11pm. We went back to the room and sat on our balcony for a little while before heading to bed for our last night on Sensation.

The next morning, we were up and out of the room by 8:30am. We were in group 1 but we like to spend as much time as possible on the ship before leaving it. We went to the Lido deck for breakfast and ate while waiting for them to announce "last call, folks. Any passengers still on the ship need to make their way to the gangway..." You see, we were going back to the Budget Rent A Car to get a vehicle to drive to Orlando for the remainder of our trip, and we were in no hurry. I think it was about 10am when we finally got off the ship.

Our daughter Grace with our cabin stewart, Leonardo. I think he was the best cabin stewart we've had so far. Always seemed to be available when we needed him and he cleaned our room quickly and thoroughly.

We've sailed on Fantasy class ships before so Sensation was similar in layout to those ships. What was different for us was the platinum experience before boarding and how easy it was to check in and get to our room.

This sign was at the Budget Rent A Car in Port Canaveral. I guess we weren't allowed to go down in the canal, unless we wanted to meet a new friend. :)

Cool review. Thanks for spending the time to share it with us. I took this same trip back at the end of October and it was pretty good. I posted a review of it and it is in my signature if you want to check it out. I have a lot of pictures from it but I havent found out a way to post them here yet lol.

I too enjoyed Freeport but I hardly went anywhere in Nassau because I had already been there a few times before. Our mdr experience wasn't as good as yours unfortunately but overall the food and service was good. We even got a last minute upgrade from an interior to an ocean view which was on top of a very good interline rate I got.

Yes, that was ft. Lauderdale that you saw on the last sea day. It passes close to the east coast so you get to see all the coastal towns on your way back to Canaveral.

Any chance you could scan and post any of Fun Times?

Also who was the main lounge band and style of music?

Thanks!

Mike