Paradise Review with Chefs table and pics.

This review is a little later than I had wanted to post. Things have been busier than I expected when I got home. I also wanted to type it in word first to help speed up posting time. I really wanted to write more while it was fresh. So I hope I dont leave anything out and please feel free to ask any questions.

DH and I was on the February 20th-25th cruise on the Paradise. This was the second cruise for DH and I. I booked this cruise early saver first of October. I didn’t really expect to get any OBC from price drops because I booked the grand suite and there isn't many of them. But I was happy enough to get the cruise $200 cheaper a person than the other rates. It was a little bit of a bummer to see that the cruise leaving the week after did drop $50 a person less than what I payed, but that’s the luck of the draw.

I am going to share my one hiccup with early saver so that others may consider their situations when booking. Like I said I booked this cruise first of October. Around the first of November, I was hired as the Game Day Manager for the University of Pikeville. The University (which was Pikeville College at the time) won the NAIA National Championship last year and wanted to step up the entertainment and organization of their games so I was brought on board. When I entered the games in my calendar I had accidentally wrote down that I would be returning from my cruise on the 24th. When I sat down first of January to check out my documents online I realized we were returning on the 25th. A day in which I had a game. What follows is totally my fault and shows how you need to really read everything. When I had read the ES terms for some reason I had thought there was a $100 penalty to change the dates before and after final payment. I thought the percentage penalty only kicked in if you canceled, not changing. So I called to changed my booking thinking I would be charged $100, so I was shocked to find out I would lose $1,300 to change the dates. I even begged the PVP when I called, I even called back at different times and got the same answer. I was in the Penalty period and could not change anything. Thank fully the Coach was fantastic and told me not to worry about it and they would manage without me one game.

So the Friday before we were supposed to sail it was forecasted that Eastern Ky was to get 8 inches of snow on Sunday morning. DH and I decided we would leave Saturday as soon as I finished working a Upike game. So I had our bags packed, did my thing at the game...

then hit the road. We drove about five hours, grabbed a hotel, then drove the rest of the way to Tampa on Sunday.

When we left Pikeville it was 37 degrees so I was excited when my car read the external temp as 70.

We arrived at the Hyatt downtown Tampa Sunday night. I do like this hotel and would recommend it. I was hoping for a view of the port, but that was a no go. But the service was fantastic and the hotel very nice. We decided to leave our car with them and grab a shuttle to the port the next morning. This worked great. Blue shuttle service took us to the port for $3 a person and the Hyatt kept our car for $10 a day.

Our first glimpse of the ship.

Since I had booked us a suite we had VIP check in. I was a little confused at first because during check in for our first cruise out of Mobile we got to skip all lines. There was a separate door we entered for ID verification and we got to skip ahead thru security. In Tampa VIP doesn’t actually start until after security. But the line thru security went super fast and we were sat in the VIP lounge to check in. From the shuttle to the time I was “dinging” in was around 20 minutes tops.

A little information for those of you sailing out of Tampa is that the port has some shopping and restuarants. I could see some of it after boarding and it looked very nice. It would be a good place to kill some time if need be.

Our Embark photo

So after the months of planning and the hours of driving I was finally heading to Lido deck for some lunch. DH and I decided that he would sit with our carry-ons while I grabbed us some cheeseburgers from the grill. The cheeseburgers were good, as were the fries. We sat on some lounge chairs on the top aft balcony. We ate and chilled until 1:30 when our cabin was ready.

We had cabin U83. Here are some pics.

I loved sitting here and getting ready every night.

The closet had plenty of room.

The bathroom had a new tile job.

Our room did have a Carnival pen this time but no samples in the bathroom. Is this new for the fantasy class? I did not think to ask our room Steward and he never left anything during the trip

Once we explored the room, we decided to explore the ship since we did not have any of our bags yet. The layout was basically the same as the Fantasy, so it didn’t take too long to get oriented with things.

The muster drill was at 3:15 and was over fairly quickly. We congregated in the Normandie Lounge for all of the instructions, then lead out to our lifeboat stations. We were then told that we were officially on vacation!! DH and I headed up to enjoy sail away. Here are some pics of the port and Tampa Bay.

A view of the port and some of the shops as we pulled away.

You cant really see them, but there was two dolphins seeing us off.

DH and I sat on the aft balcony outside of the Paris restaurant during sail away. I had grabbed some fries to snack on along with a DOD. DH decided he wanted something else instead of fries so he left to see what else they had. He found the deli. He ended up bringing back a bagel with smoked salmon and another paninni with arugula and mozzarella. I went back and got a grilled ham and cheese. All three sandwiches were great. DH said he would definitely be back for more of the Salmon and bagel sandwiches. But believe it or not he never did.

Great start.

Looking forward to the rest of the review! :D

Thank you very much for taking the time to post this review along with the pics. We are sailing on her in May and I am loving the reviews being posted!

Kim

thanks a lot .well done.

Well done! We leave on her Saturday. Keep the review coming!

Great start! Love reviews with lots of pictures. Looking forward to hearing about the Chef's Table experience. Going on the Paradise in June.

Great start to the review, keep it coming! :)

Hey...we were on the Paradise 2-11 to 2-16....our room did NOT look like that...HA HA.

Was not a huge fan of the ship but then Carnival is not our choice of lines.

BUTTTTTT...how did the NAIA thing go. I think the finals are tonite here in KC.

Did you make it?

Looking forward to the rest of your review. Good start so far.

Loving your review & pictures. :)

At some point our bags arrived and I unpacked our stuff. We had tons of room with drawer space left over. I slid our empty suitcases under the bed. We then headed up so that we could be on deck when we sailed under the Skyway bridge. We sailed under it around 6pm.

The bridge in the distance

Here is a link to the video DH shot while we sailed under the bridge.

Leaving the bridge behind

The Atrium the first night.

DH went back to the room and I hit the Casino. I spent a little and won NOTHING! The theme for the entire cruise unfortunately. I guess you cant win every time, but it sure would have been nice. While in the casino I noticed the ship starting “rolling” a little, that along with the cigarette smoke I wasn’t feeling great. Since I wasnt feeling so swell and we were both still pretty full from the deli splurge earlier we decided to skip the MDR. We ended up relaxing for the rest of the night.

First Day at Sea:

I woke up feeling much better. I am starting to think I need that first night of taking it easy to get my “sea legs” because I didn’t have any problems with the ship motion after that. But we had pretty calm seas after that too. By the way I did take start taking Bonine from day one just as a precaution.

I ran up to the buffett and grabbed some breakfast. The bacon police was on patrol. I brought the food back to the room and then called room service for coffee and juice. It was nice having breakfast in our room since we had the extra seating area. As for the food, everything was good. Nothing extraordinary but it was very good.

After we ate we headed out to enjoy the day. I can say if the chair hogs were out this morning or not because EVERY CHAIR WAS FULL. On our last cruise I was used to the area around the pool being full but every deck was full. We finally managed to score these loungers.

We were going to sit here for a few and discuss what we were going to do for the day. We decided that we would just hang out there for a while and just chill in the warmth of the sun. So I ran down to the room grabbed the sunscreen and towels. I am always harping on the importance of sunscreen but I honestly didn’t think we were out there long enough to get burned. WRONG. We were pretty red when we went in later that day. Lesson learned...put on sunscreen before you leave the room for any amount of time. Our poor pasty sun starved winter skin just couldn’t take it. Luckily we sun-screened up before it became a painful sunburn.

I had planned on going to afternoon tea at 3, but the Captain announced we would be sailing by Cuba around that time. So I decided to skip it since they would have tea again on the last sea day. DH went back to the room and hung around on deck to see Cuba because our balcony was on the opposite side. I stood there for a bit and did not see Cuba...bummer. I went back to the room and ordered two desserts from room service.

The chocolate cake, in which I fell in love with last cruise.

And the New York cheesecake, which became my favorite for this cruise.

Tonight was Elegant Night. We opted out of any professional pictures since we were sporting bright red skin and racoon eyes.

DH and I had anytime dining, which seems to becoming popular. We were giving a beeper and was told it would be around 30 minutes. So we just hung around the atrium until our little beeper notified us “your table is ready”.

This was the first time we had ever had to wait for anytime seating but I figured it was due to being Elegant Night. Once seated it did take a while for us to be served. It just took a while for the server to get to us. Once we ordered the food came quickly and was very good. The Maitre' D did come and apologize to us and a lady beside of us for the service being slow. This was the only time it happened the rest of the cruise, so I do feel like it was due it being Elegant night.

I had booked the Chef's Table. I was a little confused on the best way to book this. I posted on John Healds facebook and blog. I then read on here to email the maitre'd, so I did. I heard back the very next day with my confirmation. We received a letter in our room asking us to confirm and letting us know which night it would be. Since it was going to be held on the night we were in Grand Cayman someone (not the chef) came by our table at dinner that night and asked if we had any allergies or any extreme dislikes.

Great start to your cruise. Thanks for posting. I like the chairs you scored on the back of the ship. It's still amazing to see how blue the water is. Can't seem to get that in pictures. It's one of those "you have to be there" to really appreciate it. Looking forward to hearing about the rest of your holiday.

Thanks Everyone!! I know I love reading reviews so I thought I would try to share.

Huntkc, unfortunately UPike did not make it this year.

After dinner, we headed back to the room and changed into something comfy and went back out. We did not go to any of the shows tonight. There was a line waiting to get into the comedy show so we didnt bother. We just walked around the open decks and sat our under the stars.

This is one of the things I love about cruising. You can always find something to do or you can just kick back and relax.

When we went back to our room our invites to the past guest party were there.

Enjoying the review and pics so much. We are leaving on the Paradise Saturday and getting really excited.

Great start to a vacation! We are booked in a Jr. Suite on the Verandah (I think it's a spa suite) so I was happy to get an idea of what to expect.

Thank you for the review and pictures!

Tonight was Elegant Night. We opted out of any professional pictures since we were sporting bright red skin and racoon eyes.

I think you look great in your Elegant Night pics. I don't see red skin or raccoon eyes. Cant wait for the rest of the review. :)

:DLoved your review, you looked great!!

We woke up the next morning in Grand Cayman. The view was spectacular and the weather was fantastic. Since we hadnt booked an excursion we didnt hurry to catch a tender. I went to the lido grabbed some breakfast and sat out on the balcony watching the tenders.

Once they stopped being so busy we made our way down and straight into a boat.

The Paradise viewed from the tender boat.

A couple of minutes later we were docked. We decided to shop, look around Georgetown and then grab some lunch. I had done some research and I had decided we would have lunch at Guy Harveys. We ate on the deck and this was our view.

We started with some Conch Fritters.

DH had the Mahi Mahi.

I ordered the fish and chips.