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Carnival Destiny B2B Epic Review! Tons of Pics, Menus, Food, FunTimes, & Documents!!!


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We are just off of our B2B Carnival Destiny cruise and wanted to try to write the most informative, epic review I could. The last time I did a review, I only let 11 months pass by before I actually wrote it. This time, I decided I was going to do everything I could do to make it the best review that I could write. Hopefully, you will enjoy it and will get some helpful insight through our cruise experience.

 

First, a little bit about us; I am David, 28 and my wife is Alicia, 27. We have two kids that are 4 and 22 months who will not be joining us on a cruise for a loooong time. Cruising is a way for us to get away from everything in life and re-energize ourselves. I am a Pastor in a large church outside of Cincinnati and my wife is a stay-at-home mom. For both of us, life can be challenging, tiring, and very rewarding. Everyone needs a break and a chance to step away and cruising is the way to do it for us.

 

I will do my best to post just as much as possible just as quickly as possible. There will be pictures to see, food to drool over, and also we will scan in as many documents that we received while on the cruise including all the Fun Times. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the review of our Carnival Destiny B2B adventure.

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Leading up to our trip, I did as much research as I could. I wanted to be informed as much as possible so Cruise Critic became my most visited site. After researching everything, I was so excited to leave and get this adventure underway. Part of me is doing this review as a way to give back to the Cruise Critic community. I asked questions, joined a roll call and followed advice along the way. I felt after creeping on so many posts and reviews that it was something that I needed to do.

 

We joined a roll call for the two cruises we were going to be on. One roll call was relatively active and the other was quite dead. We had all arranged to do a meet and greet at 2:00pm on Embarkation Day. My wife and I, especially my wife, was very apprehensive about going and meeting up with the people we were talking with on the roll calls. Were they going to be weird? Would it be awkward? We had made a promise to each other that we would sneak out if the people were weird. I will give more on that subject later on in the review.

 

We booked the first leg of our cruise through our PVP back in February. This is before we knew that we were going on a B2B so we decided to just go with an interior room just to see if we liked it. We have only done OV before this so we decided to try something else. We book ES and it was $329pp. The more I thought about it, the more I decided to try to convince my wife to do a B2B. I researched it and saw that many people loved doing them. Because of my job, I cannot be gone 2 Sundays in a row due to our services. Most 7-day cruises do not work for me because they are Sunday-Sunday cruises. We figured we are stuck with 5 or 6 day cruises for the most part. When I found out we could do the B2B and only be gone 1 Sunday and we got to visit Grand Cayman again, the decision was easy. We booked the second leg in May through ES and the fare $359pp. Our PVP got us a room on the Lido that we would be able to stay in for both legs of the cruise.

 

Fast-forward until the Friday before the cruise when my phone rang. It was the Upsell Fairy. She offered to move us to a balcony across the hall from our original cruise on the first leg for only $200 total. We decided to take so we could see what it was like in all the rooms except for the suites. What did we think about the room differences? Guess you will just have to wait and see.

 

We are not consumers of alcohol so we did not make any plans to smuggle the goods on board the ship. We don’t have a problem with it but we just do not like the taste or smell. I will not be able to give much info on alcoholic drinks during this review, as we did not purchase/smuggle any on board. However, we enjoy Sprite Zero, Coke Zero, and grenadine. Seeing as we were flying, we could not bring either on our flight. We figured we would ask our driver to swing by a store on the way in and grab some to bring onboard the ship. We did not know if he would do this for us but I figured it probably would not be a big issue. We planned to buy 4, 12 packs to bring on-board, one for each of us for each leg. Carnival allows 12 per person so we just printed our boarding passes for both legs in case they said something about it. At least that was the plan…

 

We reserved SAS to pick us up in FLL to take us to the Marriott Biscayne Bay and did this through email.

 

We reserved our hotel direct through Marriott.com.

 

We did not purchase trip insurance.

 

The only excursion we booked beforehand through Carnival was our cabana on Half Moon Cay. This was an extremely wise choice as they were all sold out before the cruise departed.

 

We booked one non-Carnival tour in Grand Turk before we left for the cruise. It was renting a golf cart from Nathan for $80, which we had read was a good thing to do in Grand Turk.

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Day of departure

 

We flew out on a Sunday afternoon right after the morning services at our church. In our last cruise, we left the morning of Embarkation and made it without any problems. This particular time, we just did not want to chance anything happening and decided to leave the day before. I know it may not work out like that for everyone but it worked out for us this time around.

 

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Our flight departed Cincinnati at 2:00pm in a legit thunderstorm. This storm was the remnants of Hurricane Isaac, which was making its trek through our area. Even with the rain/wind, we left on time and landed ahead of schedule in Atlanta.

 

We found our gate in Atlanta and saw the sign that we had longed to see for quite some time. We were bound for Florida!!!

 

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Here is myself and the love of my life, my best friend, and my soul mate, waiting to leave Atlanta.

 

 

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Heading to bed for the night and will post first thing tomorrow. If you like details, photos, and honesty this review is for you. I will post around 40 documents relating to our cruise including fun times, menus, etc. I have over 1300 photos to sift through and I am sure there will be a ton of them going on this review. We were on Destiny for 10 days and have plenty to talk about with everyone. You don't want to miss this review and that you will take something away from it that will help you in your cruise planning! If you have any questions about the cruise, please do not hesitate to let me know and I will do the best I can to answer.

 

"txmom" was on board the cruise with us and she is also a wealth of knowledge. Please feel free to ask her any question related to the dod's and such as she will be better acquainted with that than I. ;)

 

Good night everyone!

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We are just off of our B2B Carnival Destiny cruise and wanted to try to write the most informative, epic review I could. The last time I did a review, I only let 11 months pass by before I actually wrote it. This time, I decided I was going to do everything I could do to make it the best review that I could write. Hopefully, you will enjoy it and will get some helpful insight through our cruise experience.

 

First, a little bit about us; I am David, 28 and my wife is Alicia, 27. We have two kids that are 4 and 22 months who will not be joining us on a cruise for a loooong time. Cruising is a way for us to get away from everything in life and re-energize ourselves. I am a Pastor in a large church outside of Cincinnati and my wife is a stay-at-home mom. For both of us, life can be challenging, tiring, and very rewarding. Everyone needs a break and a chance to step away and cruising is the way to do it for us.

 

I will do my best to post just as much as possible just as quickly as possible. There will be pictures to see, food to drool over, and also we will scan in as many documents that we received while on the cruise including all the Fun Times. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the review of our Carnival Destiny B2B adventure.

 

 

Exactly!! I am stay at home mom as well and my husband has two jobs and cruising is how we both leave it all behind and spend time with each other uninterrupted! Looking forward to more!

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While flying to FLL, I took a slight nap because we were quite tired from staying up until 2:00am the night before packing everything. I am not sure why we wait so long to pack but we do. All flights on this trip were uneventful and on time. We applaud Delta and their great crew for providing us with a safe and reliable transport to and from our cruise.

 

When we were getting close to landing, I kept an eye on the window to see if I could see the ocean. I was greatly disappointed because this was the view outside of our window of the Everglades.

 

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I do not know how many gators there are down there but I do not want to be the one guy counting them. As disappointed as I was to not see the ocean, I was intrigued by the Everglades. Plus, I was also soothed by the fact that I would be seeing plenty of ocean for the next 10 days.

 

It was crazy to see the blank canvas of the Everglades. I was even more in shock that this really nice neighborhood popped up in the middle of it. Turns out it is the town of Weston, Fl. Pretty nice place seeing as most houses had a pool AND a tennis/basketball court in their backyards.

 

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We landed in FLL right at 6:00pm. After taxiing to the gate, we were welcomed to FLL.

 

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The terminal Delta uses is not big so within just a few steps and an escalator ride, we had arrived at baggage claim and called our SAS driver.

 

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We told him we were at claim 3 and he basically said “grab your bag and turn around”. We looked out the window and saw the van there waiting to take us away. We snatched our bags and then headed outside of the airport.

 

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The driver was very nice to us and was kind enough to take us by a Publix so we could buy 4, 12 packs of soda and some grenadine. The whole ride took approximately 40 minutes from pickup to drop off including the stop at the store. SAS charged us $45, which we paid the driver in cash along with some extra money for tip.

 

I would highly recommend SAS to you for FLL transportation however they do not service MIA.

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We stayed at the Marriott Biscayne Bay the night before our cruise. It is located right by the port and boasts great views of the city or the port. We have a family member who works for Marriott and got us the room for $97.00 + tax. When we checked in, we asked for a room on a higher floor and we placed on the 29th floor! When we walked in, we were very impressed with the room and how it was set up. It showed some great views and was quite impressive.

 

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Port of Miami

 

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