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Sensation 50th Birthday Celebration Review 11/1...


keystonemama

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We are back! What fun! I will try to post what pics I took, this was such a crazy, fun, party cruise I didn't get to take even close to what I normally do, but it was a great crowd! We are officially exhausted! Going to get some dinner and hopefully stay awake long enough to write a little more......:).

 

 

Happy Sailing,

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welcome back!!! I cant wait to read your review!

 

As the days go by till our turn on the Sensation I am scouring the forum for reviews especially picture reviews on this ship.

 

Please please post pictures, a ton if you could :D I can photoshop my face in there :D since I must vicariously live though fellow CC'ers for another month :(

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October 31st

The day of surprise is finally here! My husband tells his job he will be a little late because I have asked him to come to my job and watch our halloween contest. (of course they already know this) Debbie works with me and she and her DH are going with us on the cruise. We do our skits out in a courtyard at work so I had another friend seat him on a bench so he could see everything, aka, be the center of attention. Everyone does their skits and me and Deb are going last. We proceed out into the courtyard to the very loud sound of Bang of the Drum. :)

We are dancing, drinking, throwing mini beach balls, using plastic fish squirt toys to wet everyone. Everyone's laughing and David is still thinking we are just doing a Hawaiian themed skit (Deb used to live there). At the end of the skit I had 5 people dressed in tropical dress hold up 5 different signs in red, white and blue of course, as they shouted, "Happy 50th Birthday Dave, you are going to the Bahamas!" OMG was he stunned and I mean literally, he didn't understand because he thought we had no extra vacay money and he had mandatory work weekend. He got real serious which is his way of holding back the emotion. Deb shouted him out of it with "and we are going with you!" and he said, "Awesome, when?" We both shout "tomorrow!" and he was estatic, he just couldn't believe it.

What a day he had, first he finds out he is going to the Bahamas, then he dresses up to go to work as The Hulk and wins "Most Scariest" costume with a prize, then he gets a $100 gift card at work for doing "good merits" and the same day the company announces they are getting quarterly bonuses so he get another extra check! Now that's the way to start a vacation!

My costume100_3270.jpg

Surprise

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Deb

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Nov 1 - Embark Day!

 

Our friends drive to our house and off we head to Port Canaveral, we only live in Gainesville so its a very easy drive there. Deb has never cruised before and Bill has only done it once as a senior trip in 1984. I had made online reservations with Park and Cruise to park the car for $6.99 a day so with tax, it was less than $30. It's literally right off the expressway and there is a grocery mart type store next door if you need to purchase anything. You drive up, drop your luggage, park the car. They load up the shuttle and off you go, you are there in 5 minutes and pick up was very quick also. I highly recommend. Drop off is easy and getting thru this port took us approximately 5 minutes, we arrived around 11:00. Walked right thru customs and was able to put cash on our accounts right there.

 

 

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Bill is on his way!

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There's our ship!

 

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We had luggage so we head to Lido for some lunch. We dive into pasta, fries, chicken nuggets, reubens, salad, cupcakes and of course drinks and I'm not talking lemonade. :D We begin talking to a waiter, from Bulgaria, he was impressed I pronounced his name correctly, lol. I asked him about Sandy and what it was like. He said awful, the ship was rocking so bad you literally could not walk a straight line, things were falling and breaking and such. We take our time eating and smoking on Lido till our rooms are ready which was 1:30.

 

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We arrive at our rooms, I show my friends the things they need to know about in their rooms and head to mine. I will mention here people always laugh at me when I tell them I always take duct tape on a cruise. Well first thing I unpack was my camera only to find the lid that keeps the batteries in was cracked and broke into 2 pieces! DH was about to get a little upset but I reminded him I always have my trusty duct tape, problem solved! I used it to hang my sign and post it note on my friends door all thru the cruise.

We booked an OV this time which DH really liked, I took a few pics of the room. There are no refrigerators, but our steward kept 2 buckets of ice for us to use or keep our champagne cold. Plenty of closet space and room in the shower. The safe used cards to lock and I had more goodies in my basket this time than on the Paradise. There is a clothes line in the shower.

Our bags arrive and I unpack and decorate the door. Across the hall from us was a bachlorette party group and they also had decorated their door, they were a fun group and boy did her maid of honors have surprises for her, let's just say what happens in the hallways, stays in the hallways! :p

I did found out at dinner time though I had a slight problem, since there were no blow dryers, I brought mine, upon trying to plug it in I found it would not work, whoever designed the dressing table overshot it by about 2 inches, my plug was too large to fit, I had 10 minutes till dinner so I rush next door to Deb and borrow hers which thankfully fit, running back to the room, my steward ask me what was wrong and he said he would have a blow dryer to my room shortly, good deal. BTW luv his name, his real name was too hard to pronounce so he goes by Super Duper, lol. :D

Shower

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Closet

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Door decorations which really helped our friends find there cabin. ;)

 

I forgot to mention my one issue which disappointed me a little, I had ordered birthday decorations for the room from Bon Voyage and when we opened the door there were none. There was a note on my table apologizing that they were out of stock? :confused: It was not available so they were supposed to credit my card back so I will have to check that later this week to make sure it happens.

 

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Once our rooms are settled, its time for a beer run, lol, and to check out the ship a little, unfortunately I did not take alot of ship photos because of my camera issue and the fact I only had 3 days and friends with us and it was my hunny's trip so I left it up to him. :) My friends were surprised how much walking you can do on a ship, lol. The layout of the Sensation is alot like the Paradise, minus no basketball court. (I have another review with lots of pics) I must say though it was a little more difficult to navigate though because all elevators did not get off on all floors, you have to catch one, get off on that floor and walk either up or down one flight to get to some floors. The atrium seems a little smaller, there was a piano and someone playing guitar but only seating is at the bar, no room for a small dance floor and extra chairs.

I saw people playing cards in the library and I liked the MDR decor better than the Paradise. We smoke, but we did find the casino really smelled like old smoke, even just walking by it and not through it. The pool area is nice and there is one ping pong table up above this. There were 2 hot tubs here also. The dj was good. Serenity is just like on the Paradise. There is a running track and putt putt. Smoking is only allowed on one side of the Lido, none upstairs, the casino, disco club and casino bar. We never visited the piano bar, Deb & Bill did and were not impressed with this particular guy so they did not stay long.

Spa has a sauna and steam room, I did not look at the gym, on vacation ya know. :D There is a kiosk by the casino and Joe's place where you can apply money or check your account or cash out your account. Also there is one by Guest Services.

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loving the review so far!

 

 

A quick question on the hairdryer did you have to use a travel hairdryer or would a standard hairdryer work?

 

Glad you like it. Mine was a fold up travel Conair, you know the kind with a retractable cord, the square black plug was too big to get in between the desk and the outlet. If you take a look at the pic above, the white blow dryer plugged in is the correct size, its the one provided by Carnival for me.

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Well, I will have to do more tomorrow, three days of partying has pooped me out. :D Good nite all....

Happy Sailing,

 

Where do I look to order a shirt we leave for a B2B on the Sensation on Dec 6, and do you think I have enough time to receive it?:confused:

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Where do I look to order a shirt we leave for a B2B on the Sensation on Dec 6, and do you think I have enough time to receive it?:confused:

 

You can order here, http://carnival.victorydyo.com/

Yes, if you order now I think you have plenty of time, I received mine in about a week after I ordered.

Happy Sailing,

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It's now time for muster, ours was held in the Fantasia Lounge and then we proceeded downstairs to the lifeboats, took about 30 minutes and we were done by 4:00. We proceeded up to the top Lido deck and the sail away party begins! Everyone was having a good time dancing below and they have a couple of break dancers on board who were good. We started our own dance line upstairs.

As we passed the restaurant and webcams, I call my work to make sure they could see us waving to them and my co-worker asks "Is that David waving both hands frantically?", lol, "Yes, I replied, thats the birthday boy," lol.

We watched the sail away for the Ecstasy and the Disney Dream, that is an impressive looking ship, more pics of her later.

We went to check out the waterworks area, it was quite windy up there, we watched down below as a group of retired people from The Villages danced to some pop music, they all had matching t-shirts. We saw several groups like this, some were wearing pink boas, wedding parties, bachelor parties, one of these groups had t-shirts made up with numbers like Thing 1/Thing 2 on Dr. Seuss, except their shirts said Drunk 00, Drunk 1, Drunk 2, Drunk 3 etc...

There was nice mixture of ages of people this cruise and different cultures, but not many children, I guess since school is in session.

The decor of this ship is interesting, I don't mind the purple, but there were areas where the walls, carpet and tiles did NOT match! Later in the evening after a few drinks, I told my friends, I never get seasick, but I can't look down at these busy carpets they make me dizzy! Please Carnival, change the carpet! I love the hanging chandelier lights by Joe's Cafe that change colors though.

Chandeliers

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We went to the atm kiosk and set up our accounts and made our balances were correct, this by far, is the best thing ever to use, so convenient. We headed over to the casino bar, we hang out here more usually because we can smoke there and set ourselves up with the bartender, Stella, from Bulgaria. She is a very pretty girl and is getting her degree in Business Administration, she said she signed an 8 month contract so she could take all her tests and hopefully get her degree in April.

Stella had some great stories of some of the things she has seen. She said a few cruises ago, they had a wedding party, as the wedding proceeds the groom's parents shout they do not like the bride and don't want him to marry her! :eek: Then both parents starting argueing, the brides father pours champagne on the grooms head and things start to heat up so much that security had to brought in! Eventually they all got off the boat before sailing except for the bride/groom and her side of the family! How awful! I don't forsee a bright future for this couple, lol. :rolleyes: Can we say Jerry Springer? :p

We head back to the room to change for dinner, we had decided to keep this cruise low key so this would be our only night we ate in the MDR.

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