cdillon23

Great cruise, great review, and great photos. Thanks for sharing

 

http://luv2cruise.blogspot.com

You're welcome!

We were on the same cruise and had a blast! Were you in the Universe or the Galaxy dining room? We were in the Galaxy for the 9/3-8 cruise and the Universe for the 9/8-13 trip. Liked the Matre'd much better in the Universe--he was a lot more fun.

 

BTW, love your pictures! Did we have the same camera? Your pics looks very familiar.

We were in the Universe. It was a lot of fun...and a...1...2... That always cracked me up.

The camera I have is a Nikon D40x. I told my wife I knew some people were doing the B2B...so jealous! :D

After dinner we went and took pictures on the lido deck. It was pretty windy.

I love my wife!

We then put the kids in bed and went and enjoyed some more Super Star Live Karaoke. Went to bed around 1:00 AM.

Dinner was excellent. I had two lobsters.

YUM!

More food.

We had two birthdays to be celebrated this week. The waiters came over and sang happy birthday.

Then our head waiter decided he was ready to do some magic for the kids.

Thanks for sharing this. The review is great. Looking forward to more!

Great review and pictures. Thank you for sharing your experience with us!

Your Welcome!

Enjoying your review so far, looking forward in reading more.

Thank you. Hopefully will get it out a little faster.

Formal night! I have to be honest. I am not a fan of ties because I feel like I am being choked. But my wife loves formal night so it was important to me. It was another night of a tight space to get ready but we managed. After we got ready we went to deck 5 to get pictures taken by some of the Carnival photogs. It was very, very crowded as you could imagine. Seemed like all 2500 people on the ship were on the same floor trying to do the same thing. We did buy one photo of us all dressed up. My wife loved it so it was the best $22 I could spend! :D

My DD not wanting to wake up from her nap! Just like a soon to be teenager.

All dressed up!

DD thinking I am paparazzi!

The kids all dressed up.

Everyone looks so nice!

Day 2 - At Sea

I woke up a little late. My wife and kids got up before I did and went to the dinning room for breakfast. My wife has a gluten allergy so it was much easier for us to eat in the dining room then at the buffet. I did, however, eat breakfast at the buffet this morning. Another long wait. The food was ok I just couldn't believe how long it took. So I patiently waited got my food and found my wife and daughter on the pool deck laying out. I don't like to lay out in the son. I get hot and sweaty and it is just not that enjoyable to me. So I sat for a little bit to please my wife, yes that is the only reason I did it, and then wondered the ship for a little bit. We finally called the other family we were with and found out the wife was sea sick and struggling to even get out of bed. The sea was a little rough but it wasn't to bad I didn't think but it was effecting her pretty bad. Here is a picture I took while wondering around.

Beautiful!

After wondering around I found my wife and we decided to eat lunch in the dining room. It is nice to go in and be waited on. I ordered some Mongolian beef and salad and when I got it there was hard crusted food on the bottom of the plate and even a piece of an order ticket stuck to it. Pretty disgusting but I understand sometimes dish washers mess up. Not a big deal to me I just asked the server for a different one. When I did that you would have thought I asked him swim back to Miami. I, and those at my table, heard the server complaining to his assistant that I wanted another one and even used some curse words. I tried not to pay any attention, got my new meal and enjoyed it.

After lunch my son went to Camp Carnival, he said it was ok. Not a lot of kids on the boat this week so he said it was a little boring. While he was there I went back to the room and took a nap. Soon it would be time to get ready for formal night!

After dinner we walked around for a bit. We decided to take the kids back to the cabin and got them ready for bed. They watched a little tv and my wife and I went and hung out with the other couple who was with us. We watched some Superstar Live, which is karaoke with a live band, and then went to the Apollo Room for some sing a long piano music. The Superstar live was hit and miss. Some people were pretty bad but having fun and some were pretty good. The guys name in the piano bar was Billy. He did pretty good, played to the audience well. Before we realized it was 2:00 AM. I have never stayed up so late before on a cruise before. This became the norm for this trip. It was a lot of fun. As crazy as it sounds, that was just day one. The rest of the trip will be a little quicker as I seemed to take less pictures as time went on.

After we let the kids swim some we went back to get ready for dinner. This is where we started to notice the size of the room. It is hard getting 4 people cleaned up in such a small place. We managed though. By the end of the week I was taking my DS out while the girls got ready, then we would go back and get ready ourselves.

I have to be very honest at this part of the review/journal. I read a lot about the food on carnival not being very good. I have to totally disagree with this opinion. Dinner became the highlight of the week for me. The food was good, tasty and plentiful. I did not get pictures of all the food we ate but I did get some so I will post what I got on those days.

Ready for dinner.

PIRATES!

After sail away we went back and unpacked our rooms. I had a missing bag so I mentioned it to my room steward and he suggested I go to guest services. The Guest services line was long. Took me 30 minutes to get through it only to have the person tell me that sometimes it takes a little longer to get our bags. She did call and the luggage people said all luggage was delivered so she suggested I wait a little longer and then come back to fill out a missing luggage form. I decided to head back to the room to finish unpacking and when I got there my steward said he found the bag and put it in my room. He found it on the deck above us. He was very helpful and all week he went above and beyond. After all this I went to the Criterion lounge to meet my wife and kids. It was Camp Carnival Orientation. We had late dining so after this we went back to the top deck to hang out and let the kids swim. Here are some pictures from sunset.

Enjoying your review. Was the muster drill on Deck 4 on in various lounges? Not looking forward to standing in the heat, hope everyone behaves so it goes quickly since they are being so strict these days.

No waiting in lounges. They did all the instructions on the PA and then sounded the alarm. We then went to our muster station. We waited there till everyone was there then they did a life jacket demonstration. After that they released us.

A few more pictures during Sail Away.

Famous Whale Tale

We're on VACATION!

Neat picture my wife took looking back at the port. That is the Imagination heading out behind us.

Line Dancing!

After we got saw our room it was time for our Muster Drill. The drill was very easy. Took about 20 minutes which is good because it was extremely hot. After Muster it was time for sail away.

They had the Destiny Show band out playing on the Lido deck, they had some sound problems so they did not play long. We stood at the rail and watched as we left the Port of Miami. Here are some sail away pictures.

We passed the Carnival Imagination

And the Norwegian Sky.

Accident on the road the follows the channel. I wonder if this happens often as people stare at the ships leaving.

DS enjoying a Virgin Strawberry Daiquiri

Two families enjoying Sail away

South Beach

Ok, back to the review. After we got on the boat we went up to the Lido deck to have lunch. I could not believe how busy it was. He had a very difficult time getting a table and the lines for the buffet had 20 minute waits on them. I figure this is natural on the first day so didn't worry about it to much. The food was good. My son got his first slices of pizza and was in heaven. I got a burger and hot dog from the grill and it was very good. The food from the buffet was good just very crowded.

Son getting his first slices of pizza. The Camp Carnival coordinator told the kids their muster station bracelets were tickets for all you could eat pizza and ice cream.

After lunch we were able to head to our room. We had a balcony cabin on deck 7. Room number 7257. I read somewhere that the cabins on the Destiny were a little bigger than the industry standard. This is hard for me to believe after seeing the cabin. It seemed really small. We had about a 6' x 5' space in the middle of the cabin to stand in and get ready in. There were a number of times my son and I would leave and do other things while my wife and daughter got ready. The last ship we were on was the Legend of the Seas and we had a ocean view cabin. It seemed a little bigger. The room was adequate and we loved the balcony but it was a bit on the small size we felt.

Cabin from entrance

Beds for my kids

On the balcony

Lots of luggage to still get on board.

So,when you guys reserved the room with LMT,it was just a standard room? Did you guys call the number or just reserved online? Thanks in advance!

I did it all online and it was a standard room then. We upgraded at the hotel when checking in to get the bay view.

Palladium Theater

Casino is on the right. This is the main hall on Deck 5. Lots of traffic here. Many times between meals in the evening this hall was so crowded it was hard to get around. I think Carnival needs to do a little better job at this.

Coffee Shop on Deck 5

Night Club on Deck 5

Apollo Bar on Deck 5

Universe Dining Room on Deck 5

I missed getting a picture of the Criterion Lounge on deck 5 and the Onyx room on Deck 4. My casino pictures did not turn out to well.

Here are some pictures of the ship I took.

Atrium Bar

Atrium Looking Up

Atrium Looking Down

Big Screen on the Lido Deck. Notice the black square? Hard to watch movies with this. They did fix it by the end of the cruise but then it was a peach square.

Pool at the back of the ship. 24 hour ice cream and pizza was here also.

Lido Deck

Can't wait to read your review!!

Thanks!

Great start to your review! Yikes at that $131 ticket:eek:

Yeah, I was pretty ticked at myself. Thankfully I have to the end of Oct. to pay it.

so far so good :D looking forward to the rest of your review, we will be doing this itinerary on the Victory.

We say the Victory in Miami when we got back into town. This really is not a bad itinerary at all.

The day of the cruise our friends who had driven to Miami picked us up at our hotel. We stuffed all 9 of us into their mini van and headed for the port. Thankfully it was not to far.

Our first view of the ship when we got to the port.

Here is another bad thing that happened on our trip. I guess when my DS got out of the van he had his back pack and decided to give it to a porter to have it taken to the ship. I did not know he did this but before he have it to the porter he took out his iPod touch and checked the time and then put it back. When his bag got to our room the zipper of the pocket that the iPod was in was opened and no iPod was there. I am not going to say someone stole it but it does seem this to be the case. This is a good reminder that if you have something like this keep it with you.

Embarkation was very simple. We had one passport (mine) and the rest were birth certificates. No issues at all. Total time to get on the ship was about 45 minutes from when we arrived at the port. Not bad at all.

My beautiful wife!

First step into the atrium!

Now, about the hotel. I don't know if we would stay there again. It was expensive and for a pre cruise hotel maybe a bit more expensive then I would like to spend next time. I will admit though, waking up to this view was pretty cool!

Carnival Destiny waiting for us!

We left for the cruise on Sunday Sept. 2. We live close to Muncie, In so we flew from Indy. A crappy thing happened on the way to the airport. I got pulled over and got a ticket for speeding. There goes $131. My fault but made an interesting start to our trip.

We flew from Indy to Charlotte. You wouldn't think this would be to crazy but it kind of was because of the DNC. After a hour or so layover we flew to Fort Lauderdale. When we landed and got our luggage we called SAS Transport to pick us up. I had reserved with them before we left. They were very prompt at picking us up. Cost for a trip to our hotel was $60. The driver was very, very helpful so I tipped him $10. Our friends who were going on the trip drove to Miami, yes, all 22 hours.

We had reservations at the Intercontinental in Miami. We got it through Last Minute Travel for $130. When we got there we decided to upgrade to a bay for for $20 more. Here are some pictures of the room.

First thing you see when you walk in the room.

Closet in the bathroom

Shower with two shower heads

Bathroom Sink

The View!

DS enjoying the view, he loved to sit on in the window.

Ok, so I have been reading cruise reviews for months. Different ships, companies, etc and I love the picture reviews people do. So here is my attempt at doing so. I will admit, this is a daunting task, one I debated on whether I should do. What's the worse thing that can happen though? I don't finish it? No biggie so lets give it a shot.

First a little about us. This cruise included myself (35), my DW (35) and my two children, DD (12) and DS (10). We decided since they would only miss four days of school because of Labor Day that we could make this happen. Also with us were our friends of similar age and their three children, daughter -16, and two sons 10 and 7. This is their first cruise. My wife and I have been on 4 cruises now, first was Big Red Boat, second was Carnival Celebration and third was Legend of the Seas (RCI).

We did the 5 night cruise from Miami on the Carnival Destiny going to Grand Turk, Half Moon Cay and Nassau.

These are some of the most amazing pictures I have ever seen from a cruise. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you for the review or what I like to call cruise journal. It was fun to read.