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Review from the Splendor, 2-17-18 cruise


gdisney
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Hey folks! Just posted my review on Cruise Critic, but until it publishes, here is the text of it. Enjoy!

 

 

Our cruise was a 7-day Mexican Riviera about the Carnival Splendor from February 17-24, 2018. Our last cruise was also to Mexico, about ayear ago on Princess, so I’ll reference some comparisons here.

 

We arrived to the port at Long Beach about 11am. There was a Celtic Festival going on at the Queen Mary site, which added to traffic and parking delays. We actually had to show our boarding pass to a staff member prior to entering the garage, as they were trying to keep festival patrons from taking the garage spots. The garage was quite full at that point; there were probably still a lot of guests from the previous cruise there as well. But we got very lucky and caught someone leaving, parking on the 3rd floor of the garage right next to the elevator. Note that parking is $19 per day, or $133 for the duration of the cruise. We know people who arrived after 1pm and had to get redirected to a parking garage at a mall a mile away, and then take the (free) city shuttle back to the port.

 

So we were parked at 11:15am, and then unloaded and went downstairs and used the restroom. We had a boarding window on our passes of 1-1:30pm, so we assumed we would check our luggage with the porters and then maybe go tour the Queen Mary. But at the entrance to the terminal, there were three marked lines: “Early/Late Arrivals”, “Faster to the Fun”, and “On Time Arrivals”. So after checking our luggage, we entered the early line at 11:30am. By 11:37am were through the first checkpoint and security, and got a Zone 10 boarding card. At that time they were already calling Zone 5. Within 10 minutes our zone was called, and we walked on board the ship at 11:55. It was among the quickest times we’ve had from entering the terminal to being on board at only 25 minutes.

 

This was the first time on a cruise that we didn’t already have our room keys, as they are now picked up at your room after 1:30pm. We also didn’t have to take pictures prior to boarding to link to our S&Scard, as they just use your passport photo automatically now.

 

We spent some time on the first day just exploring, as we had never been on this specific ship. The first impression walking onboard is that the décor is quite pink. Almost garish. I mean, that’s a lot of pink. But honestly after the initial shock, you don’t notice it too much. We did hit the buffet briefly just prior to 1pm, and it was jam-packed as is often the case on embarkation day. I was surprised that none of the dining rooms offered lunch, as they do this on Princess. In fact the dining rooms never served breakfast or lunch during the cruise, except on two sea days where they had brunch from 8:30am-1:00pm. (As our son is always up and wanting breakfast by 7am, we didn’t partake of the brunch). But that’s another change from Princess, as we’ve enjoyed having lunch and sometimes breakfast in one of the dining rooms throughout the cruise before. Princess also has afternoon tea in the MDR, which is a nice classy touch as well.

 

The Carnival Splendor Lido deck does have more options available than we’re used to seeing, such as the Mongolian Wok (very good, and almost always has a line, though lines were almost nonexistent on port days), a Deli and Indian food place at the aft of the Lido deck, a made-to-order burrito bar, the Grill (hot dogs, hamburgers, and fries, and if you ask, grilled chicken patties), The Pizzeria, the BBQ (upstairs, and also quite good), and the traditional buffet lines and dessert lines, as well as self-serve softserve ice cream and yogurt and beverage dispenser areas. Carnival offers free hot chocolate 24/7 at the beverage stations, which I wish Princess did. The Grill had an expansive self-serve condiment/toppings bar, which was nice (I made chili cheese fries once). The pizza was very thin and greasy, though not un-tasty, but I definitely think Princess does better. Also there seemed to always be a short line of people waiting, as there didn’t seem to be much quantity of pizza that was ready to go. Breakfast was pretty good, especially with the made to order omelet bar (they also do eggs cooked to order, such as over easy eggs). Princess did waffles very well, warm and crisp, but on Carnival the waffles were cold and chewy. Carnival’s French toast was pretty good though, as was their daily benedict (done like a large quiche). Their breakfast potatoes were always cut up and fried whole potatoes; there was never a hash brown option except on the last morning when they had hash brown discs. Princess tended to alternate their daily breakfast potato type.

 

We are early risers (especially with our son), and a general difference we’ve noticed between Carnival and Princess – on Carnival they stay up later and sleep in more, and on Princess they turn in earlier and get going earlier in the day). As an example, breakfast on Princess started at 6am in the buffet and 7am in the MDR. On Carnival breakfast starts at 7:30 in the buffet (with continental options at 6:30am). That’s a 90-minute difference in full breakfast start times. Though we noted that the aft buffet line on the Splendor tended to start serving breakfast 30 minutes earlier than posted.

 

Overall I found the food quality on Carnival to be on par with Princess, but in the MDR at night I thought Carnival was a little bit above, both in variety of options and quality. The staff was quite efficient as well; we were in and out in just over an hour. On our last Princess cruise,they were friendly but incredibly slow in the MDR. Also on Princess, you get visited periodically by the maitre’d, just to welcome you and see how things are going. We didn’t get that kind of personal attention on Carnival from those up the food chain, though our waiter and assistant waiter were quite attentive and addressed us by name.

 

Our 4 year-old didn’t care too much for Camp Ocean, though we’re not sure why. He played in there the first day, with us present, and had a good time. But he generally refused to go there much after that. The room is spacious and divided so older kids are on the other side. They have a lot of (clearly well used) toys and for some reason a small igloo play structure that kids can climb through and slide down. They seemed to have plenty of interesting sounding activities throughout the cruise, and although they rarely opened early, they always stayed open late. But when we were on the Grand Princess last year, they had just remodeled the kids’ area; so it was much nicer, and included various play structures, ski-ball and foosball, and other things.

 

We had an ocean view room on Deck 2, and I gotta say, after being used to the small insides on Princess, this room felt enormous. Our son had the little couch bed, as opposed to the fold-down bunks you often see with inside cabins. There was more than enough closet space and drawer space, though the closets were not very deep, so my garment bag had to be in there at an angle to get the door shut (I’m 6’3” and 200 pounds, so my clothing isn’t small). And if the closet door wasn’t shut, you couldn’t get into the bathroom or leave the cabin. The kid loved the deep shelf window, which was so large he could sit up in it and almost stand up in it (he’s 43 inches tall). We had a problem with our fridge not working, which is important if you’re storing milk or apple juice (only available at breakfast) for your kid to have later in the day. After calling, a work person came to check it and basically said that’s as cold as it gets. When our kid’s apple juice started to ferment by day 3, I went down to the desk and complained (nicely), and to their credit they had a new fridge installed within an hour that worked great.

 

There was a problem just outside our room midway through the cruise – apparently a pipe overhead broke and water was leaking through the ceiling into our hallway. It was quite soaked out there. They got it under control, but for the next day we had carpet fans running and we had no hot water, as it was a hot water pipe that broke. But it was fixed by the second day. This is a testament I guess to the age of the Splendor – though it’s just under 10 years so not too old. And really, we felt the ship was in fine shape overall and we had little complaints about its condition. The crew was all friendly and helpful, except for that one refrigerator service tech.

 

There are some design oddities on the Splendor. First being that there’s a dining room right in the middle of the ship on decks 3 and 4,which made navigating between the theatre (deck 3 and 4 forward) and comedy lounge (deck 5 aft), as well as our dining room (deck 3 aft), a little tricky. I felt bad for the Art Room folks, as it’s stuck to the side just past the entrance to this mid-ship dining room, which is where anytime dining is also held, so finding the Art Room was tough. And it was a very small room besides. I really like the Grand Princess Art gallery setup, very spacious and nice to walk through as you’re going from point A to B. On the Splendor, displayed art for the gallery was spread all over the place. And really the best way to get from one end of the ship to the other was through Deck 5, which meant always having to go through the Casino (cough cough). The arcade onboard was much more expansive than what I remember on Princess. It includes many games our 4 year old likes, which on land are usually ones that dispense tickets that you can redeem for prizes. And most of the games had stickers on them about tickets, but they don’t dipense tickets. And they’re pricey - $1 and up per play on the games. It was convenient that you just needed to swipe your room card to play these.

 

I pre-purchased the Social Media plan ($28 for a 7-day cruise versus $35 if buying on board). It allows you to use Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger (anda couple others such as Whatsapp that I don't have). You can't use it for emails, though oddly it would display the number of emails I had on the screen icon (iphone 6s Plus), so you knew how many were building up over the days, but you couldn't see them. I could send texts while in the homeport with the Airplane Mode on, but after sailing, texts no longer worked. The wifi worked...okay. I was able to post photos on Instagram and Facebook and send them through Messenger, and it worked fairly quickly early on in the cruise (usually under 10 seconds at non-peak times to post one photo, sometimes as much as 30 seconds or so in peak times of 10am-8pm). But as the cruise went on, it get steadily worse, presumably due to more people signing up throughout the week, or even just using the Hub app which also utilized the wifi. By the second to last day, it was nearly impossible to post anything from 8am-10pm. I tried sending a photo over Messenger just after 8am, and left it on in the background to see how long it would take. It wasn't received till 8.5 hours later. But for most of the cruise, I was able to share photos to people back home without too much difficulty. And I found Carnival’s Hub app to be more user friendly than the one we used on Princess, though messaging between passengers with the app on Princess didn’t cost money (it’s $5 per person for the cruise on Carnival). But the wifi on the Grand Princess was spotty, and had numerous dead zones on the ship.

 

I miss the drink specials (BOGO) you find on Princess, though I’ve heard they may be phasing it out too. Cocktails on Splendor were $8.50 to $9.50 generally, with beers in the $6 range. Every time I go on a ship it seems the prices are higher than before... They did have a special cocktail of the day, which is $1 off (though only if ordered from the open-air bars such as the pool area), and we’ve seen this before. Speaking of pools: I only went swimming once, because the pools were quite cold. The main pool on the Grand Princess was heated (and both ships have a retractable cover), and I’ve previously gone swimming at 7am while sailing through Alaska on the Grand. Couldn’t do this on Carnival as the water was just too cold. The spas were luke warm, and it actually wasn’t all that difficult to find space in one though there were lots of kids on board. Bar service was quite attentive at the pool/spa areas and in the theatre and comedy lounges, more so than I’ve seen on Princess.

 

On entertainment: honestly I was worried at the welcome show, which didn’t have as much variety as I expected. The singers and dancers closed it with a brief show, but the canned music was way too loud, which caused the singers mics to have to be way too hot, and the whole thing was practically unbearable to listen to. BUT it got better. The 80’s Pops to the Max was actually a pretty decent show, and well executed. But their final show – Epic Rock – was quite fantastic. Great selections, not overblown on the sound, well choreographed and staged, nice effects; all in all one of the best overall shows I’ve seen at sea. Still – I miss the live musicians playing like they use in the theatre on Princess. On the comedy side, the Punchliner Comedy Club was also quite good, and featured at least 4 different comedians (that I saw) throughout the trip, doing both family friendly and adult shows. It seemed like a lot more comedy variety, and offered far more often, than I had seen on Princess. Sadly I didn’t make it to the almost nightly piano bar sing-a-long, as I was usually at the comedy show.

 

The Splendor has a big movie screen on the main pool deck area, like the Princess MUTS. Most of the time it displayed either underwater tropical fish scenes or beach scenes. It was big and nice and clear, and pretty to watch, but I miss the variety of programming you see on Princess: everything from the morning show with the cruise director to music videos and educational programs related to the area you’re cruising to. Like Princess, on Carnival they show movies most nights and offer popcorn and blankets. The movies were a mix of older ones (Sweet Home Alabama anyone?) and some more recent ones and kid friendly ones (Wonder, Cars 3 for example).

 

On ports: this trip had two days in Cabo and one in Puerto Vallarta, skipping Mazatlan which is a typical port for these trips. They handed out tender stickers on the main pool deck starting at 9:00am, about 90 minutes prior to their expected first tender. We got ours around 9:10 and were in group 14, so we waited in our cabin on deck 2. They started calling groups right at their expected time, and ours was called about 35 minutes later. 10 minutes after that we were in the tender and heading off. So, it was fairly efficient. Those who had ship-booked tours the first day in Cabo met in the theatre, so they could be whisked away separately on their adventure. But on the second day were told to just go down about 45 minutes prior to your tour, to board the next available tender. We had a trip booked for the second day, which had an early (7:45am) meet time on the pier, but we made it out okay. Again, on Carnival they tend to stay up late and sleep in, so there wasn’t a lot of early morning tender competition.

 

Our excursion in Cabo was the Mountain Bike Adventure put on by Cabo Adventures. It started with a short walk from the pier to the bus stop area. We were in the same bus group as the camel riding trip, as they both go to the same place. And we were the only two with the bike trip (though 5 more joined us later who were staying at resorts in Cabo). Then it was a 30-minute bus ride to the dune-like shores, where we boarded these old Mercedes Swiss army trucks to go down closer to the beach area. The Mountain Bike adventure was a fun trip, riding through sandy dunes and in between cacti and other local plants along the beach. Although it didn’t look too difficult, riding up and down hills in the sand and maneuvering around sharp turns is tough. Our guide, Jesus, did a great job helping us along, and we got to pick between different directions to go, ultimately ditching our bikes after awhile and taking a 100 yard hike down to the ocean, and then climbing up a rocky overlook before heading back. The day concluded with a buffet lunch including beer and other Mexican drinks (think horchata), with short ribs and quesadillas and salad, beans and rice. We also got treated to a tequila tasting of four different varieties, and they demonstrated the traditional way of grinding corn on rocks to make tortillas. So it was a worthwhile adventure. Tip: we booked in advance of sailing when Carnival has a 10% off sale on excursions, so we saved some money there.

 

We did not have an excursion booked in Puerto Vallarta; instead we walked off and took a cab (there’s was plenty waiting) to the Malecon area. If you just walk off the ship and don’t go anywhere, there’s not much to see or do. Except for the WalMart and Sam’s Club across the street, as well as the shopping mall, if you’re into that sort of thing. The cab ride to the Malecon was $4 per person each way, so $12 for the three of us who went. It’s definitely worth it just to see the beautiful beach boardwalk area with all the statues and artisans doing crafts, as well as souvenir shops and plenty of restaurants ($1 margarita anyone??). I also bought a watercolor by a local artist of that area, a souvenir for myself.

 

Our last two sea days on the way back to Long Beach were pretty uneventful, except it was quite windy out, so a lot of the open deck areas were closed off. And the miniature golf was closed as well, much to the dismay of our four year old. They kept the cover closed over the main pool deck until the last morning. We elected to carry off our bags for disembarkation. They tell you to hang out ondeck 5 or 9, since you have to be out of your stateroom by 8:30am, but since we were on deck 2 and you get off the ship from deck 3, we just went up one floor and managed to get through the crowd to the theatre. The elevators were far too backed up to try and get to deck 5, and I wasn’t about to carry our luggage up three flights of stairs. One was enough. The theatre was mostly empty; I believe it was supposed to be for people needing extra assistance? I don’t know. I didn’t watch the disembarkation videothe day before; I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life on a sea day ;)

 

They call walk-off folks by deck, and we were supposed to be in the third group called. Our posted estimated time was 9:15, but we were called at 9:00am. Being that wewere already on deck 3 in the theatre, we kind of merged into the line of people wrapping around the central atrium who were coming from different floors, and we were off the ship by 9:05. We made it to customs by 9:14, and even that went pretty quickly and we were outside the terminal by 9:22am. Then there was nothing left except a long drive home, and dreams of the next vacation. Except this: our son suddenly started throwing up on the way home, and did so for the next 24 hours. We suspect he may have caught a little noro virus at the end of our trip. By the second day at home he was fine, and fortunately neither I nor my wife caught it. We now look forward to our next trip this July to Alaska!

Edited by gdisney
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Thank you for the review. We will be on Splendor in 3 weeks! Children in our family group ages 2.5 - 7 years. Did you join in any of the Dr. Suess activities?

 

We didn't; our son hasn't ever really gotten into Dr. Seuss. We did do the build a bear workshop, which was offered twice during the cruise. You have to sign up and wait to be called, and it costs extra (he got a monkey with clothing and accessories and it cost $50)

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In fact the dining rooms never served breakfast or lunch during the cruise, except on two sea days where they had brunch from 8:30am-1:00pm. (As our son is always up and wanting breakfast by 7am, we didn’t partake of the brunch).

We just got off the 2/24 sailing yesterday, and there was breakfast served in the Gold Pearl dining room on port days as well as debarkation day. The hours were kind of limited though (usually something like 7:00-9:00 but varied based on port arrival times).

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We didn't; our son hasn't ever really gotten into Dr. Seuss. We did do the build a bear workshop, which was offered twice during the cruise. You have to sign up and wait to be called, and it costs extra (he got a monkey with clothing and accessories and it cost $50)

Thanks for the info on Build A Bear.

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We just got off the 2/24 sailing yesterday, and there was breakfast served in the Gold Pearl dining room on port days as well as debarkation day. The hours were kind of limited though (usually something like 7:00-9:00 but varied based on port arrival times).

 

You're right, somehow I missed that; it was open in the Gold Pearl, deck 3 aft, for two hours when in port.

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Thanks for the compressive review! I really liked the compare and contrast with a Princess. Are you going to stick with Carnival for your Alaskan cruise?

 

 

 

We’re going on Princess to Alaska; it goes out of San Francisco which is the closest port to our home. Also my parents cruise on there a lot, so we’re doing this trip with them

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

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Carnival has afternoon tea time at 3pm in the aft of one of the dining rooms on sea days. In the Fun Times it is listed under " Hungry For More " rather than with the other food venue and time listing.

image24-1024x1024.jpg

 

We wanted to like Princess but much prefer Carnival especially as Carnival offers the Seaday Brunch.

 

Thanks for the detailed review, it was a pleasure to read.

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Carnival has afternoon tea time at 3pm in the aft of one of the dining rooms on sea days. In the Fun Times it is listed under " Hungry For More " rather than with the other food venue and time listing.

image24-1024x1024.jpg

 

We wanted to like Princess but much prefer Carnival especially as Carnival offers the Seaday Brunch.

 

Thanks for the detailed review, it was a pleasure to read.

 

Nice photo. Looks yummy.

 

Keith

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Carnival has afternoon tea time at 3pm in the aft of one of the dining rooms on sea days. In the Fun Times it is listed under " Hungry For More " rather than with the other food venue and time listing.

 

Dang...I must have totally missed that. Thanks for the tip!

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