Carnival Imagination - 3 Night Ensenada Cruise Review

This is my first review, so please bear with me. My wife and I cruised the Carnival Imagination on 9/24/15 for the 3 night cruise to Mexico. We had a great time!

We had Faster to the Fun, which we try to get every time. In my opinion, it is worth it for the priority boarding alone. The last thing I want to do to start my vacation is wait in line to check in and board. They boarded a large wedding party, the Diamond/Platinum guests, and then we were on board!

Once on board, we stopped by our room (which was ready for us, thanks to Faster to the Fun) and dropped off our carry on bags. After that, we signed up for our Bottomless Bubbles, grabbed something to drink, and set off to check out the ship.

We, of course, made our way to lunch. I had the Mongolian Wok, which was very good.

My wife had roast beef with mashed potatoes and salad, which was very good too! We didn't eat at the buffet too much, but the food was standard Carnival buffet fare. Good, not great, but nothing that I would complain about. The only disappointment we had was the pizza. It seemed like the pizza was pre-made, and maybe even frozen (they have them sitting in a display case). When we were on the Miracle last year, the pizza was really good and I saw them rolling out the dough and making the pizzas right there in front of you. Don't get me wrong, I still ate the pizza, I guess I would just say it was not as good as pizza I've had on other ships.

From there, we went back to our room and relaxed for a while until it was time for the muster drill. Our meeting location was in the comedy lounge and it was pretty nice to not be standing on the deck the whole time!

After the muster drill, we went to the spa and entered the raffle. We didn't win anything. Oh well. We set sail shortly after that and enjoyed the sail away from the lido deck. I've heard that Carnival is planning to start doing more of a "sail away party" in the future, which will be a very nice change.

-More to come

Before dinner we stopped by the Taste Bar. They were serving roast port and tortilla soup from the Blue Iguana on other ships (there is no Blue Iguana, Red Frog Pub, or Guy's Burgers on the Imagination):

It was really good. I'm hoping they serve that pork at the Blue Iguana on the Breeze when we sail later this month!

We ate dinner each night in the main dining room. The only other option on the Imagination is the buffet, or room service. We had anytime dining, as usual. We had no wait on any night and on the third night we were able to have the same servers we had the night before. The food in the dining room was excellent for the entire cruise.

We started with the duck pot stickers, calamari, and a caesar salad:

The pot stickers were really good, as was the caesar salad. The calamari was just ok.

I had the flat iron steak for my main and chocolate melting cake and nutella tiramisu.

It was all very good. We left stuffed, as usual.

For the rest of the evening, we spent some time in the casino playing blackjack and ended the night in the comedy club. We caught both comedians and both were hilarious.

- More to come -

I'm with you, I much prefer the new style of pizza like that served on the Miracle over the old pizza on the Imagination. Some people swear by the old cardboard but I prefer the thin crust.

Who were the comedians? Great start to your review I sail on her Sunday!

Day Two: Ensenada

As we woke up, we were pulling into port in beautiful Ensenada, Mexico. :)

Is Ensenada the best port you could be going to? No. But a cruise to Ensenada is still better than no cruise at all. If you are someone who enjoys cheap beer, tequila shots, and day drinking, you'll like Ensenada just fine. Make your way to Papas and Beer downtown, and just make sure to get yourself back to the ship on time and you'll have a great time (we saw port runners, they barely made it back before we left).

The wife and I decided to do something different. We booked an ATV/Zipline tour through shoreexcursioneer.com. While we had a great time, the "ATV" portion of the excursion is a bit misleading. They advertise it as a "Guided ATV off road ride", it is entirely on road. Yes, you drive your ATV through the streets of Ensenada for about an hour to the zip lining course.

Note rule #2...

Once we got used to the fact that we would be "on-roading" for the ATV portion of the tour, it was actually pretty fun, just not what I was expecting. Our guide did do an excellent job leading us at a safe speed, and at busy intersections, he stopped traffic to allow us all to ride though and stay together.

After about an hour, we arrived at the zip lining location: Las Canadas Campground.

The zip lining was really fun. It was 5 separate zip lines, the longest being 1/4 mile. It also included 5 suspension bridges which varied in difficulty from a simple bridge to more challenging obstacles. Our group of 4 was assigned two guides. They were very friendly and even took our camera from us and took pictures of my wife and me the entire time. They must have taken 60 pictures of us!

- More to come -

Who were the comedians? Great start to your review I sail on her Sunday!

Unfortunately, I can't remember their names and I don't think I brought home any of the Fun Times. Sorry. If I come across one, I'll let you know.

Have a great cruise! The Imagination is not the newest or prettiest in the fleet, but we had a fantastic time. Great food, great crew!

Here are a few pictures of the zip lines/bridges, and a video I took. I'm still learning how to use the GoPro and I don't have a lot of good video of the zip lining because the rope was right in front of the camera:

Some of the bridges were pretty challenging, but nobody in our group fell or needed to be rescued by the guides. The zip lines were really fun and the guides were great. You can hear me start laughing on the video, that is because the guide thought it would be fun to start jumping up and down on the suspension bridge while I was about half way across!

After we were done with the zip line course, we hopped back on to our ATVs and braved the streets of Ensenada back to port. The guide offered to take us somewhere else, but we declined. I think the other two in our group wanted to have time to head downtown. We were hungry anyway, so we were happy to head back to the ship for lunch.

Back on board we had lunch at the buffet, where I tried the pizza (discussed above). We spent some time on the Serenity Deck, which is small, but works just fine, as long as you can find a chair (which we did, no problem). There are two hot tubs available and the bar staff was coming around for drink orders. The buffet is one floor up so if you want something to eat, it is not far.

After that, we went up to the room to get ready for formal night!

- More to come -

Such a nice review so far. I've done the 3 day and 4 day a few times and so far my experience was the same. Except in Ensenada we either didn't get off or we did the winery tour, which was fantastic. I would have died at just the thought of crossing those bridges!!

Who were the comedians? Great start to your review I sail on her Sunday!

Geechy Guy was one of them. I can't remember the other one. (9/27-10/1)

I still cruise for Warm Chocolate Melting Cake (with 2 sugar free ice creams)

Great review! You don't see many detailed reviews of the really short (3-4 day) cruises, so this is nice.

We're doing this cruise in two weeks :-) Thanks for the review!

We'll be cruising in three weeks; can't wait! :-)

Googling Geechy Guy, thank you!

5 min later - not impressed...

But he might not be on your cruise.

How physically demanding was the las canadas? How about heights, would someone afraid of heights have troubles with the zips or bridges? I was looking at them for our excursion in Ensenada.

Great review and thanks for sharing!

Great review so far! I leave in 24 days! Now I'm getting excited!

Geechy Guy was one of them. I can't remember the other one. (9/27-10/1)

He must have boarded when we got off because he wasn't one of them.

Thanks for all the comments! I'm glad people are enjoying the review.

As we left Ensenada, the birds all surrounded the water that was being churned up by the ship. Does anyone know why?

Night 2 was formal night. For anyone wondering, for this cruise, people didn't seem to get too dressed up. I didn't see too many people in shorts and tank tops, but most people were just "dressed nice" as opposed to "formal". I put on a suit and tie and immediately went back to the room and left my jacket because I felt overdressed. Slacks and a shirt/tie was about as dressed up as I saw for the men.

We had dinner in the dining room. Bad news everyone, when Carnival said they were doing away with lobster on the shorter cruises, they weren't joking. I was actually pretty bummed about it as I always enjoyed gorging on lobster on formal night. But the good news is that the new formal night menu is very nice. I certainly did not leave dinner hungry that night!

For starters, we had the scallops, stuffed mushroom, shrimp cocktail, and a salad. All were very good!

Everything was delicious. While I always think the food in the dining room is good on my past Carnival cruises, my wife and I both felt that the food on this one was the best we've had. I'm not sure if it is the new American Table menu, or just the chef and kitchen staff on this ship, but we had very little to complain about.

Our servers this night were very good too! As you can see, we ordered multiple appetizers (hey, we're on vacation!). Instead of just dumping them all on the table at once, he brought us one each, then when we were done, he would bring the next. It was a nice touch!

For our main, we had the prime rib and and we tried the sea bass. The prime rib was great! It was a thin slice, but cooked nicely. I've had some prime rib in the past that wasn't the best cut of meat, but this was very good! The sea bass was ok. I only had a few bites because I just wanted to try it. We were pretty stuffed from the prime rib!

After dinner, we went to the main showroom and watched the Divas show. I think this is one of the newer shows that Carnival has rolled out. The show itself was very good and had a lot of recent popular "Divas" hits. The sets were good and they install a catwalk that goes out into the audience. It is true that the music is pre-recorded and they have done away with the life band, but that didn't really bother me.

My complaint with this show was that the young lady who was doing the majority of the singing was having a really bad night. We originally thought she was just a bad singer and had no business singing that much, but she sang very well in the show the next night. So we are assuming she was either sick that night, or was just having an off night. I will say that if you have young kids, this is probably not an appropriate show for them to attend. It didn't bother us, but some of the dancing was pretty provocative and we saw one family in our row get up an leave partway through the show.

We ended the night by playing blackjack in the casino. We had a good time in the casino the whole cruise (probably didn't hurt that we each played the whole cruise on the same buy-in from the first night!). The staff was just fine. I wouldn't say they were the friendliest casino staff we have encountered, but I wouldn't say they were the worst either. They have to deal with some pretty intoxicated people on these short cruises, so I'd say they do a pretty good job of maintaining their patience.

I will say, if you are a blackjack player who gets upset when people don't play "by the rules", you may want to save your money for Vegas. I'm usually pretty relaxed on this, but it was even getting to me this time. It was easily some of the worst play I've ever seen. But even in spite of it, we ended up ahead by about $50.00 by the end of the cruise, so I guess I can't complain too much.

After this, we went to bed. Our neighbors were pretty quiet this night, my guess is that they called it an early night after a day of partying in Ensenada (the first and third nights, people were pretty loud in the rooms on either side of us).

Day Three was our Sea Day. We started off the day by going to the Sea Day Brunch. It was excellent! We went to it last year on the Miracle and it was not good at all, so we were a little bit reluctant to try it again, but we were pleasantly surprised!

I had the eggs benedict, my wife had eggs with sausage and toast. It was all fresh, hot, and very tasty!

We shared the banana cream pie for dessert! Don't judge me, I'm on vacation here people!

After brunch, we made our way to the magic show. I didn't keep the guys name who does the magic show, but I guess he works in the dining room because we saw him that night doing tricks for people while they were eating. It was by no means a high production-value show, but we really enjoyed it. The tricks were simple, but he did them well. He was pretty funny too! Definitely worth the 45 minutes or so on a sea day!

We spent the rest of the day playing in the casino, entering the slot tournament, and playing bingo. We are not big pool people, so I can't really comment on the crowds or activities up on the Lido deck. I can say we went up there at one point and the line at the grill by the pool was quite long.

I came within 1 number of winning $500 at bingo!

A note about the "$5,000.00 Jackpot Bingo": they don't tell you this until you are already playing, but they only pay out $5,000.00 if someone fills their entire card with the first 49 balls pulled. If nobody gets it, then they only give out $500.00. A little misleading if you ask me. I also think Carnival could step up their payouts on the Bingo games, or at least play more games. The lounge is packed with people and they are giving out $100, $150, $250, and $500 for the winnings (don't quote me exactly on the payouts). They are making out like a bandit on the bingo games!

We entered the slot tournament in the Casino. I made it into the finals, but didn't do very well. I'm not sure where I placed, but it was definitely out of the top 3. Oh well, we'll try again next time.

Dinner that night was in the main dining room again. We asked for the same servers we had the night before and they had no problem sitting us there. I will note that we ate earlier than we normally do and had no problems with waiting for a table. We did notice that on a few nights, when we were leaving, there were a lot of people lined up waiting for a table. I'm not sure how long they had to wait though.

We started with the escargot, caprese salad, and the ceviche. Of the 3, the ceviche was probably the best and I would highly recommend getting it.

For our main, we had the beef tenderloin.

For dessert we had chocolate melting cake and a bread pudding:

The bread pudding wasn't very good.

That night, we went to the Epic Rock show in the main lounge. It was a very similar format to the Divas show, but this time with classic rock songs. I liked this one better than Divas and the singing was much better this night.

It started with this guy doing a guitar solo:

Overall, we thought the new shows were really good! Are they Broadway or Vegas quality? No. But they are certainly entertaining and a good way to spend an hour or so being entertained and enjoying a drink. I'd say they are on par with the type of shows you'd expect to see at an amusement park.

We ended our night playing in the Casino again and going to the late comedy show.

The lady standing up on the chair is one of the comedians. I wish I could remember her name because she was hilarious. She interacted with the audience a lot during her set.

We disembarked the next morning. We use self assist, so I can not comment on how the "relaxed disembarkation" is done on this ship. We like the self assist because it gets you off the ship quickly. Once they called our floor, I'd say we were off the ship and through customs in less than 15 minutes.

Final Thoughts: I was pleasantly surprised by this cruise. It seems that the Imagination, and this particularly itinerary, gets bashed on reviews. I was a little nervous after reading these reviews.

The Imagination is not the newest ship in the fleet, and this itinerary does attract its fair share of party people. That being said, for a short getaway, my wife and I had a fantastic time. Sure, it would have been nice to have a few extra dining options, like they have on the newer ships, but the dining room put out some excellent food.

We did have our fair share of drunk folks on the cruise, but nobody got too out hand. The worst was the noise caused by our neighbors at 3:00 AM a couple nights, but it didn't kill us, and I'm sure I could have called and they would have sent security to quiet them down.

For a short, inexpensive, getaway, we thought our cruise on the Imagination was fantastic. We have other cruises planned in the future, but I would not hesitate to book it again if we wanted a short weekend away. I did miss stopping at Catalina, so I would probably try to book the 4 day so we could stop there.

I hope everyone enjoyed reading. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have, just ask!

How physically demanding was the las canadas? How about heights, would someone afraid of heights have troubles with the zips or bridges? I was looking at them for our excursion in Ensenada.

 

Great review and thanks for sharing!

There were 5 bridges. Two are just regular bridges that you walk across. No big deal. The other three were a lot more difficult than I was expecting. One was like hanging balance beams, another was a series of hanging squares that were secured by 4 cables, on on each corner, and the other had these wooden tubes you had to crawl through. Our guide said that the bridges could be skipped if someone didn't want to do them, but the zip lines could not be skipped. I think for the bridges you would just go down stairs and walk under them. I'm not positive you could skip the "regular" bridges.

Another comment about this place is to go early. When we got there, we had nobody in front of us. By the time we got to the end, we could see that a couple buses had pulled up and there was a lot of "traffic" on the bridges. I'm sure people had to wait a while at each bridge or zip line.

Such a nice review so far. I've done the 3 day and 4 day a few times and so far my experience was the same. Except in Ensenada we either didn't get off or we did the winery tour, which was fantastic. I would have died at just the thought of crossing those bridges!!

Thanks for reading! I've heard the winery tour is another good option. One of these times we are going to go see the blow hole that is publicized so much around there.