Carnival Paradise Review/Recap - Jan 11 to Cozumel (WAY TOO LONG Version)

Please note: There's a good chance that lots of this will quickly become irrelevant, as the Carnival Paradise goes into dry dock for 2.0 upgrades within a few short weeks.

Backstory:

For my wife and I, this was our third cruise (second together). She had a Disney cruise years ago, and I was on the Fantasy back in '97. Since then, we have enjoyed the Carnival Sensation in March of 2015, and now the Carnival Paradise, 1/11 - 1/15 2018. This was our first time to Cozumel (both of my previous cruises were the Freeport/Nassau circuit).

Day 1 - The Traveling:

I won't bore you with too much on the "Getting There" side of things. Chicago is cold. It's a 3 hour flight to Tampa.

We rented a car for the day, and drove to our hotel. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay. It's a lovely property. We had a beautiful bay view from the room. It's a business hotel for certain, so expect that it is a bit distant from everything. Wholly gorgeous place though, with excellent service. The only negatives were that the location was again rather removed from entertainment without a car available, and it took almost 5 minutes for hot water to arrive in the showers. There was also what appeared to be a fingernail that was embedded in polish on the countertop around the sink in the bathroom. I have no idea how they let that get through housekeeping standards.

That afternoon, we drove around tampa to do some quick shopping for a few items left behind. We stopped at Whiskey Joe's for dinner, which was really very good. The burger was great, but nothing to write to all of you about, but I absolutely recommend "Joe's Rocking Oysters". They're baked, which put them in my wheelhouse (wife likes raw, and I just can't do it). Stuffed and baked with cornbread, roasted corn, andouille sausage, crab meat and pepperjack cheese, and finished with a sharp sauce. Phenomenal. I'd have eaten three orders instead of a burger entree had I known. The location is great (be ready - it appears it's ONLY valet), and the view was incredible.

We knocked off to bed early, as it had been a long day of travel, and we didn't finish packing till an hour or so before it was time to wake up for our ride to the airport in Chicago at 4 AM.

Day 2 - Let's Get This Party Started:

In the morning, the Grand Hyatt's breakfast buffet was fantastic. Super high quality everything. I stuffed myself a little more than I meant to, and had to stop myself so that I could get to work on the ship!

Dropped off rental car, and got a taxi to the port. It was only $25 for the two of us, right to terminal 3. We were admittedly super early - second in line in the priority queue (Faster to the Fun). We only waited outside for 20 minutes or so, and were directed to check-in. We had completed online check-in, so we had cards in hand and a seat in the waiting area within 5 minutes.

Boarding went well - except it wasn't completely clear that you had to enter the boarding area from inside the waiting area. No worries, just had to get through the throngs of people standing around waiting to hear their group called. We stepped into the atrium, and went straight to the bar for cocktails. I landed on the Rum and Ginger Beer immediately, and it became my go-to drink for the whole cruise.

Note for Cheers! Customers: You pay tax on drinks in territorial waters. You do have to sign for each drink.

So, off to our room. It's a little weird navigating around when the doors are all closed up. We found our room (U154), and dropped off our carry-on items. Our checked bags were nowhere to be found, so we took off to get acquainted with the ship.

After a few drinks, it was time for Muster Drill. We were group F, so off to the Lido deck, by the food court. It started raining during the period that they scan everyone's cards, so that was a little bit of a clusterhug, but it was all worked out soon. We did not have to parade around to any other areas.

Once muster was finished, we checked back at our cabin (which at the time of this writing had not yet been refurbished). One of the bags had arrived, so we unpacked and got back out to see the ship. An announcement came that departure was going to be delayed a bit due to heavy fog out by the Skyway, although it was clear in port.

Eventually, we realized we were moving, and headed up to watch the water go by. Off in the distance, you could see the fog. It was a dark area, and we were definitely headed into it. We stayed at the rail, watching it advance, until we were in the thick of it. The foghorn was blowing every few minutes, it was surreal. My wife had a spa appointment for a quick manicure, so I relocated down to the pool bar area for a cigarette break, and watched the thick fog obscure the whale tail - it was thick. Thick thick. The lights glowed through the murk, though, and it was warm out.

One thing that was not at all subdued by the thick fog was the group of young men at the pool bar, complete with bluetooth speaker, blasting out some pretty profane and ethnically insensitive rap, while rapping along and performing a series of dance moves with each other. It was unpleasant enough to drive me inside to stand around at the spa until my wife's appointment was complete.

The first night's menu at the MDR didn't appeal, so we ended up at the Paris buffet. Wife had her deli sandwich with the sundried tomato and arugala, I decided to finally try a slice of the pizza everyone raves about. To my surprise, it really was That Good. The crust was light and airy. We ended up doing two servings, the Au Chevre (best of the bunch) and the one with all the anchovies and capers (really good, in a salty way).

At this point, there's the Welcome Aboard show, and we popped on in to see what happens. It was well orchestrated by Jaimie, the Cruise Director, who was an absolute dynamo - you'd think the previous cruise was to Columbia, the way she was bouncing around! We stayed all the way till the singing and dancing started, and beat a hasty retreat to the piano bar for the rest of the evening.

SPECIAL NOTE TO CARNIVAL STAFF WHO MAY READ THIS: THE PIANO BAR'S MAIN FEATURE, THE PIANO, IS MISSING THE LOW E STRING, AND IT'S NOTICEABLE. FIX THIS, WOULD YOU? THEY COST LIKE, NOTHING, AND IT WOULD MAKE YOUR CUSTOMERS (AND FEATURED PIANO PLAYER) MUCH HAPPIER, THANKS.

We headed back to our cabin, and found our final bag had arrived. We completed our unpacking and settled down for the night. Turns out, the TV in the room was just not good at all. The signal was bad coming in, and it was not fixed (likely as it would be handled during refurbishment). As we were now out to sea, the skies had cleared, and I fell asleep to the sight of a million stars through our stateroom window.

Morning broke, and there was a little bit of rock and rolling on day 2, a very Fun Day at Sea, which will be my next post.

Great start. Following

Terrific start and I will be following this report/review.

Keith

Excellent start.:)