Our visit on the Sunshine

Great review! We are going to be on the Sunshine in July. Can't wait!

On to the cruise Director, his name is Mikey. I will preface by saying we don't really cruise for the entertainment, it's just an added bonus. But, Mikey is probably the best Cruise director we have sailed with in a long time. I'll go back many many years to Alister on Princess. Mikey is very energetic, engaging and entertaining. He seems tireless as he goes through the day and is very visible around the ship. What he is not, is overbearing and distracting to our vacation with too many unnecessary announcements throughout the day. We also observed Mikey going and getting waters and personally handing them out to his staff as they sold shirts for St. Jude in the blazing heat. He could have just had someone else do it for him because he's the "Director", but that's how he rolls. Nice Touch!

Now for the crowding on the ship. I believe all ships are crowded at the buffet area certain times throughout the cruise. We usually only use the buffet area in the morning for breakfast and of course pizza at late night, but mostly early morning for us. It is mostly annoying when people seem confused as to where to go, and just stop and hold up traffic causing more "crowding" which happens on every ship we have been on.

The other part of the crowding is when you can't find a table. Our solution was to get your food and take it to the Havana Bar area. Most tables in the buffet area are for 4 or more people, and they have at least 1 person there. In the Havana Bar area, there are a lot of tables for 2 which are usually open. Even if you have a party of 4, you could sit at 2 of the tables for 2 together. Of course you could just get you food at the Havana Bar and stay there, but the selection is limited.

However on this cruise, we chose to eat in the dining room on the last 3 days and we will probably just do that from now on. If it's a Sea Day Brunch, it's even better.

Couple things we didn't like about the coffee at the Havana Bar. They don't open until 8 am, so any earlier and we have to go to deck 5. The other disappointment is that we were looking to try the Cuban Coffee there. While it was very good, it was only available as "espresso" made into an Americana, and it was made from a coffee I can purchase from our grocery store. If they didn't have the packaging out, we never would have known. We were just expecting something different.

There was a band called Caught in the Act that we absolutely loved. After talking to some of the members, they auditioned at Carnival and were put together. I believe that none of them knew each other before Carnival put them together. All of the songs in their main sets were amazing and as good as, if not better than the original artist. I'm not sure how long they have been rehearsing and performing together, but I'm sure they will continue to get better as time goes on. The highlights were the lead guitar and lead vocal. They performed mostly in the Ocean Plaza and also were active on the Lido during the special events later in the evening.

Just a note, we found the Ocean Plaza to be a nice cozy spot to just sit and relax, have a drink, listen to the music ad/or play a game.

Hi,

We just got off the Sunshine today and want to share our thoughts. First some background, we are Elite on Princess and have sailed twice on NCL during those cruises. Our son got married on a Carnival cruise, our first on Carnival, and we have only sailed them since and our next cruise will put us up to Platinum. We have heard all the comments about the Sunshine, you either love it or hate it, we loved it. We can get more specific in the next coming days, but we just got back home a short while ago and we are exhausted.

We were also on this cruise and we also LOVED the Sunshine. We will be back on for the Southern route before she leaves PC April 19, 2019. I hope Mikey is still the CD then we really loved him.