Sunshine comprehensive trip report 7/7/18 Eastern Caribbean

Here is tonight's dessert menu:

I can attest that the chocolatini is delicious!

The chocolate melting cake was on the menu every night and it was outstanding and addictive, as always. We ordered it several times.

I went to the Welcome Aboard Show and then we hit the casino for awhile.

We gambled every day on this cruise, however we are not big spenders. My husband and I did not gamble enough to reach the 1500 point threshold to be eligible for Drinks On Us -- not that it mattered since we had Cheers.

So on that note, lets talk about Cheers. It was a huge expense -- over $950 for this 8 day cruise. There must be hundreds of threads here on Cruise Critic debating the pros and cons.

I spent months deciding. But we finally rationalized it this way: if we had more than 5 drinks a day, we would probably come out ahead. We do like to drink wine with dinner and have late night cocktails while gambling in the casino. We are on vacation and indulge much more than we would normally at home.

I almost never order a frozen cocktail like a Kiss on the Lips, and certainly would not be drinking something like this during an average afternoon at home, but I did enjoy it on the ship.

Doesn't that look delicious?!

Cheers also includes unlimited sodas, shakes, coffee, bottled water, energy drinks, virgin cocktails, and vitamin waters.

Ultimately we dedided that it would be worth it for us. We would not have to worry about the cost of every drink and we could just relax and enjoy our vacation. For us, I think we got our money's worth, including our consumption of bottled water, sodas and alcoholic drinks.

But this is a very individual choice depending on how much you and your travelling companions will drink -- remember that if one purchases the package, then all adults in the stateroom must purchase the package.

We did run into one hiccup late in our cruise when a waiter refused to serve my husband a soda, saying he had gone over his limit. The waiter was in error, as Cheers includes unlimited nonalcoholic beverages. I won't go into all the details here, since we discussed this extensively in a separate thread https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2656277

Just make sure you know the rules and ask to speak to a bar manager if you think the wait staff is not following the Cheers program.

Some bars had their own menus. I think I already showed you the ones from Ocean Plaza and Red Frog Pub. I forgot to get the Alchemy Bar menu.

Here's the menu from the Havana Bar.

My apologies that the second photo is so blurry.

*Book Mark*

What a good review! thank you for posting it. We were on the Sunshine right before you. ( Aruba cruise. )

My "foodie" daughter was on a diet, so she stayed vegetarian, and at night would eat cheese and fruit. One Night she ate some of my chocolate Melting cake, and then ordered it every other night of the cruise.. we teased her some, but it was all in good fun.

We had a great time, too.

thanks for the reply about the fridges it your rooms

Everyone in our group signed up for the Carnival Hub. It's only $5 per person for the entire length of the cruise. They didn't have this when we last cruised with Carnival and I loved it. We used it all the time to check menus, the daily schedule, and to communicate with each other. I know some people have said they had trouble with it not sending messages in a timely manner but I think this only happened to us once. In general it worked great.

However I learned the hard way to NOT rely on the account information in the Hub app. I posted in detail about this here https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2657159

July 8 Sea Day

I was awakened by lots of noise coming from outside. Chairs scraping and such. I was confused because I was sure there was not a public deck above us. I decided our neighbors upstairs were just being unusually noisy. And they kept it up for awhile.

Eventually I got out of bed and opened my curtains. I was standing by the bed when a man walked by on my balcony! I was shocked! How the heck did he get on my balcony? Thank goodness I still had my pajamas on and wasn't changing when he went by!

As it turns out the balconies were being cleaned and all the partitions between them had been opened so staff could walk the length of the deck. I later found this paper in our room. I guess we had just overlooked it earlier.

Word to the wise, make sure you read everything they put in your room or door.

We took our time getting out of our cabin. I went to JiJi's for an omelet. They do omelets until noon, and then switch to Mongolian Wok from noon to 2:30pm. There was no wait to get my made to order omelet at 11am. It was excellent.

Breakfast was the best thing served at the lido buffet. Lots of choices. Would have liked to see bananas on offer but we never saw any. All the bacon you want. You can't help yourself, they have someone serving it, but they always gave a very generous portion -- probably even more than we would have helped ourselves to. And you could always ask for more.

We tried to go to the cooking demonstration at Farenheit 555. Showed up at 11:40 for the 12:00 demonstration. Doors were closed with 2 crew standing in front. They told us they were full and had had a long line very early. Keep this in mind if you want to go. I've heard it's good with samples from the chef.

My sister convinced my husband and her husband to enter the Red's versus Blue's contest at 1:00 on the Lido. This is a mixology contest. The way it works is all contenders write down their best drink recipe -- you can only use the limited selection of ingredients they have available. My husband had to alter his favorite drink recipe a little because some of his preferred ingredients weren't available.

So from all entries, the fun staff picks four finalists. Those four get to prepare their drink in front of all on the lido deck and have it judged to determine the winner. You can't be shy if you enter this contest. The judging includes your drink shaking skills and the contestants gave it all they had.

So my husband Paul was picked to be one of the four finalists. And his drink won! The runners up each got some free drink coupons and Paul, the grand prize winner got THREE free drink coupons! LOL We all had great fun being his enthusiastic cheerleaders.

He also got his name and drink mentioned in the next day Fun Times. The winning drink is available at the bars the next day. We all went to the casino bar and got one!

Here is his mention in the Fun Times the next day and all of us enjoying one of his drinks at the casino bar:

We had the Cheers package, so we didn't need the free drink coupons. We gave them to our daughter. She said that each time she tried to use one, there was great confusion among the bar staff who acted as if they had never seen such a thing and had to have a major conference about it. (They were generic coupons; they didn't have our name on them or any limitations about who could use them.)

Sometime this afternoon I enjoyed a shake included in our Cheers package. It was delicous! Here's the menu for the shake spot and the coffee bar. These two are adacent to each other on deck 5. Sometimes they seemed understaffed. There would be a line and it takes a few minutes to make each specialty coffee or shake so the line moves slow.

Were the pads on the hammocks in the Serenity area tied down? I fell on my butt when I tried to sit on a hammock in the Serenity area on the Legend. The pad, along with me, slid right off the hammock since it wasn't tied down.

Looks like one of y favorite bartenders, Parriz, is still on the Sunshine! That’s him next to your husband in the drink contest picture

Enjoying your review! I was discounting the Sunshine for next cruises simply because its an older ship, but it looks beautiful! May have to reconsider

Following; enjoying your pics & review

Wonderful review so far!!! The pictures are fabulous. Thank you so much.

We'll be on the Sunshine next April. The last time we were on the ship was in 2006 when she was the Destiny. Looking forward to reading about the ports. We've never been to St. Kitts.

Were the pads on the hammocks in the Serenity area tied down? I fell on my butt when I tried to sit on a hammock in the Serenity area on the Legend. The pad, along with me, slid right off the hammock since it wasn't tied down.

I have no idea. I hope you weren't hurt! That's a good warning to people to be careful.

The sports square area was very popular and had tons of fun activities -- ping pong, shuffleboard, corn hole, foosball, Twister, giant checkers/chess, a basketball court, and probably even more things that I am forgetting. We tried out the ropes course and water slides later in the cruise.

My husband, son and I attempted to play a round of mini golf. The wind made it quite a challenge. You would try to set your ball on the putting green and it would blow away before you could even stand up and attempt a putt. We made a game out of it, stopped even trying to keep score, and had a lot of fun. If you want to have a serious game, you might want to try this on a port day when the wind is calmer.

Here are several pictures of the sports and water slide area:

Speaking of wind, there had been concern about a mild hurricane named Beryl that had formed a few days before our cruise and appeared to be headed straight towards our ports of call. Some people on our Facebook roll call worried that our ports would be changed.

Here is what we were looking at just a day or two before our cruise:

Naturally this was making many of us nervous.

We were presented with this letter when we arrived at the pier on embarkation day:

We did experience pretty choppy seas during the first couple of days of our cruise and the boat was rocking more than usual, but no one in our group had any trouble with seasickness and we were able to continue on our itineray without interruption.

Everything turned out fine. As you can see we had beautiful sunny skies.

Here's another picture from sports square, and one of the VERY crowded lido deck:

I have to say that this ship felt the most crowded of any I have ever been on. Everyplace was crowded. It was nearly impossible to find a seat anywhere near the pool, waterworks, or serenity on sea days. The exception was the bar stools and chairs (not loungers) near the serenity bar. We did find seats there one time.

Inside areas also often seemed crowded. Just trying to browse pictures at Pixels gallery could be a jostling match sometimes. And I've already mentioned how I felt the traffic flow on deck 9 was very poor. Just my opinion.

We went to the Bust A Move dance class in Ocean Plaza at 3pm. They were teaching how to do the Thriller dance and it was funny to watch.

This was our first Cruise Elegant night. We saw lots of ladies dressed in full length gowns. I could not get my husband to commit to anything more than khaki pants and a Hawiian shirt. LOL

We went around and had our picture made at several of the photo spots. We have been on 6 cruises before this and I have never bought a cruise photo (I think they are very overpriced), but I thought what the heck. We have not had a family photo done in years so let's give it a shot.

The photographers did a great job but some of the poses ("ok, you put your hand on his chest, now you put your hand on her cheek, now touch noses") were just ridiculous and we had a huge laugh when we saw the results. But it is free to get your photo done, there is no obligation to buy, so why not?

Because this was my birthday month, I received a coupon in my stateroom offering (I think) $12 off any photo. I used it to purchase one of our family photos later. I think the retail price was about $22. I may have the details wrong. The final price of our photo was $9.99. We did not buy any of the casual photos that are taken all the time, in the dining room, upon disembarkation at the ports, and other times.

We checked in for dinner around 6 pm.

So here is how supper works in the main dining room. You have to sign in for supper on deck 5, near Ocean Plaza and the Alchemy Bar. If a table is available, they will give you a little slip of paper and you proceed down the stairs to deck 3 to be seated. If there is not a table immediately available, they give you a pager.

Unfortunately, this pager only functions in the Ocean Plaza area. You will be instructed not to leave the area. You can't even go to the casino which is only a few steps away. The pager concept would be great if you could do other activities on the ship, but it is a big fail in my opinion when you are simply tied to a small area.

My sister and her husband waited with the pager while others in our group played in the casino. After almost an hour, I went to relieve her. After another 20 minutes or so, I went to the check in desk to ask when we could expect to be seated and explained that we had already been waiting for an hour and 15 minutes. They quickly gave us our little slip of paper that would admit us to the dining room and told us to head on down to deck 3 to be seated.

This long wait was one of several service lapses we experienced in the dining room. We found service to be very slow. The waiters always looked like they were working hard. I don't think it was their fault. They just seemed to be understaffed and could not keep up with everything. From the time we checked in to the time we finished dinner was going on 3 hours tonight. With so many fun things to do in the evenings, this is completely unacceptable to me, and it was more the norm than the exception.

Here is the cheese plate that we enjoyed several times. You can see 2 of them on the table in front of us above. We loved it! :p

Carbonara:

Fried oysters

Lobster with shrimp

Here's the prime rib

I'm not sure what they called this dessert, but it was yummy.

After dinner we went to the "Playlist Productions Motor City" show in the Liquid Lounge. We weren't super impressed with the shows. We loved the performers. They sang and danced their hearts out, and had great voices. But the cast was small (7 members) and the sets/props were pretty much nonexistent. Instead of a set, they used a huge LED screen behind the performers. Instead of live music, the performers sang and danced along to a pre-recorded track. The sound system needed some tweaking, in our opinion. The music seemed almost to drown out the singers' voices sometimes.

Nevertheless, these shows seemed popular and the theater always seemed to fill up. On previous cruises I have really enjoyed the showsand made a point to go almost every night. But on this cruise we only went a couple of times. These shows just weren't our cup of tea.

Here's the entertainment schedule

One last thing about the shows. After the show was over, cruise director Chris would get on stage and rev everyone up as he carried the party out of the showroom to the atrium. Chris was awesome. He had amazing energy and was always jamming. He would lead the crowd out to the atrium where he would jump up on the bar and have everyone on their feet singing and dancing. It would get very loud.

Just a warning, the sound really carried up the atrium. It could be clearly heard on deck six around the forward elevators and rooms near the elevators. I could hear it loudly when I went up to deck six, around rooms 6178 and 6180 on the port side. I'm sure it was the same on the starboard side. Just be aware of this if you like to turn in early and would be bothered by the music and Chris's voice over the microphone floating up from the atrium. Look at deck plans and choose your room accordingly.

We noticed that the doors to the hallway offered little in the way of sound buffering. We could very clearly hear people moving around and talking out there.

There was no dedicated night club on this ship. I guess they turned the main showroom into a nightclub on some nights. But on some nights it would be used for other forms of entertainment so if you are into the nightclub life you may want to choose a different ship. This didn't bother us since we dont' go to the nightclub.

We finished out our first sea day in the casino. We went to the casino every night, but we gamble small amounts. Neither my husband or I gambled enough to earn Drinks On Us, but it didn't matter because we had Cheers so we didn't need DOU.

Next up: Grand Turk!!

Monday July 9 Grand Turk

We put out our room service breakfast card the night before.

Here's a tip I learned a long time ago on CC. There is a BLT sandwich available on the regular room service menu available 24 hours a day. We write in on the breakfast menu "BLT no mayo." And we ask for butter and jelly. This way we have toast and bacon for breakfast. The BLT is served with potato chips. We put the chips in a baggie to save for an afternoon snack or late night craving. We have done this several times on two different Carnival ships and they have always brought it, no problem. We always tip the person who brings our room service breakfast.