Carnival Triumph April 14 Review (long, with pictures)

[douglinc@msn.com]

Excellent review, thanks.

 

Doug

[skittl1321]

Excellent review, thanks.

 

Doug

 

Thanks (all) for reading. I'll have the last sea day up soon.

[skittl1321]

Our cruise closed with a fun day at sea. This was fantastic, as the last cruise ended after a port day and you didn't really get "closure" on the cruise. Or something like that... anyhow- I liked the way this cruise was laid out. I was worried about a 5-day cruise, but I won't hesitate to take one again. It was fantastic.

 

We slept in a little later this morning (still not late...) we woke up around 8:00. The blackout curtains in the balcony cabins work very well- if you don't want light coming in it won't. Today, we chose to eat in the main dining room for breakfast.

 

Unfortunately, this wasn't as good as it has been in the past. I really enjoyed my pineapple juice and danish, but the entree was a little disappointing. Kevin loves eggs benedict, but ended up picking his apart. It was clear that the egg was fried, not poached. I think he ate about half the egg, and then moved it off the english muffin and just ate the rest of it. I had waffles with strawberries and turkey bacon. The turkey bacon wasn't crisp enough, so I only ate a few bites (we make turkey bacon at home- you really have to cook the heck out of it to make it crisp. Microwave is best. This was probably on a grill top.) The waffles were good though, and I liked the strawberry sauce.

After breakfast you'll be shocked to hear we went to Trivia. Up first, at 10:00, was "Ultimate Mind Games" which is usually of the type of "a rooster lays an egg on the top of a steeple roof. Which way does it roll" brain teasers, but instead this was just the regular mixed trivia we'd done all week. We did fine, but that was kind of a bummer.

We skipped Towel Folding and went back to the room to have a nap. This is my favorite cruise activity. Kevin sat out on the balcony and said there were tons of flying fish.

Then, at 1:00 was movie quotes trivia. Kevin played and I spent some more on my sign and sail. This time I splurged and got the plate of 5 chocolate covered strawberries :) I'm a big spender on cruises - haha.

 

 

I don't know why people spend so much on their bar bills. THIS is cruise ship goodness.

[skittl1321]

I had wanted to do the Groove for St. Jude at 1:30, but it was the same time as Guess that Song trivia. We had always really liked that in the past, but this was all obscure 80s songs, and Kevin actually gave up! It was awful. Should have gone and grooved!

Hanging out at song trivia.At this point we did go back up to the Lido (second time this cruise?) and grabbed some ice cream, pizza, and fabulous lemonade.

 

At 2:15 was "The Game of Love" (Newlywed Game) and it was tamer than our last cruise, but always funny. The cruise director filled in "the best answers" he had heard- which were all hysterical. I always wonder if those are the best answers or if the entertainment staff sat around and said "you know what would be so funny? If someone said..."

 

At 3:00 we went to Tea Time. This was wonderful, although no one at the table really talked to anyone they weren't with. I love the strawberries and cream. I also had a cucumber sandwich. Kevin had smoked salmon, and I think a macaroon with dark chocolate.

 

Afterwards we went to sports trivia and on to the main event: progressive trivia final! After placing second by only 3 points on the Freedom (having missed the first day of progressive trivia) our strategy was simple: show up everyday. One other team had the same strategy, but we got the win by, I think, 6 points. We had so much fun with our trivia team the entire cruise, and we were rewarded with a bundle of ships on a stick, and a bottle of champagne.

Ship on a stick for all! (This is the only trivia event the entire team gets a trophy.)

Team LA-AR-IA

[skittl1321]

We then grabbed some sushi and all went over the the Fun Farewell party (Cheryl ran to the room to chill the champagne), which is not a well kept secret on the Triumph. It was clearly in the Fun Times as being free drinks, and the place was packed. There was singing and dancing, and drinks were flowing. Unlike the past guest party there are no hors d'euvres. We had a lot of fun dancing, posing for pictures, and just goofing off.

 

 

Kevin drank whiskey sours (YUCK! Even the cherry was gross), Cheryl prefered to have beer.

Someone mentioned they didn't get to see the dinner show the previous night. It was essentially "shimmy-clap-clap-clap" so I recapped it for them.

 

 



 

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The previous night I had a lesson in posing to look skinny, so we gave it a try. The secret is chin OUT no, UP.

[skittl1321]

More goofing off at Fun Farewell:

Errett started it...

Just being silly now.

Months behind the trend, we decided to go for the full Tebow.

[skittl1321]

At dinner there wasn't anything I wanted to eat, and as much as I really wanted the Indian dinner again, I didn't want to eat that much. One of my favorite appetizers was on the menu, so I asked for it, and then it again for dinner.

I had hoped to order off the kids menu, and just get a spaghetti or something, but they told me the kids menu pasta is the same as the adult pasta- just a smaller portion. Well, it was a sea food pasta. :( I'm kind of surprised they do that, because I don't think most kids would like that. Kevin had a study in sushi as his appetizer, and he had the seafood pasta, which he really liked.

 

For dessert I did get the kids banana split, and I think I'll stick with warm chocolate melting cake. The sauce wasn't so good- I think just hershey's syrup. I've never had a banana split before though.

 

What? No cherry on top?

[skittl1321]

After dinner we skipped the Big Easy show and went to the family friendly comedy at 7:30, where we met up with LA ARIA and had our champagne.

 

 

Glasses for six?

Pretending to pour into a tower.

The guy behind us who took a picture for us scored glasses for him and his wife, because 3 of our group were non drinkers. (I didn't have any of it, so I can't tell you if their free champagne is any good. Kevin says it was 'alright'. But the main adjective to describe it was 'free'.)

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The comedian was fantastic. Kevin thought we had seen him on comedy central before- J.R. McCollom, I think. He did a really good show, and apparently did a different show every time he performed. I imagine his notes for the show are an outline of jokes he thinks he might do, and then he just throws it away, because he spent most of the time picking on the audience. It was fantastic (and I did get picked on.) There were 4 unrelated kids in the front row. All who said they were at the show alone because their parents were taking "a nap." Poor J.R. he said "so many jokes, but this is family comedy time!".

 

 

We hung out for awhile until the next comedian at 8:30. I don't remember his name, but he said it would be the same show he did the previous family comedy time, he only has different adult shows. That seemed lazy. His show wasn't so good. There was a small portion set aside to pick on the audience, but he kept trying to make pre-concieved jokes work, rather than working with what he got. He needed someone with a tattoo, for example, but not many people in the room cheered when he asked if anyone had one. So then he kind of tried to force to make the show work. He also did too many bodily function jokes. Not my thing.

 

 

At 9:00, we chose not to go to The Big Easy, and just headed to bed. Kevin's duty free purchases had been delivered, and they tape up the box to make it really hard to verify things are correct (they were). We did not put our bags off, as we were going to do self-debarkation.

 

 

 

 

[skittl1321]

And sadly, it was time for debarkation. There was not a time in the Fun Times when we had to be out of our rooms, but we left just after we got dressed (Kevin went and grabbed food from the Lido) and went to the World's Bar to hang out. We decided to hang out there to wait to be called because it was DOWN and not up to the Lido. Since we had all of our bags, I didn't want to go up any stairs!

 

We did find that we used stairs, because the elevators were very crowded. Although we were first to the elevator bank, as we were waiting more and more people who were either older/less fit/had children with them, showed up and we decided to just grab the stairs. I imagine if you did self-assist debarkation and had to rely on elevators there could be a wait.

 

We hung out at the World's Bar area for a short time, our deck number was called for self-assist and we easily left the ship. So much better than waiting forever for your number to be called with the regular debarkation.

 

The port of Galveston wasn't as quick going through customs as it was getting on the ship, but the lines weren't too bad. We had 2 bottles of alcohol each, rather than the alloted 1, but we were not charged additional duty.

 

Lighthouse parking picks up all the way at the END of the port building, so it was a bit of a walk, but was not a hassle at all to find them. We knew just where to go. They did wait just a few minutes to get a few more passengers.

 

We took the short shuttle ride back to the parking lot, where our car was safe and sound. The staff offered to carry your bags right into your car (can't recall if we took them up on it or not.)

 

And so ends the vacation! (Well, sort of- next we went up to College Station for a quick visit, then back to Austin, then back to Iowa.)

 

 

Something I did for the first time on this cruise: Water Slide! (It was SLOW...)

Something I still need to do on a cruise: Putt Putt. And use the gym.

 

I also lost 2 pounds on this one :)

[Rudyard]

Thanks for the great review :)

[cruiseclues]

Excellent review...with lots of Cruise Food Photos which we like very much, and really enjoyed your description of the Chef's Table. :)

[skittl1321]

Excellent review...with lots of Cruise Food Photos which we like very much, and really enjoyed your description of the Chef's Table. :)

 

We kind of fell down on the job taking pictures of everything we ate- about mid cruise it stopped... Maybe next cruise.

 

At least we got all the Chef's table food photographed. It was AMAZING. I highly recommend it. If we go on a ship with the other menu, we'll definitely do it again. (I do wish they'd offer a no wine price though. But it was still worth it.)

[DillmanTx]

What an AWESOME review!!! makes me ready to go now and we dont leave until sept 28th!!!

 

I do have one quick question ... you said yall had a song trivia?! thats my favorite kind of game!! Did I read that correctly??

 

and you got trophies and medals each time ... how awesome!!

 

Do you have to sign up in advance to play the trivia games and such? Yall looked like you had a blast doing it, I wanna play too!!!! :) :) :)