Carnival Destiny B2B Epic Review! Tons of Pics, Menus, Food, FunTimes, & Documents!!!

[cmptrwiz]

We did not request anything different but just kept is as a souvenir. We actually got 2 of them on the ship. One for the B2B portion and one for the game of love. The other one we popped the cork on our balcony just for fun and then poured the rest out. It is a nice conversation piece when people ask about it. Again, I don't have a beef with alcohol but it is just something we don't like..

 

Thanks for the response. We received one when we were on our first cruise for the game of love too! We don't drink because of alcoholism in our family. we choose to give our champagne to our room steward. I just thought if there was someway to get something else that would be great!

 

P.S. what a great rate for your hotel!!

 

Wiz

Edited September 20, 2012 by cmptrwiz

[smjlt]

 

After months of waiting, we FINALY got to see our home for the next 10 days!

 

So Funny you called your Home for 10 days! We Loved our cruise and it was Home for 5 days! We'll still call the Destiny Home even though we're Home!! lol :p

Lovin your review!!!!

[tdk1938]

The reason I love cruising is witnessing God's beautiful creation...sunsets, sunrises, the soothing sounds of the ocean, the stars in the clear night sky...what a wondrous reminder of His majesty!

 

Loving your review...may He continue to bless you and your family and your ministry! :)

 

I hummed "How great Thou Art" every time I see His wonderful creations during the cruise.

[DeloreanGirl]

Holy wow!! Details!!! This is my kind of review -- and we're going on Destiny in January just like a lot of your other readers. YAHOO!! Can't wait for the rest of this review. I'm hooked! :D

[pezhead]

I'm on the Destiny in 3 weeks; so looking forward to your review of the ship.

 

Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2

[LOVECRUISING100%]

Great review so far !

[dvdkndy]

We got to the port as early as possible because we were ready to get the fun started. When we pulled in, there were still many people that were coming of the previous cruise waiting for buses and taxis.

 

 

 

In all of the craziness of people leaving, we saw a sign directing us where to go.

 

 

The only bag that we carried on board was a small roller bag that had our 4, 12 packs of soda in it. We had our backpacks too with our electronics and important stuff inside. I am sorry but there is not a porter out there that I would leave my MacBook and iPad with. We dropped our two bags and tossed the porter a few bucks for his time.

 

 

We then made our way inside the building were we were immediately asked for documents saying that we were supposed to be there. I was thankful that we were challenged right when we walked in. It gave us a sense of safety and security.

 

[dvdkndy]

We went and had our passports and boarding passes checked and tagged. Then it was time to go through security. We were nervous because we were carrying more than the allotted amount of soda. However, we were ready to explain it if need be.

 

We went through and as expected, our bag was pulled to check for smuggling. The security guy was really nice and just gave our drinks a quick once over to see they were sealed. He never mentioned the fact that we had more than what we should have for one cruise. He wished us a great trip and then I started to zip my bag up but then decided to offer the guy a drink. He seemed very thankful that I offered and was happy to have a Sprite. I quickly snapped a picture of it and then they told me to put away the camera. See the drink sitting on the table?

 

 

The whole security guy situation reminded me of the importance of decent people in the world. I am sure he made his fair share of enemies doing his job and gets a lot of unfair ridicule for just doing what he was hired to do. When I offered him the drink, I am not sure he really knew what to do. Just a reminder everyone, be nice and respect each other. Simple, yet very important!

 

We went upstairs to check-in and put some cash on our S&S account. We were thrilled when we were handed Zone 1 card! Woot Woot!!!

 

 

This is the collection of items we walked away with from the check-in counter.

 

 

Receipt for our S&S cash payment.

 

[wrigley80]

We woke up this morning and literally had to grab our camera because of the sight we were seeing. What do you think about it?

 

 

Went to bed with an empty port and woke up with 4 ships in port!

 

 

Someone please give props to my wife’s flower on her toe, it will make her feel special!

 

 

Sun coming up over South Beach

 

 

Norwegian Sky, Carnival Imagination, Carnival Destiny, and Majesty of the Seas (not pictured)

 

Love the pictures and the next time I cruise out of Miami. I am going to have to remember this hotel.

I love your wife's toes. Tell her next time to do Carnival Colors :p

[Rainbowfalls]

I love the cincinnati tee and backpack. :D.

 

And her toesies are cute! I love the design and the feet picture is adorable

Edited September 20, 2012 by Rainbowfalls

[jigger]

Great !!

[Jane2357]

I'm on Destiny in 11 days and I'm LOVING this - please keep going!!!

[dvdkndy]

We were walking away from the counter by 9:45am and this is how the waiting area looked.

 

 

 

There were still people leaving the ship while we were waiting. GET OFF PEOPLE SO WE CAN GET ON!!!

 

Around 11:00am, we began the boarding process and were we more than happy to trade in our zone card.

 

 

This is how the crowd looked at 11:00am.

 

 

After getting our photo taken, a turn here, a walkway there, and a couple more turns, we realized we were only steps away. After all the waiting, planning and saving we were finally about to board the Destiny.

 

[dvdkndy]

We walked on board the ship and had our security photo taken. You could hear the music and feel the excitement in the air that only being on a ship can bring.

 

 

After we got passed security and had our pictures taken, I turned around and snapped as photo of everyone coming on board. After taking the photo, security told me again that I could not take a picture of the area. My bad but I already had the picture so here it is.

 

 

We went straight to the Lido to grab some lunch before all the chaos began with everyone getting on board. I was not sure what to expect when we arrived on the Lido but as you can see the place was fairly deserted except for the few of us who were coming on board. No chair hogs in sight!

 

 

Having no kids with us, we are not the family who needs a table and chair right by the main pool on the Lido. We prefer the quiet place away from it all. After reading the reviews and information, we realized that the best place to accomplish this was to go to the aft area and we should be fine. We went to the aft area by the pool and hot tubs and found a place to park our stuff while we went to grab some lunch. What a great suggestion this was, as you can see by the following photo that we were the only people around the area for quite some time.

 

 

 

I love looking at the skyline of a city so this view for lunch was right up my alley!

 

[dvdkndy]

For lunch, we had the typical fare of the buffet and then I saw the Deli. I had read their sandwiches were wonderful so I had to get one. I ordered the pastrami on rye and it was absolutely delicious. Here are the choices for the Deli.

 

 

I grabbed my sandwich, some roast beef, and some deli cheese/meat to sit down and eat.

 

 

Another aft view. In this picture, you have Majesty of the Seas and then in the cluster of buildings was the Marriott where we stayed the previous night.

 

[dvdkndy]

After lunch, we decided to search for an unlocked door to drop off our heavy roller bag in our room. Walking past the elevators, the first door we tried opened right up and was just down the hall to our balcony room, 9174. When we opened the door, we saw that everything was all setup and ready to go. I was hoping that the steward was already done so we would not be in the way and was happy to see he had already been in and had our room turned around from the previous cruise.

 

 

 

 

 

I thought that storage in the room was plenty adequate for what we had. If we had more family in the room, it may have been a little tight but it worked just fine for the two of us.

 

We found that the bottom drawer of the counter top fit 4, 12 packs of soda perfectly. We kept 5 or 6 in our soft cooler and left the others in the drawer. When we took one out all we had to do was pop open the drawer below and replenish the cooler. It worked out great and was a pleasant surprise to us.

 

 

The big disappointment with the room was that we had an older TV. The reason is not because I wanted a flat-panel TV but because the channels were cut off on the side and the bottom of the TV because of their digital signal on an analog TV. My favorite channel on a cruise is the one that shows the position, speed, and depth of the ocean. On this particular TV, none of this could be seen as it was cut off for the most part. I asked guest services about it and basically was told there was nothing they could do.

 

We read the Fun Times and saw that they were doing the Spa Tours at 1:00pm so we decided to go check it out. As we left, the stewards were still doing last-minute things on our floor.

 

[Aldeya]

I just have to say it again..

 

I absolutely LOVE your review! The details and the pictures are amazing!

 

Please tell me that you and your lovely wife plan to go on a cruise more often so we can enjoy your reviews:):)

[BEACHPAD04]

GREAT REVIEW, LOVE READING IT, AND THE PICTURES ARE GREAT.

Tell your Wife love the flowers on her toenails

Please CONTINUE WITH THE REVIEW:o

[navybaby1113]

The hallways by the staterooms look so bare on the Destiny! I'm used to bright colorful hallways.

[dvdkndy]

We went up one flight of stairs to Deck 10 for the Spa Tours. Every time we go on a cruise we do this because it is very nice to see the facilities and see what they have to offer. The spa staff does teaser massages, which are always free, right in front of the spa. They can tease me all they want because it felt great even if it was for only a few minutes. They market their product well because I was ready to book by the time those few minutes were up. We decided to wait on the spa treatments until a later time but did enjoy seeing the facilities in the spa.

 

This is the area they do facials, teeth whitening, barber services, mani/pedi’s, and hair. In the very back by the windows is where the pedi's are done. What a better way to get a pedi than looking out of the massive ocean passing by!?!?

 

 

Massage Room

 

 

This spa employee was giving everyone a preview of the seaweed wrap treatment that they do. My wife is not a big fan of the smell but I sure do love it! It smelled great and, again, I was ready to book but my wife was there by my side reeling me back to reality.

 

 

Couples Massage Room

 

 

This is only a half view of the gym. The gym is in the shape of a "u" with male and female lockers on opposite ends and everything else in between. There was plenty of equipment to be used and everything seemed to be in proper order.

 

 

The Group Fitness Room, which is located right in the middle if the "u" shaped gym.

 

 

After getting through the Spa Tour they gave us a card to enter into a drawing where they were giving away $500 in spa treatments. We had to be back for the drawing at 5:15pm and made plans to do so. Now it was almost 2:00pm and we needed to head to the pizzeria to join everyone from our roll call for a meet and greet.

[southernfocus]

I am really enjoying the review!

[dvdkndy]

Let me begin by saying I am fairly new to Cruise Critic. I have never heard of roll calls or meet and greets until just a few months back. As I said before, we joined both the roll calls for our B2B. The first leg the roll was fairly active and the second leg seemed as if there were only 2 or 3 people that were keeping the roll alive. Still we did not know what we had got ourselves into.

 

We had all agreed to meet at 2:00pm on embarkation day at the pizzeria. As we were walking to meet at the pizzeria, my wife and I agreed that if we found we were surrounded by a bunch of nut cases, we would quietly dismiss ourselves for something. Don't judge me because of that statement because we have all met those people in our lives and if you are like me, you met them at your family reunion.

 

I am a pretty outgoing guy because of my job and do not have a problem making conversation with people. My wife on the other hand was very apprehensive about the whole deal and was not a fan of the idea. We both decided we would give it a try and only hang out for a couple of seconds if we wanted to leave or we’d have “something come up".

 

When we got to the pizzeria, we could not really see anybody around. There were a few people here or there sitting and eating but nothing that jumped out at us as people from Cruise Critic. We wondered a little awkwardly looking a people wondering if they were they to meet us or not. What were we supposed to do? Should we go up to a family sitting near the pizza and ask them if they are here for the meet and greet only to find out they don't speak English? We were convinced our active roll call had stood us up.

 

A couple walked in a little bit ahead of us to the pool/pizza area. The husband went to the bar and the wife grabbed a table by the pizzeria. Then we noticed another lady walk over to the gentleman by the pool bar and shake his hand like she was introducing herself. We saw him point over to the lady at the table. She walked over to her and greeted her and their husbands joined them quickly after that. I figured this was probably the roll call and was ready to let the awkwardness begin.

 

We walked up to them and I took the lead of introducing my wife and I to them. We were telling everyone our screen names and exchanging small talk with them. Then one lady suggested we all pull up a chair and sit down for a minute. We sat and chatted for a few minutes and another couple walked up and asked "are you guys from a cruise forum?" Our roll call had gained another husband and wife! There were 8 of us sitting there talking and trying not to make things as awkward as possible.

 

You know as well as I do that meeting people can be awkward. Sure it is out of our comfort zones but how fun is life if you have nobody to share it with? If you will just roll the dice and give people a chance you will discover that there are amazing people out there who will add so much to your life. That is exactly what we found in our roll call. We found 6 new friends that we were able to share this experience with and they were not weird at all! (most of them anyway) :) We sat there for the next 90 minutes and laughed, shared stories, told about our lives, and most importantly made new friends by the pizzeria. When we walked away to go to the muster drill, we knew we had made real friends just then. We exchanged room numbers and promises to get with each other during the cruise. In this picture you see people that you do not know. I see people that I consider my friends!

 

 

Left to Right:

Alicia & David: Cincinnati, OH, Wil & Cherl: Dallas, TX, Sam & Anna: Akron, OH, Scott & Tina: Baltimore, MD

 

My advice to you is get on a roll call, take a chance on the decency of complete strangers, and get out of your comfort zone. You just never know what may happen. You make be like us and expect to meet a bunch of weirdos but instead walk away with life-long friends.

[dvdkndy]

After we left our meet and greet it was time for the muster drill. Good thing the drill was scheduled because we probably would have sat there all day long talking and laughing.

 

They packed us on the outside decks and lined us up like soldiers going to battle. They were serious about the drill and were getting on to people for talking, drinking, and using their cell phones. It is a shame that it took people losing their lives on the Concordia for people to take safety serious.

 

 

Drill was over in 15 minutes tops and we decided we would go to our room and enjoy our balcony. Seeing as we would only have the balcony on this leg of our B2B, it was a no-brainer to go to our balcony for sail away.

 

When we got to our room we saw that some people had received their luggage but up to this point we did not have ours.

 

 

The ship was moving in no time and beginning to pull away from the Port of Miami. We stood on our balcony and were joined by our neighbors to our left, right, and below.

 

Not sure where these folks were from because there was definitely a language barrier.

 

Colorado being represented

 

 

My wife was raised in Norfolk, NE, which is just a few miles away from the middle of nowhere. As we were talking to these folks we asked where they were from and would you believe they came all the way from Norfolk, NE! Small world!

 

[dvdkndy]

We loved taking in the sights of Miami and the surrounding areas during sail away. It was awesome to see the homes and the yachts lining the waterway to the open water.

 

 

 

Cars were honking at the Destiny as we were pulling out. Maybe they were jealous? Maybe they were honking at other cars? Whichever the case was we waved like they were looking right at us!

 

 

 

Cars waiting for the ferry to get home. Can you imagine living on an island where you had to get a ferry to get home!?!? Must be nice!

 

 

[dvdkndy]

As we passed people, we waved and they were most kind enough to give a wave back to us. If they knew how much fun we would be having without them, they might have waved to us with their finger!

 

 

Approaching South Beach.

 

 

My boat that I keep in Miami is pictured here in the middle of the photo. It's the really large one! ;)

 

 

A pilot boat giving us an escort to open water. It was amazing to see how he bounced around in the water and caused such a wake yet this 100,000+ ton vessel I was on was gliding with not much water movement at all.