Another Valor Review 6/19-6/26, not a glowing recommendation.

[Roboat]

Excellent review. FWIW, here's my take on it. I have only cruised a few times, with HAL and Celebrity. We recently booked our first Carnival cruise, for Nov on the Glory. Reason: significant military discount. But I am SO looking forward to it!

 

Bottom line: I don't think you should give up. You don't have unreasonable expectations; there is learning curve. I think you would very much enjoy yourselves, maybe with another line or not, on your next cruise.

 

Embarkation - Always a pain in the neck, but fixable. They won't fix it, but you can. Now that you know what to expect, read up on others' experiences based on what time they arrived. Timing is everything. Get there early or late. For a 4-5 pm departure, we get there at 11am or 2:30pm. I prefer 11am so I can start early, have lunch and explore.

 

Photographers - Can't do much about it. I blow right by them, even when they physically hold me. I wish more folks would do that. But they are a major pain. (If they are such a money maker, why not have 5 lines? It's not art photography, fer crissake!)

 

Food - Now here's where you might do better on a different cruise line. In my opinion, the dining room food served on Celebrity and HAL are both clearly above Outback and maybe half-way to Mortons. Their Lido food is very good, slightly above Outback. I would give the edge to Celebrity, but HAL cruises, at least the Florida to Caribbean, are no more expensive than Carnival, whereas it seems the Celebrity cruises have climbed are 15-20% higher.

 

Room service menus are also more extensive, and I could order off the dining room menu during the times they were serving in the dining room. BTW, I am hoping the food will be as good on Carnival, since that is an important part of cruising. Any chance they have GREAT Ponderosa's where you live? ;)

 

Room location - Rookie mistake. I did the same thing a couple of weeks ago, then scrutinized the deck plans above and below my cabin - on the Upper deck, just above the disco. Fortunately, folks here confirmed my fears and I was able to get it changed. But you won't make that mistake again. That's learning curve. No problem.

 

Excursions - Here again, next time you'll know what to look for and what questions to ask. You'll ask the TA, the cruise line, and this forum, and you'll avoid a repeat performance. Most cruise excursions go as planned and are uneventful. Next time you'll probably book them on your own after researching the ports o' call, and the crowds will be small and you'll have a great time. In general, I didn't experience significant lines, but I usually waited to depart until most folks were already off. The other ships I've sailed on were smaller with fewer passengers and I didn't notice the lines too much.

 

(We are not big on shore excursios, just like hanging on the boat. Your mileage may vary.)

 

Deck chairs - I'm not a sit in the sun by the pool person, so this is not an issue for me. Personally, I would have zero problem moving somebody's stuff, and would fully expect others to move my stuff. I would expect my chair to be taken when I returned, and I'd find another one. My wife likes to relax in quiet with a book, not near the pool. She never had any problem finding quiet spots elsewhere. I am optimistic she'll be able to do the same on Carnival Glory.

 

Kids activities - I can't offer any comparisons, since I haven't cruise with kids.

 

Customer service - I thought both HAL and Celebrity were reasonable whn it came to addressing problems. I can't comment on Carnival in that area.

 

So like I said, IMHO, most things that bugged you are improvable, if not fixable. You shouldn't give up.

[jnjburgess]

Roboat!

 

Thank you very much for the detailed responses! One of the things about cruising and these boards are the people are great! Everyone is willing to help each other out. I was concerned that I would get flamed for not posting a glowingly positive review :). But then I reconsidered and hoped someone would read my posting and the replies from experienced cruisers like yourself and the others and learn from it.

 

FYI - my wife and I have discussed going on a cruise by ourselves and trying one of the other cruise lines. I can't fix the food (we have good Ponderosa's, just not GREAT Pondersosa's), but we can fix our arrival times, expectations, snagging chairs and room locations. We only booked the St. Martin excursion because we hadn't been there before. Carnival needs to remove that tour for safety reasons! I think we will try a smaller boat and another cruiseline.

 

Thanks again!

[klfhngr]

 

We were a party of five (me 44, wife 40, mother 62, kids 12 and 15). We flew in to Ft Lauderdale and rented a limousine to take us to the port. The $$ worked out to be only $20.00 more than the Carnival transportation but much more convenient and nicer.

 

 

Can i get the name of the limo co.? do you recommend them?

[puggdogg1]

As far as paying for stuff when you get on the cruise, unfortunately, Carnival seems to be the cheaper of the bunch!

 

Carnival's non-souvenier drinks are $2.95, souvenier drinks are $6.95. Most of the other lines start their non-souvenier drinks at $4.95 and above, we paind $9.95 for a souvenier drink on NCL.

 

The soda card is about the same price as the other cruise lines. But I priced it out... and honestly I'm not sure if it's worth it to buy the soda card unless you really drink a ton of soda. I drink a lot of diet soda (not much now, trying to cut back), and when I priced out the card, I'd have to drink 4 a day to make it worth it, and I didn't. I think next cruise I will skip the soda card and drink iced tea instead. Carnival's iced tea is EXCELLENT!!!!! I just don't think I drank enough soda to make it worth it, so to spend $1.50 to get 1 soda once in a while isn't a big deal.

 

As far as the gift shops on the ships, Carnival's is at least semi-affordable! I saw one T-shirt that I liked in the NCL gift shop and it was $38.00!!! Same price I paid for a nice windbreaker on Carnival on sale day that I still use!!! The other shop which had jewlry and perfume had lots of options for the budget conscious, such as $10 watches and jewelry and sales on stuff.

 

Bingo is expensive, but again, Carnival is the cheapest. Royal carribean wants like $35 for a triple pack, NCL wants 25 and they have these electronic bingo things that are supposed to up your odds that are $40. The people that won the bingo seemed to mostly have these electronic gadgets, but I didn't really want to pay that much to lose, so we passed on the bingo after a while. We were frustrated on the RCCL ship we went on because one table with a huge party won the big jackpot on the bingo alll 4 nights of the cruise!!!! My travel bud and I decided that we could probably have just as much fun for just as long by playing the nickel slots on the boat. First time I took Carnival, I won $60 on them. We have sailed 2 ships. The other Canival trip I took one of the girls that sat at my dinner table stuck $5 in a machine and won $400. I can't bring myself to spend $5 on a slot bet though!!!! I have never won on NCL or RCCL's slots.

 

I don't know how much Carnival's wireless internet access is, we paid about $55 bucks for about 2 hours on NCL, which was more than enough for us to check email and to check the weather in the ports that we were going to. We got in on a special before sail away where they were giving away 2 for 1 minutes, then there was a couple of hours where it was surf for a min, get a minute free. My friend likes to have the email access b/c you get no cell reception for the most part, and at least with the email, we are accessible by friends and family in case of emergency. I have a digital camera, so I plugged the camera into the computer and was able to make nice e-postcards in photoshop to send to people at home. All I did was bring the picture into PS and add a personal note to it. Took like 10 min, and I did it while waiting for my friend to blow dry her hair.

 

I normally travel on a tight budget (I'm single and support myself), while my travel bud still lives at home, so she has a bit more financial freedom... I found I got more for my money aboard carnival than any other ship. The food was free, except for the 1 night we treated ourselves to the supper club, and I was happy b/c I didn't have to cook it!!! LOL The drinks were reasonable, and the gift shop had some good sales. Even got a good deal on some perfume and a pretty gold bracelet from the gold by the inch (I am big boned, so this was great.... I actually could get a bracelet that fit!). Both RCCL and NCL had higher prices on everything and I found myself being bummed b/c my friend could buy stuff, while I just had to stand back b/c i was on a budget. At least on Carnival, I can buy some nice souveniers, have some foo foo drinks for a reasonable amount and some pretty good food for free!!! We got coffee and cookies from the coffee bar a couple of nights and that was even half the price of the other cruise lines. If you like to cruise, and have little money.... definitely Carnival is the best!

[jnjburgess]

The limo company can be reached at www.infinity-transportation.com. Their rates were reasonable and they were very helpful and accomodating.

 

Jeff