Carnival Breeze Jan 2015 with pictures

[willowvacay]

Hey All! I have found so much helpful information using online reviews that I like to contribute too! We were on the Breeze Jan 11, 2015 for the 6 day Eastern Caribbean. Hopefully my experiences will help other people just like reviews have helped me.

I first started using online reviews to plan my trips when we were planning our honeymoon 5 years ago. We traveled on the Carnival Victory (when it was sailing from Puerto Rico) and the reviews helped me to know what to expect. I have since been reviewing on Trip advisor and our last cruise I made my first attempt at a pictorial cruise review in the forums. Here is my second attempt. Please keep in mind that everything is based only on our opinions and experiences and I understand not everyone will feel the same way.

 

My husband and I are in our early 30’s and we take several vacations a year. We love both land based and cruise vacations and probably have taken an equal number of each. As above, our first cruise was our honeymoon on Carnival Victory and we fell in love with cruising! On that cruise we had an amazing time but one thing left a sour taste that we didn’t want to repeat. We had requested a table for 2 at dinner but were assigned to a table with several other honeymoon couples. Two guests at the table were extremely negative and ended up dominating the conversation every night we were there. Since we were newbies we did not know that the maître d could reassign us to a different table or to a table alone. Therefore, many nights we ate at the buffet instead of in the main dining room. Did this ruin our vacation? Absolutely not! We had an amazing time. However it did lead to us deciding we would rather be able to pick our own dining times.

 

Long story short, this led us to NCL and their “freestyle.” We absolutely love being able to pick our own dining times and eat at other restaurants besides our assigned table. We have been on 3 NCL cruises since our honeymoon and will continue to cruise NCL when we can. Prior to this cruise we were on NCL Getaway in August 2014. We LOVED this ship and this cruise. We had previously been to all the ports but went on this cruise anyway and the SHIP made the TRIP. Upon completing this vacation we had another cruise planned for August 2015—NCL jewel to Alaska. In between we weren’t sure what we were going to do for vacation.

 

How did we end up on this cruise?

We had so much fun on the last one that we really had the cruise bug. On a particularly dragging day at work my husband called and said he had found us an inexpensive January vacation: Carnival Breeze! We looked over the reviews that night and were hooked! Breeze looked like our kind of ship. In other good news we had discovered that Carnival now had any-time or your-time dining. Nothing was going to hold us back.

 

 

Booking:

We booked our cruise that night! We chose an aft balcony. Our previous cruises had been aft balcony x2 (Carnival Victory and NCL Epic), aft penthouse (NCL sky), Courtyard/Haven penthouse (NCL Getaway). I had done my review-research and found that carnival did not offer many suite perks (no butler/concierge etc) so we decided not to spend the money for the upgrade. Much to my dismay upon booking we figured out that because we were last minute no your time dining was available! BOO. So after we booked I called to find out what we needed to do to get up higher on the your-time waitlist. They told me there was nothing I could do. I was soooo disappointed. I decided to call back the next day and ask again, and this time a gentleman told me that if I upgraded to a suite I would get to have your time dining and we could board priority. We went with it because I really wanted your time. Our wish was granted and I got the email that we were off the wait list! Success!!! Let the cruise countdown begin.

 

I wont bore you with all the details of our pre cruise adventures…we came to Miami on Friday night for a Sunday cruise so we stayed at a beach hotel instead of the Marriott near the port (I am a platinum Marriott rewards member from work travel). We stayed at Marriott Stanton South Beach based on trip advisor reviews of all the beach front Marriotts. It lived up to its reviews and we had a blast getting out of our winter weather. Our favorite part was that on Saturday evening the view from our balcony allowed us to see the ships leaving port. Not much gets me more excited for a cruise than seeing other people get to leave on their vacation the night before!

 

 

Embarkation:

The next morning we were up early and ready to head to the port. We re-packed our bags and hopped in a taxi. The driver dropped us off at the beginning of the breeze port building but apparently that wasn’t the right spot. We took our bags around the front of the building to head to the porter area, left our bags and were on our way.

 

We checked in at the priority desk and went into the lounge to wait. This lounge was a regular waiting area that was blocked off from the others and it was VERY crowded. There must have been a ton of diamond and platinum carnival members on this cruise! There were no snacks in the waiting area (NCL priority lounge has snacks) but this is probably a good thing because that’s the last thing I need 

 

The only drawback to this area that I see as real is the lack of bathrooms. They had a “onsie” bathroom that was unisex so there was a long line of people waiting to use it.

Once they announced it was time to board we headed on in! So much excitement for this part of a cruise!!

 

 

Once we got to the top we got to ding our cards and we were on a cruise!!!

 

 

I love how carnival has a giant atrium and artwork! So pretty. We took the elevators up to the pool deck and got our first drinks. Oh how I love vacation. After getting our drinks we headed to our room. We were in 9206. This is a forward junior suite. It is a large room and it has a large balcony (not huge like some other suites) and it also has a window. This room in particular had a window looking out onto a public deck so we never opened it. Also our balcony was adjacent to said public deck and those people could come over to the side and look onto our balcony. NBD but I can see why this room isn’t prime real estate.

 

 

 

 

You can see the public deck in the picture of the balcony (it is the deck over top of the bridge) and you can see the window looking out onto this deck in the picture over the couch. In spite of our location with the window and the balcony lookers we LOVED this room. It is a very large room and we had plenty of space. The closet was very large to accommodate our over packing. Our room steward Jon was wonderful and he really helped us out. One other thing we didn’t love about this room was the temperature. We have unreasonable expectations for the ability of air-conditioning to cool a room and this one wasn’t cutting it. We left Jon a love note and asked him to have someone come look at the air-conditioning or bring us a fan and we ended up with a fan. That did the trick and we slept comfortably every night. Thanks Jon!

 

More to come...it just takes me a few minutes to do each one.

[amberxob]

This is great so far! Cant wait for the rest (:

[willowvacay]

After we dropped off our carry ons we had finished our first round of drinks so we headed back up to the pool deck to get another round and look around. The ship is large and there are two pool areas. The beach pool area is large and has two bars…red frog pub and blue iguana cantina. These each have their own drink menus and we didn’t find many drinks that disappointed. We wandered around the decks to see what is offered. There is a deck with water slides, a sports deck with mini golf a hot dog stand and a bar, the aft pool deck with the tandoor buffet (lunch only) and pizza buffet (24/7) plus a bar. There is also an adults only area called serenity deck.

 

main pool

 

sports deck

 

 

Guys burger

 

[Jamman54]

GREAT start to your review!! Looking forward to the rest. Thanks for taking the time to do it.

[willowvacay]

We had lunch at Guys burgers. This is located at the beach pool (main pool). The line moves very quickly and the food was really good. All the burgers come with cheese but if you ask for no cheese (like we do) they make you a plain hamburger quickly. We loved the fries and all the fixins for the burger and fries are close by and you can put them on to your liking.

 

We stopped and had another drink. We tried Carnival's beer this time. I personally think this is a brilliant branding idea!!! We liked the beer (even though it is a little dark for my taste.

 

 

[kelkel2]

Thank you for doing a review! I am loving reading it!!!

[willowvacay]

Thank you for doing a review! I am loving reading it!!!

 

 

Omg you're a wildcat too?? Go CATS!!

 

 

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[WAHMto5]

Thanks for the review, can't wait to read the rest!

[KPfromCT]

Loving your review!!!! Thank you for taking the time to do it.:D:D

We have been on the Breeze twice and hoping to make this year a third time.

She is definitely our favorite ship.

[Patneeds2cruise]

Thanks for doing this - I'm loving your review! Keep it coming. I will be on the Breeze in October.

[willowvacay]

We checked out the buffet and might have had a little snack  I will have to say here that I strongly dislike the layout of the buffet on the ship. The galley is in the center and takes up a large portion of space with skinny rows of tables on each side with food at either end. It kind of felt like if you wanted something from one end you should find a spot and eat it there instead of traveling to the other end. For example, Mongolian wok is at one end and the deli and desserts are at the other. If one person wanted one thing and the other person wanted the other you would have to pick a meeting spot in the middle. I can only imagine the challenge if you had a few children and were trying to get meals for them there. I’m sure people manage but I guess I am trying to say I wouldn’t have picked this design. I like the food all lined up where I can walk along and take each thing I would like.

 

After this we went to the muster drill in the theater. It was relatively painless but I don’t remember anyone checking our cards or taking attendance. After muster we went upstairs and I took a brief nap before sailaway. I guess the getting on the ship was just too much excitement!

We always do sailaway on our own balcony. It was a blast as usual. This time the ship was facing in toward Miami so we went into the harbor toward the city and turned around.

 

We went to the steakhouse for dinner the first night after sailaway (and 2 other nights on this trip). I believe the cost is $35 per person. They have a pretty nice presentation with all the meats on a tray and they show you what you can pick beforehand (similar to what Morton’s does). Of course like most cruise steakhouses you get an appetizer, salad, dinner, and dessert. I usually got the wedge salad, Ben (my husband) usually got a ceasar salad, we had sliders one night for an appetizer, French onion soup another, and had ribeyes for dinner. The first night we had the dessert (we ordered cheesecake) but after that night in the steak house we did not order any more dessert. It was not super great. I don’t know why they don’t have crème brulee…or they could have warm chocolate melting cake there because I like that too.

 

The next day was a sea day. We got up and worked out (the gym is very nice and has plenty of cardio equipment but a small weight area), had some breakfast at the buffet, and headed to the pool. It was no big surprise but it was a little challenging to find seats at the pool on a sea day. We went to the aft pool and the beach pool and finally found a few seats. We hung out until what we thought was lunch time…but apparently lunch is at noon and not 11. We should have read our FunTimes a little more closely. Luckily our seats were still there so we sat back down and waited.

 

When the clock struck noon we made our way to iguana for a taco sample. They were delicious. Then we went on a mission to find the bbq place (yes we ate too much). Apparently on sea days only there is a bbq called Jimmy’s c-side bbq. It would be a smart choice to look at a map prior to finding this if you are in a hurry. We just went down to the floor it was on (5th I think) and started walking outside. We finally walked almost the length of the ship and made it there. The line was very long. NBD because we are on vacation and have no where to be. We waited in line and the bbq was pretty good. There is a guy there selling drinks but mostly cans of soda and cans of beer.

 

The rest of the day we either just hung out at the pool (hairy chest contest is fun to watch) and then we went to bingo. We have won some $$ at bingo the last two cruises but this time no luck. We went to the casino and discovered our favorite penny slot….the Michael Jackson game. We ended up having some good luck on this game later in the week! We kept playing the keyhole game (where money is hanging and you try to line up the key into the slot to win the money). This game is very fun but we did not win. We did, however, see someone else win so it must be possible!

 

That night for dinner we went to the main dining room. We got seated very quickly. There is a dedicated line in the dining room for your time dining and we ended up with our table for two right away. We had ribs and prime rib that night and they were really good. We had warm chocolate melting cake for dessert and as previously stated I love this dessert. The service was very good as expected.

[rene194215]

I will be on her in Nov and love reading and seeing pics of her!!!

[willowvacay]

Sail away from Miami

 

 

towel animal from first night

 

towel animal from second night

 

I apparently do not have a ton of pictures from the sea day, but I do have a video that includes our adventures which I am hoping to include at the conclusion so you should get to see more of it then!

[kelkel2]

Omg you're a wildcat too?? Go CATS!!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

 

I am GO BIG BLUE!!!

[willowvacay]

The next morning we woke up and were almost to jamiaca! I had never been here so I was sooo excited.

 

 

Our very first cruise we did all our excursions through carnival. Since then we have nearly always ventured out on our own either hiring a private tour through a company or doing something like taking a taxi to a beach. However, since we did not have much time between booking and going on this cruise I had a hard time with Jamaica. I found several companies and good recommendations but none were doing exactly what I wanted so I ended up checking out good ole carnival.com for their excursions. Surprisingly, there I found exactly what I was looking for. We took an excursion of a catamaran to Dunns river falls and back…and that’s it. So many other tours included multiple stops etc and we just wanted to see the falls and come back to the port.

 

The view of the breeze from the catamaran:

 

 

we got going

 

 

the water is much more fabulous nearer to the falls

 

 

It is a short ride to the falls and the crew of the ship (Cool Runnings) were excellent. They played party music and seemed to be having a good time. Once we arrived at the falls, they kept all of our belongings and we headed out. You have to wear water shoes to climb the falls. The excursion allows for rental or purchase of the shoes on the catamaran but since we knew this in advance we were strictly BYO for the shoes. At the bottom of the falls you meet your guide and they were super fun and try hard to get you hyped up for the climb. They have someone videoing but you are free to be able to bring your own waterproof camera. We had our GoPro and several other people had waterproof cameras or camera covers. Interestingly the breeze sells waterproof iphone covers onboard. I do not know if they markup the price but I will tell you they sell GoPros on board and they are closely priced to what we paid before arriving so maybe the iphone covers are too.

We climbed the falls and had a great time. The water was cold but it was hot outside so it was refreshing (except for the times we went under the water). There is a natural water slide that you can slide down (I did) and a waterfall part to stand under (we both did). Once we got to the top we were pretty much on our own to get back to the catamaran. Since we had left everything on board our waterfall guides graciously promised to meet us back at the boat to collect their tips  I was relieved bc of course we were embarrassed we had not brought any money up. Luckily a number of people on our excursion had left all their money on the catamaran too so we were all in the same boat (no pun intended). We took the early cruise so one great thing about that was we kinda beat the crowds. As we were leaving the falls the crowd at the bottom was HUGE!

 

 

After the falls the party boat lives up to its name and hands out free rum punch. They also sell redstripe beer so we bought that because when in Rome…

 

[willowvacay]

The trip back was really fun. They took a little detour out to sea so this made Ben a little seasick but he was a good sport about it. Once back to shore we went to margaritaville. It had kind of poor signage but we knew it was there so we kept looking. We ate lunch there and had a drink. It over looks a small beach area and you can see the ship.

 

 

margaritaville

 

 

I like Red Stripe light a little better :D

 

 

We after lunch we walked around the port and purchased some souvenirs. Back on board we got ready and headed to dinner. We went to the steakhouse again tonight. It was delicious again. There is always something going on in the atrium and there were several people dancing this night!

 

 

Our towel animal for the night

 

[fozzy1975]

Loving your review so far! I was hoping if you could tell me if the red frog has the thirsty frog beer on tap at the pool car and inside also?

[willowvacay]

The next morning we woke up in grand cayman. I had not previously been here either but my research indicated we needed to go to 7 mile beach. This can be done a number of ways, but my preferred way to go to a beach in a port is to go to a place with bathrooms, restaurant, and pool. If you have never used Resort for a Day you should consider checking it out. We used resort for a day in St Thomas in August and it was wonderful. In grand cayman this is available at the Westin. We checked it out on trip advisor and the pictures and reviews are great. We booked online and printed out our ticket to take it with. Resort for a day at this location includes a hotel room so you can shower, sleep, watch tv, or whatever else you could use the room for. The location is beautiful and they have everything you could need.

 

 

Here is where we sat for most of the day:

 

 

Looking back at the resort

 

 

Beautiful beach

 

 

sooo much better than snow

 

 

 

 

pool area

 

 

The weather was wonderful and so was the service. There was a beach server who brought us drinks and menus. We ended up eating lunch at the poolside restaurant but the menu was very similar. The food was very good. We had an amazing time.

[willowvacay]

Loving your review so far! I was hoping if you could tell me if the red frog has the thirsty frog beer on tap at the pool car and inside also?

 

They have Thirsty frog outside at Red Frog Rum Bar and at the indoor Red Frog pub (downstairs) near the piano bar.

[willowvacay]

We took a taxi back to the port and before heading to the tender we stopped to get a local beer (this seems to be a theme of this trip).

 

 

Caybrew is pretty good beer! Not quite as awesome as redstripe...but still pretty good.

 

 

I'm gonna take a moment here to talk about the tendering process. It was easy to get on the tender from the ship. However getting off the tender in the port was very prolonged. At first we thought it was because there were a lot of ships in port and maybe people were just moving slow. However when we got off the tender onto the port dock and finally got close to the front of the line we realized that it was because the carnival photographers had everyone in a corral and were taking photos. They had a fake buoy on a stick and would put it down in front of one group as the one before them left (you know like a parking garage gate going up and down between cars) I know this is partially how cruise lines make money and that's why these photographers are really pushy. However I don't think acting like the photo is mandatory is necessary. Why would we want a pic of the two of us with a mob of impatient people behind us? We usually just politely tell them no and keep moving and then some others follow suit. Mr. or Ms. photographer I promise I will buy a picture if its good, but forced smiles and waiting in line don't usually a good picture make.

 

Getting back on the tenders and getting on the ship was rightfully slow with all the card pinging and metal detectors.

 

[jandjfun]

The next morning we woke up in grand cayman. I had not previously been here either but my research indicated we needed to go to 7 mile beach. This can be done a number of ways, but my preferred way to go to a beach in a port is to go to a place with bathrooms, restaurant, and pool. If you have never used Resort for a Day you should consider checking it out. We used resort for a day in St Thomas in August and it was wonderful. In grand cayman this is available at the Westin. We checked it out on trip advisor and the pictures and reviews are great. We booked online and printed out our ticket to take it with. Resort for a day at this location includes a hotel room so you can shower, sleep, watch tv, or whatever else you could use the room for. The location is beautiful and they have everything you could need.

 

 

Here is where we sat for most of the day:

 

 

Looking back at the resort

 

 

Beautiful beach

 

 

sooo much better than snow

 

 

 

 

pool area

 

 

The weather was wonderful and so was the service. There was a beach server who brought us drinks and menus. We ended up eating lunch at the poolside restaurant but the menu was very similar. The food was very good. We had an amazing time.

 

Which resort did you go to in St. Thomas? We are going there in a few weeks and I love doing the resort days. Thanks.

[ukblue1998]

I am GO BIG BLUE!!!

 

I third that!!!!!

[willowvacay]

Which resort did you go to in St. Thomas? We are going there in a few weeks and I love doing the resort days. Thanks.

 

We went to Marriott Frenchman's Reef in St. Thomas. It was very nice but I will tell you that we did not go to the beach there. It is down some stairs or an elevator or something and we didn't make it down there because we had too much fun in the infinity pools and at the swim up bar.

[willowvacay]

I third that!!!!!

 

C-A-T-S Cats! Cats! Cats!

[willowvacay]

The next morning was Cozumel. We have been to Mexico a few times…in fact we met in Cancun at a wedding. I hadn’t been to Cozumel in particular. This is the excursion Ben was most excited about and I was most worried about. We’ll get to that in a second  :p

 

 

This will be a good time to mention something that I did not totally understand. This being our 5th cruise we have become accustomed to knowing that just because we are stopped in the port it doesn’t mean we are able to get off the ship. On all of our previous cruises we have heard the announcement that we are able to disembark in the port. This did not seem to occur on this cruise. I promise you we did not sleep through it…I am always an early riser as I have to be at work verrry early. Sleeping in is not much more than 645 or 7am. In fact, in Jamaica we were waiting and waiting for the announcement that we were allowed to disembark and our carnival excursion time got closer and closer. Our meeting location for that excursion was on the pier so eventually we just went downstairs to be ready when allowed to leave. Turns out when we got there people were already getting off the ship! Anyway this happened every day. So when we “landed” in Cozumel we headed right down and this happened:

 

 

 

Total traffic jam. It took a while to get out of this mess but since it is vacation its not the end of the world. I was just a little surprised that this was so disorganized. This carried over into disembarkation in Miami also.

 

Back to Cozumel:

We had big plans here. Ben really wanted to swim with the dolphins so we decided to go to Chankanaab. We got off the ship and headed down the long pier to a taxi. Chankanaab was not a long trip and once there people were very friendly and directed us to our location to check in. I purchased Royal Dolphin Swim online prior to the trip and we got ready to do our thing. They have lockers there and we placed our belongings in the locker. Believe it or not the locker was free. I don't think ive ever encountered anything like that before. They were just there with the keys in the lockers and you placed your belonging and took the key with you. No catch or anything (well maybe the cost of the dolphin swim, lol).

 

They gave you a bracelet , a life jacket, and lined you up in your group. I was terrified to swim with the dolphins but there were little kids doing it so I guessed I just had to suck it up. We were in a group with 3 other couples and we got into the water with the trainer and 2 dolphins. They let you warm up to it by just touching the dolphins as they swam by but then it ramped up with giving the dolphin a kiss and swimming out into the water. The Dolphins pulled each person with their fins (you just grabbed on as they swam by) and then pushed you by your feet up out of the water. It was incredible.

 

One drawback is they have a photographer so you are not allowed to bring your own camera. :( They let you purchase all the photos of you but it was outrageously expensive! We ended up just purchasing one photo of each of us which was still crazy expensive.

 

After the dolphin swim we walked around the park and found a cool beach front restaurant. We had fajitas and chicken tacos plus Mexican beer of course.

 

 

 

Pool at Chankanaab