Carnival Valor Eastern Review with photos

[lovestocruise19]

 

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

 

 

 

 

 

[KristiandEvan]

Budget out of PC is the worst! We had a terrible experience with them 2 years ago. I used Avis last year and they were great.

[lovestocruise19]

Rainbow trees:

 

 

If you look closely, you can see the bird in the tree:

[lovestocruise19]

Budget out of PC is the worst! We had a terrible experience with them 2 years ago. I used Avis last year and they were great.

 

Yes, it definitely put our vacation off to a sour start. DH says never again for Budget! Near the end of the cruise when we were talking about picking up the car and going to the airport DH told us not to mention the "B" word: Budget! ;)

[lovestocruise19]

After that we headed to Coca Falls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

 

 

We then headed to a bridge and a river for a 15 minute stop. DH and my dad were teaching people how to skip rocks.

 

 

 

Mother/daughter selfie time!

 

[lovestocruise19]

 

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

The last stop on the excursion was at Luis and Sally's Gift Shop. They were rude in there, you'd think they would be grateful that so many tours are required to stop at their shop. I bought a pair of earrings. We were taken back to the ship and ate a late lunch. It rained on the trip back, but cleared up quickly. DH and I then watched sailaway from the secret deck.

 

One funny story from sailaway is that a guy had his son on the rail that's connected to the bulkhead and the rail was wet from the rain. He asked an older couple if they wanted him to wipe off the rail for them and he proceeded to slide his son's butt on the rail to wipe it off. The boy was giggling and it was really cute and funny.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

 

 

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

El Morro

 

 

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

 

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

Back in the room I ordered chocolate chip cookies via room service because I ate a couple of DH's cookies earlier and he was mad. :p They came in a brown paper bag with the word cookies scrawled across it. It was cute and I've never seen them delivered that way before.

 

Our cruise director Mat would always say "party on" after each of his announcements. When the captain announced our sailaway at the end he said "party on" in his Itialian accent which I thought was funny. :D He and Mat must be tight. Lol!

 

We ate on Lido that night because it was the second elegant night. Dad, DH and I went to the 80s production show while mom had a mani/pedi. After that I did something I've never done on all six of my previous cruises that I've always wanted to do: I watched a Dive In movie! DH and dad joined me and we all watched San Andreas on the big screen. The movie was good! Everyone who was watching kinda chuckled at the scene where the cruise ship tips over!

 

 

 

Edited January 14, 2016 by lovestocruise19

[dotheyes]

Great idea with the Cookies; when I order them from room service I will request a BAG of cookies.

Great review; glad you got to go with your parents; one of our daughters is going on valentine cruise with us. (we are much older than your parents)

dot

[lovestocruise19]

After the movie the night before, I went to bed and had cramps. The next bit is a little TMI about bodily functions, so if that is something you'd rather not hear about, please skip the next part. I woke up with diarrhea. Ugh! Not sure why...something I ate? Someone sneezed on the buffet? Because I was kinda constipated the first few days and it all decided to come out?

 

Well, anyway, DH and I had booked a dune buggy excursion for 2:30 p.m. I felt okay when we left and luckily I was okay during the whole excursion.

 

Ship outside our room:

 

We walked around the port a little while waiting for our excursion to leave. I took this picture of the Margaritaville pool, not realizing my lens had fogged up!

 

 

Turk is very flat and doesn't have much vegetation.

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

 

 

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

 

 

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

Our destination was the lighthouse. We stayed there for a little while. I went to the bathroom and DH bought us waters at the snack bar. They also had a gift shop and you could purchase photos that they took along the way, but I didn't.

 

 

They have a new ropes course excursion which is located right next to the lighthouse.

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

 

 

 

[lovestocruise19]

After stopping at the lighthouse, we drove back to the ship.

 

 

 

 

We were very dusty so we showered and then went to the MDR with mom and dad. DH felt a little dizzy so he left before dessert and dad wanted to catch a movie so he left before dessert too. Mom had apple pie a la mode and I had the raspberry vanilla cream cake. DH had ordered the $20 up-charge steak from the steakhouse.

 

The seas were pretty rough so between DH eating the big steak and me still with my diarrhea issues, we stayed in the room all night watching American Idol, Blacklist and Shades of Blue.

 

It was on this night that I got a monkey towel animal which made me :D because I've only gotten a monkey one other time on all seven of my cruises. I never met my room steward (DH apparently did), but I loved him because he kept our ice bucket filled and gave me a monkey!

 

 

Edited January 17, 2016 by lovestocruise19

[lovestocruise19]

I woke up the next day and still had diarrhea. DH left the room at 8:30 a.m. to go to the Behind the Fun tour with dad. I ate breakfast at 9 a.m. and found mom on Serenity where I relaxed in the sun with her for about 45 minutes. We then both went to see the Towel Animal Theater. It was cute.

 

My whole family!

 

Towel Animal Theater:

 

 

 

Edited January 17, 2016 by lovestocruise19

[lovestocruise19]

Back in the room I packed most of my stuff. I then went to lunch and saw mom there so I ate with her. It was chocolate buffet day.

 

 

 

 

Mom and I saw dad who just got off the Behind the Fun Tour. I showed him where the ice carving would be and then went back to the room. DH was there and he had ordered a BLT from room service. We took a nap and then I went down to Deck 4 to look for pictures for a half hour. I barely had any photos of DH and I together and I found nothing. Very frustrating! :mad: Carnival definitely lost out on some money from me. Once back in the room, DH was still napping so I went to go up to Serenity to get some air. In the elevator on the way up some boy coughed right on my arm twice. Gross! Then once I got up there the sun was only hitting one part. I layed down for a couple minutes, but some lady was talking really loud, so I just went back to the room.

 

Instead of going to the MDR, I decided that I just wanted a turkey sandwich and veggie platter from room service. It took about a half hour to get it. DH went up to Lido for dinner. After eating, I went up to try to find dad and DH. I found dad right away. We chatted for a bit and then mom showed up. Just a a minute or two later I was saying I didn't know where DH was and he rounded the corner. DH ate a little and I had some fudge cake and mom had some froyo.

 

Me and dad:

 

[lovestocruise19]

DH, mom and I went back to the room to check in for our flight on Southwest. For some (awesome) reason, I had had trouble signing up for the one day value internet plan to be able to access Southwest, but it worked anyway!

 

After that DH and I went to the aft bar on Lido to get our free drinks and to visit Kanchana. It was very rocky the whole day, more than we've ever remembered experiencing. While talking with Kanchana, even she mentioned the rocking and that her sick water would slosh out and she'd be standing in water. Kanchana graciously offered to take a picture of DH and I.

 

Me and my Mocha Chocolate Getaway!

 

 

DH got these delivered to the room, but he never ate them.

[lovestocruise19]

Debarkation went smoothly. We were off the ship a little before 8 a.m. and then DH and I did get stuck in the slower line for customs, but all in all, it went well. We caught a shuttle to Budget and DH was first in line! :p

 

It was very foggy out that day. We drove to the airboat place since we had missed it when we first arrived in Florida. We arrived early and waited until it opened. We bought our tickets, but were told we'd have to wait until the fog lifted. We waited and waited. The up side was that there was a cute black and white kitty that I was petting while I was waiting. :) Unfortunately, after waiting an hour and the fog still hadn't lifted, we decided to bail. We got our money back and then drove to Orlando to do the Titanic Experience. I'm a big Titanic buff and just had to do it. Mom and dad joined me and DH stayed in the car. I really enjoyed it. They had a champagne bottle that was still filled with champagne that they recovered from the ship! I bought a necklace with Titanic coal in it and a magnet for my magnet collection.

 

After that we drove to the airport. We printed our boarding passes, checked our luggage and ate in the food court before checking in. The flight went smoothly and our ride service met us at the airport to drive us back to mom and dad's house. DH and I decided we really wanted to go home, so we drove what should have been two hours back to Vermont, however between the little icy patches and DH not having his land legs back, it took two and a half hours. We were home by 2 a.m.

 

That's it! I'm going to be adding some videos to this review and I can answer any questions anyone might have about the Valor or cruising in general. Hope you enjoyed my review!