Let the SUNSHINE in!

[2xsin12mths]

(May 6-14)

I titled it that way since we had a scenic OV room in front of ship...LOVE them! Amazing views!

 

I'll try to make this short, I get wordy sometimes. I will break review down by areas.

This was my 19th cruise, all but 3 on Carnival. I'm very happy with Carnival and DH wants to stick with them since we are Platinum.

 

Check in: From beginning to being on board it was about 45 minutes? Only reason it took so long is they no longer "ding" your S&S card in. They scan your card when you enter and exit the ship (including ports). And guess what...the system goes down on occasion! When they scanned us in he had to hold the tablet above his head for it to pick up a signal. Wow! Also, when we left Sunshine the whole system "crashed" for about 45 minutes totally stopping debarking.

 

Cabin: As I stated, wonderful cabin and location on deck 9. Room steward was "ok". Not awesome, not terrible. I will say he asked if we wanted morning, evening or both cabin cleaning. I picked evening and wished I would have picked both. Lesson learned. No robes....I asked for one(hubby doesn't care). Toilet seat was broke. Room steward fixed right away. Dishes were in the hallway over 24 hrs. If they don't care I don't really care, I don't want them cluttering my room.

While I'm on room...ALL toilets stopped working on sea day 2 on every floor in the front of the ship only. OMG!! It was horrible. In 2 hours time pretty much every public toilet was out of order due to being full! Really!! About 3 hrs before it was fixed. No idea what that was about but we received a lovely apology note and cake??

 

Food: We had YTD and ate in dining room 3 nights. We were never in the dining room more than an hour. Service was good! I have come to the conclusion that Carnival food is too rich and too sweet. That said....I enjoyed the food for the most part. We did not eat dessert in dining room since we were always so full. The Lido is just OK. Not horrible but not the best. Breakfast was ok on the Lido (also the Taste Bar has a lovely breakfast). Guys was ok. Pizza was very good and lines were actually short. JiJi Asian was good. Had room service one day after a long day in port and that was ok (BLT's). After we picked up food on Lido we usually went back to Havana to eat. Nice area! Love the way it is decorated!

 

Cheers: First time we bough cheers. 8 days for 2 ppl is $920.00. Our final tally was $746.70. We tried so hard. We both had many Martini's at Alchemy which was amazing but one can only drink so many martini's. ;) We also had milkshakes, speciality coffee's, soda, bottled water and daq's. This was not a port heavy cruise so that's why I tested it. Also, I could not buy 2 coffees one morning since my DH was still getting ready in the room. Was kinda annoying that I had to stand for 5 minutes THAN I could buy a second one on my card. So, we tried but will not purchase again.

 

Shows: I think all the shows are good with Epic Rock being very good. We do not go to Love/marriage, Hasbro game show, karaoke etc. We tried the comedy shows but I have no interest in getting to a show over 30 minutes before it starts just to get a seat. The room is WAY to small that they have comedy in. People were irritated.

 

Out and about + Bars: Lido "hallways" are insane. 2 people can barely squeeze by. At the Iguana Café it is really bad. We just avoided that area. Ocean Plaza is very crowded and here is the biggest down size to Sunshine. We LOVE Alchemy bars and love to sit and get to know the bartenders and fellow cruisers. We meet some great people at Alchemy. The Alchemy is squished in across from Ocean Plaza, as is Red Frog, Taste Bar, Future cruise desk, shopping question desk and the coffee bar. One afternoon we tried to get a drink at Alchemy and the seats we taken by kids playing Bingo at Ocean Plaza. It was so full they were sitting at all the bar stools. I was sooo annoyed.

Alchemy bartenders were Parviz, Cesar and Jvorka. Jvorka was awesome. She is so funny and makes killer drinks!! We also put an extra tip in every time we bought a martini and had excellent service:hearteyes:

 

Serenity: Three floors of Serenity and you better get up at 7:00. First sea day I found 2 loungers but by 9:00 people were walking around looking for seats in ALL areas of the ship. Some days were worse than others. Forget about getting in either pool. Packed!! And we did not have many a lot of kids on board. The CHOGS were out in full force any no one ever enforced the no saving chairs policy. One morning I came up on Serenity and someone had put one flip flop on each chair...about 20 chairs side by side. It was the whole one side of the ship. It was so stupid I laughed!

Also, one day I returned towels to the towel hut and the "scanning" tablets were not working that scan your S&S card so the line was way long. They finally just wrote peoples names down and said they would do it later!

 

Ports: Aruba...AWESOME! Bonaire...Just ok. If your into snorkeling it's awesome. Grand Turk...Can't go wrong on GT. We went to an all inclusive resort. Love this island.

 

Final thoughts: Everything that happens on board is now WiFi related. If the WiFi is spotty you wait for EVERYTHING. The workers seem frustrated. The fellow cruisers that had WiFi were complaining all week. We do not bother getting. I have enough WiFi issues at home I don't need to deal with it on vaca.

The Platinum gift is a small bag that when you turn inside out is a cheap backpack. I will give to kids/grandkids.

 

Will I cruise Sunshine again? Probably not. Main reason is crowded main public areas. We got pretty good at avoiding at peak times. I would say for anybody going on Sunshine to def go and give it a chance. We certainly still had fun and have Vista booked in November and Miracle booked next May (one of our fav ships). It in no way deterred me from cruising on Carnival and someone who was on the same cruise as me may have totally different thoughts.

[mirp]

Thanks for this review.

 

The toilet incident sounds horrific. I wonder if it happens often.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[bitemebaby]

We were on this cruise. We stayed on Deck five in new rooms just behind Ocean Plaza. The toliets stopped working for us second day- no cake for us but public toliets were working on deck five.

Bonaire day- just as we were getting ready to leave room for port- power went out, halls were dark,AC went out. Then all came back on couple minutes later and we left for port. We got back from HOT HOT port of Bonaire and our AC in room was off and had been off All day, Room was HOT, took them couple hours to fix after we got back, we had to prop open door to room. The entire deck five floor rooms AC was off. Not a good day, lots of annoyed people on five including us.

Overall review of Carnival Sunshine- Loved ship, hated skinny hallways on parts of Lido, Loved Havana bar, loved our room, Room Stewart was great,hated going thru comedy club to avoid casino smoke on deck five- if you didn't go on deck five and thru smoke you had to do a maze on four . Cruise Director Emma is a sweetie- very nice!

First day at Muster Drill (on four, Station D) a poor man fainted, they propped his head up on a lifejacket on the deck.

Last day we were in main dining room , had just ordered and power went out for bout 45 minutes, somehow our fabulous waitor got us the last omelet and eggs benedict before power went out.

Deck Three was a mess trying to get off ship and thru customs because of back up due to power outage. They couldn't ding people off ship with outage.

We overall loved the ship and booked a back to back in the fall.

[bitemebaby]

I missed the flip flops on the Serenity deck loungers, I would of been getting a worker to move them- after I snapped a photo of them. The Serenity decks were beautiful, but always packed, tried to get photo first day with no people in photos- didn't happen. We tried to get ANY seats but only found two empty clamshells one evening . Guess next trip I need to get up early one sea day . Another guy on our cruise found four guys in their thirties sleeping on loungers at 530 am one morning - they got up at four to save them for their wifes!

I don't want a chair that bad, we did find some by the pool/ movie screen on last sea day in the afternoon that we had a nice view of the sea birds soaring by.

[easyboy]

Thanks for the review.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[lovingCCL]

I was also on this cruise and I agree with most of the assessments. However, there was one point I did not agree with. In my opinion, I did not find the Sunshine to be particularly crowded. I feel like all ships are crowded at certain times and the flow of how the buffet was set up on the Lido was particularly efficient.

 

The electrical issues on Bonaire day and debarkation day were stressful for my mom as she is not a very experienced cruiser so that kind of stunk. We also had no toilets on day 2 and we were mid-ship deck 9. We had intermittent issues getting our toilet to flush each day. We also were given an ice bucket (plastic) that leaked and shorted out the tv as the shelf holding the ice bucket was over the TV. That was quickly fixed by maintenance. Thank goodness -- my mom would have died without the news. :-)

 

We did have an incident with an elderly man and woman one night on deck for the Dive In Movies. A woman was in the hot tub with her children and had towels on her chairs. This is not being a chair hog as they were right there in my opinion. However, this elderly couple did not feel this way. The couple came and moved all of the woman and children's stuff and took their seats. When the woman came over and told the couple that they had taken her chairs they literally cussed her out right on deck (in front of her kids) by calling her a B word. I t was appalling. I told them that was unacceptable to speak to that woman that way but of course by the time security made it there things had calmed down and nothing was done. The elderly couple also told the woman she was an awful mother for having her kids out so late. It was the craziest thing.

 

In spite of some minor issues, we had a great cruise. I really liked the Sunshine a lot and wouldn't hesitate to book her again because of her food and entertainment choices as well as her lovely decor (the serenity deck was amazing -- when you could find a chair).

[bitemebaby]

What Dive In Movie was this ?

We went to Rogue One and Dr. Strange, had great loungers but got there right after first movie ended.

[lovingCCL]

What Dive In Movie was this ?

We went to Rogue One and Dr. Strange, had great loungers but got there right after first movie ended.

 

It was definitely either Hidden Figures or Rogue One. We sat in the same general area for both. If I had to say for sure, I think it was Hidden Figures.

[mirp]

Thanks for all chiming in.

 

It sounds like everyone had toilet issues -- was it the case that is was fixed quickly so not a big issue?

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums