Carnival Panorama July 1-8, 2023 Trip Report: Bar Takeovers, Bangin' Breakfasts, & Bucket Worshipping

[Beav1279]

12 hours ago, TaraLynne said:

Thank you! I don't remember seeing a QR code above the phone but then...I didn't know what to look for. I asked some other cruisers throughout the week and they didn't know either so apparently this isn't well known? Weird.

I would have had no idea if I hadn't been sitting at the desk one day and noticed the QR code. I'm assuming most people don't know about it because each morning when I ordered, it was up to my room in less than 20 minutes.

[TaraLynne]

"As soon as I can" this past month is apparently never working out but I'm gonna try to wrap up this report uhhh let's say sooner rather than later. Thankfully only a little over a day and a half left to write about 🙂 Here's the towel animal we came back to, to make up for my tardiness? haha

 

Anyway, we got back on the ship and I rushed to wash off the dirt from our Cabo excursion so that I could get up to a higher deck and watch us sail away! I did so from the Tides pool area and the view was great but it was pretty dang windy...

 

 

 

Next up we tried to do the SkyRide but as I mentioned, it was windy...and now that I'm thinking about it again I'm so annoyed with myself that I didn't do it earlier in the week 😠

 

We spent that afternoon doing a bit of meandering and checking off the "Casino Bar" on our bar game cards. (PS I still maintain this was a weird inclusion in the game because there is in fact no bar in the casino, and we didn't feel like gambling...so we basically had to just hang around until we could flag down a server, then wait around for a pretty lengthy time to get our drinks, all to have the receipt that said "Casino Bar" on it, heh)

 

Eventually it was time to get ready for dinner, which we did, and then had barely enough time to get another of our fave drinks because for the first time all week (that I saw) the Alchemy Bar was PACKED. But hey, we needed another Cucumber Sunrise for the road!

 

The road being the second formal dinner night, that is 😉

 

Unfortunately I was, errr, already a few drinks in by the time we sat down to dinner so I only took one picture (will get to that in a moment). I also wasn't hungry enough for an appetizer (plus I believe what they had for appetizers that night didn't appeal to me anyway) but I did order the lobster tail for dinner. Mine was really small but Dean's was a more proper size! And they tasted just fine 🙂 (I mean it's no fresh Cape Cod or Maine lobster, but what can you do)

 

Oh, and just FYI because I recall seeing some discussion about this when researching this cruise - yes, you COULD order two lobster tails at no additional cost!

 

Now for the single picture I took...

 

Yes, it's low quality, but that's because my phone wouldn't focus on what I wanted it to with how up close and personal I wanted to get to this crème brulée. Yes, that's what this is supposed to be, and it was probably the worst one I've ever had in my entire life. (And I've had a LOT of crème brulée.) Basically it was like they dumped three times as much sugar on top as they should have, because the top crust was so thick I had to spear it with the tip of my spoon to get it to crack at all, and underneath the top layer was another layer of just...wet sugar.

 

The custard portion tasted fine, but overall, yuck.

 

After dinner we basically went right to the Celestial Strings show, and although to be honest the original plan was just to go to it so that we could get our final bar checked off by getting a drink in the Liquid Lounge...we ended up staying for the entire show - the only show we went to all week - because it's just. that. Amazing. Like seriously a show you shouldn't miss, and this is coming from a former theater major who has sung with 3 successful cover bands and starred in two parody musicals, one of which went semi-viral (lolol, I'm being like...half sarcastic, here...but point being I have a lot of musical and theater and musical theater experience and I really really loved this show ).

 

I took a bunch of videos and photos but I also don't want to spoil it because I was so dang pleasantly surprised and don't want to take that away from other potential first-time viewers, so here are just a couple of my better pics  🙂

 

 

After the show we met up with Dean's parents and brother for another piano bar night! They'd already snagged the good seats, so I ran off to Alchemy for another of their drinks, and finally caught the infamous multi-drink pour!

 

 

 

This time I had the Perfect Storm and it was an awesome drink as well, but just a titch below the Cucumber Sunrise for yumminess 😉

 

 

Anyway, it was another fun (and late) night at the piano bar (really can't talk up Alejandro enough!). And then everyone but me went to bed and I went dancing at the LGBTQ+ party where I met some really nice people and had wayyyyy too much fun and went to bed way wayyyy wayyyyyy too late, giving up on dropping our completed bar game cards at the organizer's stateroom and making for a very, errr, slow last day at sea....which I'll get into in my next entry 😉

[TaraLynne]

On 8/4/2023 at 9:44 AM, Beav1279 said:

I would have had no idea if I hadn't been sitting at the desk one day and noticed the QR code. I'm assuming most people don't know about it because each morning when I ordered, it was up to my room in less than 20 minutes.

lol maybe it's better that fewer people know about it 😄

[mamiamjo]

On 7/11/2023 at 4:17 PM, skrufy said:

Let me clarify. We are platinum and have dropped our luggage off early in the cabin many times. You are correct. The cabins are not ready for everyone until 1:30 but you are able to go to your cabin, open the hall doors, go in and drop you luggage off and then leave.

Just a quick cautionary note to anyone taking advantage of this. On our last cruise in March, we boarded the ship and as outlined above, went to the cabin which wasn't ready yet, but we dropped off my jacket (hung it up) and put the Soda and Monster Energy we brought onboard in the fridge so we wouldn't have to carry it to lunch. We then proceeded to eat and came back to the cabin somewhere around 1:30 (since the cabins should be ready by then).

Well, when we got back to the cabin, it turns out our drinks and my jacket were gone. We couldn't find or get a hold of the cabin steward, so I went down and waited in the short, but slow moving (Due to the people in front of me trying to change cabins 😞 ) Plat/Diamond line at customer service to let them know about my missing items which took about 30 minutes.

When I got back to the cabin again, they had called housekeeping and got a hold of our cabin steward, who brought back "most" of my drinks (1 of the Monsters was missing), but he didn't have my jacket. So, at the cabin steward's suggestion, I went back down to customer service to have them check the Lost & Found but it wasn't there. They said that I should check back later to see if it was there after all of the recently collected items had been turned in. I was eventually able to get my jacket back, but only after 3 trips to the customer service desk and about an hour's worth (all together) of waiting in line.

 

For our next cruise, my plan is to try to find the cabin steward when we drop off our items so that they know these weren't left over from the previous cruise. Maybe also add a luggage tag to anything we put in the cabin. Any other ideas?

Edited August 10, 2023 by mamiamjo

[EllaDuChien]

18 hours ago, mamiamjo said:

For our next cruise, my plan is to try to find the cabin steward when we drop off our items so that they know these weren't left over from the previous cruise. Maybe also add a luggage tag to anything we put in the cabin. Any other ideas?

 

What I do is put luggage tags on anything I leave in the room.  Those have the current sail date on them so the steward can see that they are not from the previous sailing.  If I see a steward, I let them know that I left stuff there.

[Jamman54]

19 hours ago, mamiamjo said:

Just a quick cautionary note to anyone taking advantage of this. On our last cruise in March, we boarded the ship and as outlined above, went to the cabin which wasn't ready yet, but we dropped off my jacket (hung it up) and put the Soda and Monster Energy we brought onboard in the fridge so we wouldn't have to carry it to lunch. We then proceeded to eat and came back to the cabin somewhere around 1:30 (since the cabins should be ready by then).

Well, when we got back to the cabin, it turns out our drinks and my jacket were gone. We couldn't find or get a hold of the cabin steward, so I went down and waited in the short, but slow moving (Due to the people in front of me trying to change cabins 😞 ) Plat/Diamond line at customer service to let them know about my missing items which took about 30 minutes.

When I got back to the cabin again, they had called housekeeping and got a hold of our cabin steward, who brought back "most" of my drinks (1 of the Monsters was missing), but he didn't have my jacket. So, at the cabin steward's suggestion, I went back down to customer service to have them check the Lost & Found but it wasn't there. They said that I should check back later to see if it was there after all of the recently collected items had been turned in. I was eventually able to get my jacket back, but only after 3 trips to the customer service desk and about an hour's worth (all together) of waiting in line.

 

For our next cruise, my plan is to try to find the cabin steward when we drop off our items so that they know these weren't left over from the previous cruise. Maybe also add a luggage tag to anything we put in the cabin. Any other ideas?

We leave the room steward a note saying that we dropped off our luggage in the closet. Never had an issue. 😎

[mamiamjo]

Yeah we've left bags with luggage tags in the cabin before as well without issue. It seems that the problem for us this time stems from the fact that we didn't actually leave a bag, we kept our carryon bags with us. We dropped off drinks and a jacket, which didn't have tags on them. So I guess the lesson we learned is to be sure to tag anything that you drop off in the cabin so it's not mistaken for something left behind 🙂

[TaraLynne]

Can't believe I've finally reached the point where I'm writing about the last full day of our cruise! Needless to say after my late night on Thursday, I slept in as late as I could, and when I woke up I was the only one who wanted breakfast...but I wasn't about to pass up my final chance to get that sea day brunch skillet cake! I checked in on the app in my room and got the notification that my table was ready almost immediately. When I arrived I was seated at a two-top between a couple and a family of four, and as close as those tables are...let's just say that I can imagine this being super awkward for some people, but what can you do I guess.

 

So yes, I got the skillet cake (yet again no pastry service came around, though), and I also ordered the side of breakfast potatoes and corned beef hash. The skillet cake was missing one of its toppings (I think it was the guava stuff) and the potatoes and hash were barely even warm. The hash was also really dry (which is a common problem with corned beef hash in my experience, but this particular one was so dry I couldn't even eat half of it...I was practically choking it down, heh).

 

I went to the spa for a bit to use the steam rooms etc. and thankfully it wasn't too crowded despite being both a sea day and kind of chilly out, then Dean and I did the Game of Thrones trivia. And listen, as someone who has of course seen the entire show, read the books more times than I can count, been on dozens of panels for the show and books, AND used to run a Game of Thrones convention (for a decade, in fact)...the questions weren't hard for me, but weren't easy. One of them was tricky and was therefore the only one that I got wrong...but apparently two other teams also got 19 out of 20 correct, which I was...kind of surprised about, heh. In the end they brought one person up from each team for a tie breaker, which I answered correctly first, so I guess go me for winning the first ever cruise ship trivia game I ever took part in? ha

 

I also did Harry Potter trivia and only got one wrong there too, but another team got them all correct! Again surprising because most of them weren't easy questions, but I had fun, mainly because I was chatting with the people sitting at the tables around me throughout the game 🙂

 

The next couple hours was a mix of packing up for debarkation the next morning and getting ready for our Chef's Table dinner!

 

When researching whether or not the Chef's Table was worth it, I found...very little information? I even asked in our cruise FB group and got only vague answers. I saw somewhere that they try to keep details hush hush, and I get wanting to be surprised by the menu (though I'm guessing it changes on a very regular basis), so I'm going to try to toe the line between "vague to the point of no info" and "giving it all away" 🙂

 

Our Chef's Table group met up in the Atrium and was led into the kitchen, where we were instructed to wash our hands before being led to stand around a large table for the introduction course. Once that was finished (it took about 10-15 minutes to go over what we could expect from the evening and eat the small bites) we were led across the 'hall' (for lack of a better word) to the dining room, where they arranged us for the group photo before showing us to our assigned seats and giving us brief introductions to the staff.

 

The wine was immediately flowing, and first we were served a bread course (the main portion of which was absolutely delicious).

 

After the bread came three more courses (a mix of seafood/poultry/pork).

 

As a note, I wasn't drinking very much because, well, I'd partied too hard the night before and knew we had to get up fairly early the next morning, but from what I could tell they were pretty liberal with serving the wine to people who were drinking a lot faster 😉

 

After the bread and first three courses, we were taken on a tour of the kitchens, which included a little demonstration on how to make Carnival's chocolate melting cake. You were allowed to take photos of the kitchen, and I took plenty, but after hemming and hawing I decided it would be best to not share those. Not for any negative reason, I just feel weird sharing pictures that include people at work in what are essentially backstage jobs. (They might be available elsewhere, anyway)

 

We were given time for a bathroom break after the tour, then led back to the dining room for four more courses - three that were a mix of meats and vegetarian options, followed by a dessert course, with the experience capped off by some patisserie art...

 

(^Dean & I with our dessert sherry)

 

To give a brief review of the Chef's Table: With this dinner (which was $99 per person, plus whatever you decide to tip at the end) we received what I would consider 11 small courses (including the introduction bites, the bread, and the patisserie art). There were some things we didn't love, but that was due to personal tastes. There were other items that were surprisingly amazing. They were fairly liberal with the included wine, though I doubt one could get drunk unless you very rarely drink and/or aren't eating much of the food...because while the courses are of course small, it's still a LOT of food. As mentioned, it includes a neat little tour of the kitchen, a small cooking demonstration (guessing it's always the melting cake), and you get the melting cake recipe and a print of the group photo at the end. It lasted about 2-2.5 hours and was definitely worth it - a really nice cap at the end of our cruise 🙂

 

In fact, we were so full and I was so tired from the previous day (err...okay, night, ha) that we went right back to our cabin to finish packing and go to bed. And uhhh hopefully I can get to my last entry here - about the last morning and debarkation - sooner than it took me to get around to this one, ha.

 

P.S. We had been more in the room than out of it on this day, so it was also neat to come back from our dinner to our final towel animal ❤️

Edited August 17, 2023 by TaraLynne