Venezia July 25th - Aug 2nd - Mini Review

[steveknj]

I wanted to write this review while things were still fresh in my mind.

 

Background:  My wife and I (and sometimes with our kids) have been cruising since 2007 (with one sort of cruise on a tiny Premier ship in I think 2000).  We have sailed about 5 times on NCL, 2 times on RCCL and this was our third on Carnival and first since 2018 on the Horizon.   Our last two cruises, both after the Pandemic, were on NCL (Getaway and Breakaway) both out of NY.   We were kind of bored with both NCL ships and NCL in general seemed to go downhill.  The food was lackluster (except if you ate in the specialty restaurants) and there were few options to eat and the staff was meh.  So when we were ready for this year's cruise, we decided to try something different and then this ship popped into our radar.   Italian style was something different which appeal to us, and after getting kind of bored during our last two cruises, we wanted something "fun".   And since this went to 2 ports we hadn't been to Grand Turk (which was on our Horizon itinerary but we never got there) and St. Thomas, this appealed to us (the third port San Juan we had been to a couple of times and liked it).  

 

After reading the early reviews and watching some YouTube videos we became a bit nervous about this cruise.  Between all the publicity about fights, and long lines and crowds, and talk of people being "low life" we were apprehensive.   As it turned out we had mostly a very positive experience.  I'm always of the thought that cruises are what you make of them and we were able to make a lot out of this cruise!

 

Embarkation:   Our previous cruises always left on a weekend so it was kind of strange for us to have to deal with Manhattan on a Tuesday.  We live in NJ so se hopped on a Train (we usually take a bus, but we worried about traffic heading into the city), and from Penn Station got in a cab, which was a disaster as there was something going on and traffic was horrible, and the cab ride cost about $30, and I remember it being $20 other times.  We got there about 11:45 for our 11:30 check in.  No worries, breezed through security and check in, waited about 15 minutes until our station was called and was on the ship.   So no major issues here.  Went as expected once we got to the pier.  We'd seen enough reviews to know to do La Strada (on deck 5) for lunch the first day and it was mostly empty.  I'm sure Lido was crowded.  Only glitch on Embarkation day was our ONE piece of luggage didn't make it to our room until around 7pm, so we went to dinner in our sweaty clothes.  Not a huge deal really, but didn't like to have to wait.

 

Cabin:  We had cabin 7303, mid ship balcony.   The cabin was fairly roomy but standard balcony cabin on most ships.   Nice Italian decor all around the cabin including a nice mural on the wall behind the bed.  Plenty of storage for 2 people.   Loved that there were 4 USB ports and it meant we didn't even need to use my extra European adapter. Bathroom was small but I the shower was powerful and hot, and had no issues with the glass door as others have reported.   There were two issues we found.  One, the extra hangers in the closet clanged to the ship's movement.  We took them off the bar after the first night, no issue.  The second was the divider between balconies banged a bit on windy nights.   I thought the beds themselves were comfortable and the pillows were great.   We had our cabin done once a day, and got towel animals every day.  Only got them 2x on NCL.  Yeah, it's hokey but I always felt it was a nice touch.  To each their own.

 

Food:   From all the reviews, I thought the food was going to be horrible.   One thing I've always liked about Carnival is that there are so many options for lunch and indeed we did do a few of them.   I know lots of folks complained about long lines and we never had that issue at all.   We went to Guys burgers 2x and both times, we walked right up and got a burger (I think the first time there was ONE person ahead of us).  They had two lines going, so maybe that's something new from the earlier cruises.   We did the Chinese and pizza for lunch on other days, again no lines, and the food was fine (though the pizza was just OK, but I've spend most of my life eating NY pizza and well it's just not that).   We did salads a couple of days and had some really good desserts.  I didn't like the ice cream (Swirls) and we only had that one time.   As for the MDR, we ate breakfast and most dinners there.  The system where you make a "reservation" on the app worked well.  There were stories about having to wait an hour or more to get a table and that never happened.  We'd make our reservation as we left our rooms and by the time we got down there, our table was ready.  The app always said under 10 minutes and that was correct every time.   The food was good if not spectacular most times (great French Toast, and bagels and lox for breakfast, I also enjoyed some other dishes for dinner) but had two bad dinners, a veal marsala that tasted like a plate of salt (I tend not to like my food too salty) and a jerk pork that was just WAY too spicy.   The service was generally good and I give credit to the waiters who took the time to call us by our names.  I like that kind of personal thing..  We ate at the steakhouse one night and had a very good "cowboy" steak and excellent French Onion soup (I will say the steakhouse on NCL was slightly better).   The one disappointment with the food venues was at the Marco Polo dining room where they had a pasta lunch every day.  We didn't care for how the pasta was cooked and service was kinda slow.  I will say, the food wasn't always as hot as I liked, but it was far from ice cold either.  The last night, the service in the main dining room was VERY slow.  I don't know if that was because they had a crowd that was too big to handle.   We tend to be early eaters so that helped so we ate dinner between 5 and 5:30 every night.

 

Entertainment:   The usual assortment of trivia games (a major disappointment on NCL but great on this ship), Deal or No Deal, Bingo, Family Feud and standard cruise stage shows (not broadway productions like on NCL and RCCL).   They were fine, and entertaining.  But as we have found on our previous cruises, they really put the "Fun" in fun ships.   MarQ, the CD was great and his staff was terrific.   They take the time to try and meet everyone, and make sure everyone is having fun.  They had two fun trivia parties, a Motown one and a 90s one that were a blast.   Plus they had an Italian Fest (gelato eating contest?) and other activities.  There was little boredom to be had.  It's always been my favorite part of doing a Carnival Cruise.  They had a couple of bands playing that were pretty good, and a string trio.  We spent a lot of time in the Gondola Lounge listening to music.  The comedians were fine.  Nothing special, but again no issues getting into any of the shows unless you got their as the show was starting.  Nothing worse than what we encountered on NCL.  We usually like to watch karaoke but didn't this time because it was very loud in the lounge they held it in and the music that was being chosen wasn't our taste (mostly hip hop from what we could hear).

 

The Ship:  Others have mentioned that it's laid out like the Vista or Horizon and I liked the layout of the Horizon when we sailed her previously so we got used to it pretty fast.  I know people complain about crowds on here, but really I didn't find it any worse than any of the other ships I've been on.   There were few bottlenecks and there were parts of the ship that were quiet where you can find a seat and relax.  I really liked on floor eleven above the main Lido pool there was a nice sitting area where we spent some time.   We didn't notice anyone getting out of line, no fights nor did I hear of any happening.   Even the kids on the ship were generally well behaved.  Maybe we just got lucky, I don't know, but it was never a problem for us.  Sure by the pool you couldn't get a lounge chair (but what ship doesn't have that problem?) but if you go up a couple of levels there were plenty.

 

Debarkation:   No major issues, except the usual "hurry up and wait".   We had them handle our bags and didn't get off the ship until 9:30.  NY needs to do something about the taxi situation though.  They need a formal taxi stand because when we got to the stand across the street from the pier, it was a free for all.  No taxi line, and you'd hail a cab and they wanted to charge you $40 cash for a ride to port authority bus terminal.   It didn't used to be like that.   We ended up walking to P.A. as it was a really nice morning.   But that's not Carnival's fault.

 

Overall Impression:  We had a blast.  I'm convinced that people like to complain.   Nothing is perfect and there were certainly things we didn't like as described above, but it was certainly NOT worse than any cruise I've been on and certainly better than most.  There was little to non of of the things that got me nervous about taking this cruise.  Lines...not that long....crowds...manageable.   Wait times....nothing excessive.

 

I'd be happy to field any questions folks might have.  I'll start out by saying...sorry, no, we didn't keep any of the dailys or food menus as we just used our phones.

 

[latebloomer56]

13 minutes ago, steveknj said:

I wanted to write this review while things were still fresh in my mind.

 

Background:  My wife and I (and sometimes with our kids) have been cruising since 2007 (with one sort of cruise on a tiny Premier ship in I think 2000).  We have sailed about 5 times on NCL, 2 times on RCCL and this was our third on Carnival and first since 2018 on the Horizon.   Our last two cruises, both after the Pandemic, were on NCL (Getaway and Breakaway) both out of NY.   We were kind of bored with both NCL ships and NCL in general seemed to go downhill.  The food was lackluster (except if you ate in the specialty restaurants) and there were few options to eat and the staff was meh.  So when we were ready for this year's cruise, we decided to try something different and then this ship popped into our radar.   Italian style was something different which appeal to us, and after getting kind of bored during our last two cruises, we wanted something "fun".   And since this went to 2 ports we hadn't been to Grand Turk (which was on our Horizon itinerary but we never got there) and St. Thomas, this appealed to us (the third port San Juan we had been to a couple of times and liked it).  

 

After reading the early reviews and watching some YouTube videos we became a bit nervous about this cruise.  Between all the publicity about fights, and long lines and crowds, and talk of people being "low life" we were apprehensive.   As it turned out we had mostly a very positive experience.  I'm always of the thought that cruises are what you make of them and we were able to make a lot out of this cruise!

 

Embarkation:   Our previous cruises always left on a weekend so it was kind of strange for us to have to deal with Manhattan on a Tuesday.  We live in NJ so se hopped on a Train (we usually take a bus, but we worried about traffic heading into the city), and from Penn Station got in a cab, which was a disaster as there was something going on and traffic was horrible, and the cab ride cost about $30, and I remember it being $20 other times.  We got there about 11:45 for our 11:30 check in.  No worries, breezed through security and check in, waited about 15 minutes until our station was called and was on the ship.   So no major issues here.  Went as expected once we got to the pier.  We'd seen enough reviews to know to do La Strada (on deck 5) for lunch the first day and it was mostly empty.  I'm sure Lido was crowded.  Only glitch on Embarkation day was our ONE piece of luggage didn't make it to our room until around 7pm, so we went to dinner in our sweaty clothes.  Not a huge deal really, but didn't like to have to wait.

 

Cabin:  We had cabin 7303, mid ship balcony.   The cabin was fairly roomy but standard balcony cabin on most ships.   Nice Italian decor all around the cabin including a nice mural on the wall behind the bed.  Plenty of storage for 2 people.   Loved that there were 4 USB ports and it meant we didn't even need to use my extra European adapter. Bathroom was small but I the shower was powerful and hot, and had no issues with the glass door as others have reported.   There were two issues we found.  One, the extra hangers in the closet clanged to the ship's movement.  We took them off the bar after the first night, no issue.  The second was the divider between balconies banged a bit on windy nights.   I thought the beds themselves were comfortable and the pillows were great.   We had our cabin done once a day, and got towel animals every day.  Only got them 2x on NCL.  Yeah, it's hokey but I always felt it was a nice touch.  To each their own.

 

Food:   From all the reviews, I thought the food was going to be horrible.   One thing I've always liked about Carnival is that there are so many options for lunch and indeed we did do a few of them.   I know lots of folks complained about long lines and we never had that issue at all.   We went to Guys burgers 2x and both times, we walked right up and got a burger (I think the first time there was ONE person ahead of us).  They had two lines going, so maybe that's something new from the earlier cruises.   We did the Chinese and pizza for lunch on other days, again no lines, and the food was fine (though the pizza was just OK, but I've spend most of my life eating NY pizza and well it's just not that).   We did salads a couple of days and had some really good desserts.  I didn't like the ice cream (Swirls) and we only had that one time.   As for the MDR, we ate breakfast and most dinners there.  The system where you make a "reservation" on the app worked well.  There were stories about having to wait an hour or more to get a table and that never happened.  We'd make our reservation as we left our rooms and by the time we got down there, our table was ready.  The app always said under 10 minutes and that was correct every time.   The food was good if not spectacular most times (great French Toast, and bagels and lox for breakfast, I also enjoyed some other dishes for dinner) but had two bad dinners, a veal marsala that tasted like a plate of salt (I tend not to like my food too salty) and a jerk pork that was just WAY too spicy.   The service was generally good and I give credit to the waiters who took the time to call us by our names.  I like that kind of personal thing..  We ate at the steakhouse one night and had a very good "cowboy" steak and excellent French Onion soup (I will say the steakhouse on NCL was slightly better).   The one disappointment with the food venues was at the Marco Polo dining room where they had a pasta lunch every day.  We didn't care for how the pasta was cooked and service was kinda slow.  I will say, the food wasn't always as hot as I liked, but it was far from ice cold either.  The last night, the service in the main dining room was VERY slow.  I don't know if that was because they had a crowd that was too big to handle.   We tend to be early eaters so that helped so we ate dinner between 5 and 5:30 every night.

 

Entertainment:   The usual assortment of trivia games (a major disappointment on NCL but great on this ship), Deal or No Deal, Bingo, Family Feud and standard cruise stage shows (not broadway productions like on NCL and RCCL).   They were fine, and entertaining.  But as we have found on our previous cruises, they really put the "Fun" in fun ships.   MarQ, the CD was great and his staff was terrific.   They take the time to try and meet everyone, and make sure everyone is having fun.  They had two fun trivia parties, a Motown one and a 90s one that were a blast.   Plus they had an Italian Fest (gelato eating contest?) and other activities.  There was little boredom to be had.  It's always been my favorite part of doing a Carnival Cruise.  They had a couple of bands playing that were pretty good, and a string trio.  We spent a lot of time in the Gondola Lounge listening to music.  The comedians were fine.  Nothing special, but again no issues getting into any of the shows unless you got their as the show was starting.  Nothing worse than what we encountered on NCL.  We usually like to watch karaoke but didn't this time because it was very loud in the lounge they held it in and the music that was being chosen wasn't our taste (mostly hip hop from what we could hear).

 

The Ship:  Others have mentioned that it's laid out like the Vista or Horizon and I liked the layout of the Horizon when we sailed her previously so we got used to it pretty fast.  I know people complain about crowds on here, but really I didn't find it any worse than any of the other ships I've been on.   There were few bottlenecks and there were parts of the ship that were quiet where you can find a seat and relax.  I really liked on floor eleven above the main Lido pool there was a nice sitting area where we spent some time.   We didn't notice anyone getting out of line, no fights nor did I hear of any happening.   Even the kids on the ship were generally well behaved.  Maybe we just got lucky, I don't know, but it was never a problem for us.  Sure by the pool you couldn't get a lounge chair (but what ship doesn't have that problem?) but if you go up a couple of levels there were plenty.

 

Debarkation:   No major issues, except the usual "hurry up and wait".   We had them handle our bags and didn't get off the ship until 9:30.  NY needs to do something about the taxi situation though.  They need a formal taxi stand because when we got to the stand across the street from the pier, it was a free for all.  No taxi line, and you'd hail a cab and they wanted to charge you $40 cash for a ride to port authority bus terminal.   It didn't used to be like that.   We ended up walking to P.A. as it was a really nice morning.   But that's not Carnival's fault.

 

Overall Impression:  We had a blast.  I'm convinced that people like to complain.   Nothing is perfect and there were certainly things we didn't like as described above, but it was certainly NOT worse than any cruise I've been on and certainly better than most.  There was little to non of of the things that got me nervous about taking this cruise.  Lines...not that long....crowds...manageable.   Wait times....nothing excessive.

 

I'd be happy to field any questions folks might have.  I'll start out by saying...sorry, no, we didn't keep any of the dailys or food menus as we just used our phones.

 

Love your review, thank you. We sail in 27 days but have been reading more positive reviews. Only one question, did you notice pot smell on your balcony? I don't care if they break the law on the upper outside deck or smoking areas. I do care about smoking of any kind on the balconies, not only the stench but for safety reasons. I love my balcony in the morning and we sit out at night.

Thanks glad you had a good cruise.

[Jamman54]

Thanks for the balanced review! We'll be on her for 21 days starting next month so it's refreshing to read a review that wasn't just a complaint list! 

[steveknj]

21 minutes ago, latebloomer56 said:

Love your review, thank you. We sail in 27 days but have been reading more positive reviews. Only one question, did you notice pot smell on your balcony? I don't care if they break the law on the upper outside deck or smoking areas. I do care about smoking of any kind on the balconies, not only the stench but for safety reasons. I love my balcony in the morning and we sit out at night.

Thanks glad you had a good cruise.

 

I didn't notice pot smell on the balcony where I was, but I did notice it up around Lido, so that COULD have been coming from a cabin up on 11.

[princess76021]

39 minutes ago, steveknj said:

I wanted to write this review while things were still fresh in my mind.

 

Background:  My wife and I (and sometimes with our kids) have been cruising since 2007 (with one sort of cruise on a tiny Premier ship in I think 2000).  We have sailed about 5 times on NCL, 2 times on RCCL and this was our third on Carnival and first since 2018 on the Horizon.   Our last two cruises, both after the Pandemic, were on NCL (Getaway and Breakaway) both out of NY.   We were kind of bored with both NCL ships and NCL in general seemed to go downhill.  The food was lackluster (except if you ate in the specialty restaurants) and there were few options to eat and the staff was meh.  So when we were ready for this year's cruise, we decided to try something different and then this ship popped into our radar.   Italian style was something different which appeal to us, and after getting kind of bored during our last two cruises, we wanted something "fun".   And since this went to 2 ports we hadn't been to Grand Turk (which was on our Horizon itinerary but we never got there) and St. Thomas, this appealed to us (the third port San Juan we had been to a couple of times and liked it).  

 

After reading the early reviews and watching some YouTube videos we became a bit nervous about this cruise.  Between all the publicity about fights, and long lines and crowds, and talk of people being "low life" we were apprehensive.   As it turned out we had mostly a very positive experience.  I'm always of the thought that cruises are what you make of them and we were able to make a lot out of this cruise!

 

Embarkation:   Our previous cruises always left on a weekend so it was kind of strange for us to have to deal with Manhattan on a Tuesday.  We live in NJ so se hopped on a Train (we usually take a bus, but we worried about traffic heading into the city), and from Penn Station got in a cab, which was a disaster as there was something going on and traffic was horrible, and the cab ride cost about $30, and I remember it being $20 other times.  We got there about 11:45 for our 11:30 check in.  No worries, breezed through security and check in, waited about 15 minutes until our station was called and was on the ship.   So no major issues here.  Went as expected once we got to the pier.  We'd seen enough reviews to know to do La Strada (on deck 5) for lunch the first day and it was mostly empty.  I'm sure Lido was crowded.  Only glitch on Embarkation day was our ONE piece of luggage didn't make it to our room until around 7pm, so we went to dinner in our sweaty clothes.  Not a huge deal really, but didn't like to have to wait.

 

Cabin:  We had cabin 7303, mid ship balcony.   The cabin was fairly roomy but standard balcony cabin on most ships.   Nice Italian decor all around the cabin including a nice mural on the wall behind the bed.  Plenty of storage for 2 people.   Loved that there were 4 USB ports and it meant we didn't even need to use my extra European adapter. Bathroom was small but I the shower was powerful and hot, and had no issues with the glass door as others have reported.   There were two issues we found.  One, the extra hangers in the closet clanged to the ship's movement.  We took them off the bar after the first night, no issue.  The second was the divider between balconies banged a bit on windy nights.   I thought the beds themselves were comfortable and the pillows were great.   We had our cabin done once a day, and got towel animals every day.  Only got them 2x on NCL.  Yeah, it's hokey but I always felt it was a nice touch.  To each their own.

 

Food:   From all the reviews, I thought the food was going to be horrible.   One thing I've always liked about Carnival is that there are so many options for lunch and indeed we did do a few of them.   I know lots of folks complained about long lines and we never had that issue at all.   We went to Guys burgers 2x and both times, we walked right up and got a burger (I think the first time there was ONE person ahead of us).  They had two lines going, so maybe that's something new from the earlier cruises.   We did the Chinese and pizza for lunch on other days, again no lines, and the food was fine (though the pizza was just OK, but I've spend most of my life eating NY pizza and well it's just not that).   We did salads a couple of days and had some really good desserts.  I didn't like the ice cream (Swirls) and we only had that one time.   As for the MDR, we ate breakfast and most dinners there.  The system where you make a "reservation" on the app worked well.  There were stories about having to wait an hour or more to get a table and that never happened.  We'd make our reservation as we left our rooms and by the time we got down there, our table was ready.  The app always said under 10 minutes and that was correct every time.   The food was good if not spectacular most times (great French Toast, and bagels and lox for breakfast, I also enjoyed some other dishes for dinner) but had two bad dinners, a veal marsala that tasted like a plate of salt (I tend not to like my food too salty) and a jerk pork that was just WAY too spicy.   The service was generally good and I give credit to the waiters who took the time to call us by our names.  I like that kind of personal thing..  We ate at the steakhouse one night and had a very good "cowboy" steak and excellent French Onion soup (I will say the steakhouse on NCL was slightly better).   The one disappointment with the food venues was at the Marco Polo dining room where they had a pasta lunch every day.  We didn't care for how the pasta was cooked and service was kinda slow.  I will say, the food wasn't always as hot as I liked, but it was far from ice cold either.  The last night, the service in the main dining room was VERY slow.  I don't know if that was because they had a crowd that was too big to handle.   We tend to be early eaters so that helped so we ate dinner between 5 and 5:30 every night.

 

Entertainment:   The usual assortment of trivia games (a major disappointment on NCL but great on this ship), Deal or No Deal, Bingo, Family Feud and standard cruise stage shows (not broadway productions like on NCL and RCCL).   They were fine, and entertaining.  But as we have found on our previous cruises, they really put the "Fun" in fun ships.   MarQ, the CD was great and his staff was terrific.   They take the time to try and meet everyone, and make sure everyone is having fun.  They had two fun trivia parties, a Motown one and a 90s one that were a blast.   Plus they had an Italian Fest (gelato eating contest?) and other activities.  There was little boredom to be had.  It's always been my favorite part of doing a Carnival Cruise.  They had a couple of bands playing that were pretty good, and a string trio.  We spent a lot of time in the Gondola Lounge listening to music.  The comedians were fine.  Nothing special, but again no issues getting into any of the shows unless you got their as the show was starting.  Nothing worse than what we encountered on NCL.  We usually like to watch karaoke but didn't this time because it was very loud in the lounge they held it in and the music that was being chosen wasn't our taste (mostly hip hop from what we could hear).

 

The Ship:  Others have mentioned that it's laid out like the Vista or Horizon and I liked the layout of the Horizon when we sailed her previously so we got used to it pretty fast.  I know people complain about crowds on here, but really I didn't find it any worse than any of the other ships I've been on.   There were few bottlenecks and there were parts of the ship that were quiet where you can find a seat and relax.  I really liked on floor eleven above the main Lido pool there was a nice sitting area where we spent some time.   We didn't notice anyone getting out of line, no fights nor did I hear of any happening.   Even the kids on the ship were generally well behaved.  Maybe we just got lucky, I don't know, but it was never a problem for us.  Sure by the pool you couldn't get a lounge chair (but what ship doesn't have that problem?) but if you go up a couple of levels there were plenty.

 

Debarkation:   No major issues, except the usual "hurry up and wait".   We had them handle our bags and didn't get off the ship until 9:30.  NY needs to do something about the taxi situation though.  They need a formal taxi stand because when we got to the stand across the street from the pier, it was a free for all.  No taxi line, and you'd hail a cab and they wanted to charge you $40 cash for a ride to port authority bus terminal.   It didn't used to be like that.   We ended up walking to P.A. as it was a really nice morning.   But that's not Carnival's fault.

 

Overall Impression:  We had a blast.  I'm convinced that people like to complain.   Nothing is perfect and there were certainly things we didn't like as described above, but it was certainly NOT worse than any cruise I've been on and certainly better than most.  There was little to non of of the things that got me nervous about taking this cruise.  Lines...not that long....crowds...manageable.   Wait times....nothing excessive.

 

I'd be happy to field any questions folks might have.  I'll start out by saying...sorry, no, we didn't keep any of the dailys or food menus as we just used our phones.

 

Thank you for this!

Appreciate the time

hugs from the oven (texas)

[fair-winds39]

Thanks for your review. We feel the same way; our cruise is what we make it. We are looking forward to our Venezia cruise this October. Thanks again.

[Cherries Jubilee]

Really appreciate your review! My first Venezia cruise is in 85 days! I know everyone’s experience and tolerance is different. It’s probably better to expect some bumps and be pleasantly surprised when they are not an issue.

 

 I can’t wait!

 

@Jamman54 are you taking us with you on your Venezia trip?

[Old Fart Cruisers]

Thanks for taking the time to do this review.  We're looking forward to a 21-day B2B on Venezia starting September 23rd, so we're looking for any reviews we can find.

[smeesme]

I know this is kind of a weird question but did the French toast have raisins in it?

Thanks.

[Jamman54]

24 minutes ago, Cherries Jubilee said:

Really appreciate your review! My first Venezia cruise is in 85 days! I know everyone’s experience and tolerance is different. It’s probably better to expect some bumps and be pleasantly surprised when they are not an issue.

 

 I can’t wait!

 

@Jamman54 are you taking us with you on your Venezia trip?

Not a "live" review, but we'll be covering it like a glove. 😎

[Cherries Jubilee]

23 minutes ago, Jamman54 said:

Not a "live" review, but we'll be covering it like a glove. 😎

Thank you!!!

[Haljo1935]

Thanks @steveknj for sharing - glad to hear you mostly enjoyed your cruise and that things seem to be continuing to improve on the Venezia.

We'll be on B2B next week, so the timing of your post is perfect! Question - did there seem to be a bottleneck or delay in the Lido? We've read the buffet is not efficient due to the layout requiring everyone to go through the entire line even if they wanted something from only one section.

[WhiteOptima]

2 hours ago, Jamman54 said:

Not a "live" review, but we'll be covering it like a glove. 😎

I know you eat in the buffet like we do so will be anxious to here your take on the situation.

[Drose716]

Thanks for the fair & balanced review! We’re on in 6 days & your review is very in line with what I’m expecting based on many other carnival cruises.

[jimbo5544]

Nice detailed review, loved the perspective. 

[pe4all]

Thank you for taking the time for this detailed review.  I wasn't a fan of Horizon when we sailed on her at 60% capacity.  If we didn't have Haven access I really wouldn't have liked her at all with the crowds on Lido, etc.  Will definitely sail on Venezia in the future, as she is at my homeport. 

[AFS1970]

Thanks for the great review. We will be on board going to Canada in 42 days.

[edrussell]

Thanks so much for you review!!  We are going on our first ever Carnival cruise and it is on Venezia on Sept 8.  We had contemplated canceling it so many times because of everything we've read and watched.  Your review gives me so much hope that we will enjoy it.

 

You didn't mention the pool(s), what was your experience.

 

[sammee]

On 8/4/2023 at 2:01 PM, Jamman54 said:

Thanks for the balanced review! We'll be on her for 21 days starting next month so it's refreshing to read a review that wasn't just a complaint list! 

I'll be going in November and great to see some reassuring reviews.

[Lorain1]

Thank you for the in depth review. We are cruising to Canada in less than two weeks and I also was getting very nervous after all the negative reviews. I sincerely believe life is basically what you make of it and people need to just lighten up. Thanks again for reinforcing that!,

[Stick93]

@steveknj nice review - honest and informative . MarQ is really very talented and all the cruise directors on Carnival really set the tone of FUN on the ship. NCL has very nice ships but no identity of the program. Have many things going on catering to different ages and interest , but nothing that brings it together. Royal compares better to Carnival in terms of fun and entertainment. I did loved the Elvis show on the Getaway - was done very well and if you get to see choir of man on an NCL ship that was really great - the shows on carnival don’t come close to those. 
 

Happy travels….

[HappySails4U]

On 8/4/2023 at 1:41 PM, steveknj said:

NY needs to do something about the taxi situation though.  They need a formal taxi stand because when we got to the stand across the street from the pier, it was a free for all.  No taxi line

Thanks for your review.  We are sailing from NYC mid-Sept and my spouse will be super focused on the most efficient method of transportation from the ship to LGA.  We initially thought about using the Carnival shuttle but the horrible reviews made us reconsider.  In your opinion If the "taxi stand" is so horrible should we just plan to use Lyft ??? 

[shof515]

5 hours ago, HappySails4U said:

 In your opinion If the "taxi stand" is so horrible should we just plan to use Lyft ??? 

the whole taxi stand area is congested with fake uber/lyft, expensive ripoff taxi drivers, yellow cabs, etc. it can be a mess. it can be somewhat not easy getting a uber/lyft with the traffic in that area. what i do instead is i walk up to 11th ave or i walk a few blocks down to 46th st. the best part of walking is you can sometimes escape the very annoying surge pricing zone and save a few bucks

[steveknj]

On 8/4/2023 at 4:19 PM, smeesme said:

I know this is kind of a weird question but did the French toast have raisins in it?

Thanks.

 

No, which is good for me as I don't like raisins in French Toast.  Thick fluffy piece of bread, soft on the inside, crispy on the outside, with a tiny piece of dried peach on top (easily brushed off).

[steveknj]

On 8/4/2023 at 5:33 PM, Haljo1935 said:

Thanks @steveknj for sharing - glad to hear you mostly enjoyed your cruise and that things seem to be continuing to improve on the Venezia.

We'll be on B2B next week, so the timing of your post is perfect! Question - did there seem to be a bottleneck or delay in the Lido? We've read the buffet is not efficient due to the layout requiring everyone to go through the entire line even if they wanted something from only one section.

 

We only went to the buffet a few times, but yes, they DO make you go through the whole line rather than just for what you want.  For example, in the afternoons we enjoy coffee and sharing a piece of cake/pie.   We had to wait on line starting at the salad bar, through the main course and finally to dessert.   The line was never more than 5 minutes so it was not a big deal for us.  But yes, that could definitely improve.   The Marketplace is set up more traditional and I think this is one place that RCCL is better (If I recall, NCL is set up similar to how Carnival is).