Has anyone sailed on Carnival?

[DON M.]

We have our fifth cruise booked for this January on the Valor. We started with Carnival, tried Celebrity, returned to Carnival, tried RCCL, and returned to Carnival. We had a great time on Celebrity and RCCL and would sail both lines again under the right circumstances. However, we return to Carnival for certain itineraries, the "fun" factor and PRICE. RCCL has the most beautiful ships, IMO, but when checking prices in January, we were looking at $300-400 more per couple to sail RCCL on a 7-day Eastern itinerary. The Valor, a brand new ship, was too good of a deal to pass up.

 

In our opinion RCCL and Carnival are pretty evenly matched. Carnival does some things better and vice versa. We just won't pay that much more for the RCCL experience but will wait for a "deal" to sail RCCL again.

 

Kelly

 

Out of curiosity, I comparative checked the dotcom cruise agency we are using for a cruise in July. Rcl -Radiance,E.Carribean, in Jan., balcony, is $60.00 more per person than Carnival (valor). Sometimes price differences depend on the T.A. you use.

[Seaside2358]

I would not hesitate to go on Carnival again. Had a great time. Rooms are larger which is nice...

[momofmeg]

What I was refering to as amazing towel animals - is our cabin steward on Rccl went out of his way to amaze us with using articles we left in our room from putting sunglasses on the monkey with a baseball cap ect. I've never had another cruise line do that and Holland America does not do it at all. We

have never seen basket ball courts as large as they are on the voyager class ships- the smaller cruise ships do not have this. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The Voyager is still voted our best cruise ever.

 

If you leave your sun glasses out they always put them on your animals. I too always loved the hanging monkey. We had him on Fascination, Inspiration and Miracle. Our steward on the Fascination did another wierd animal that hung that sort of looked like a rabbit but he had a long spiky nose more like a parrot's beak. We were not sure what animal that was. We asked our steward if it was a rabbit and he said "yes, babbit" he did not speak english very well so I wondered if he even knew what we meant by rabbit. I have never been on a voyager class ship so I can add nothing to the basketball court.

 

My favorite towel animal of all was the mama and baby dophin. We had that on Miracle and also on Disney Wonder.

 

I was just going to add too I don't think we had the animals on our Princess cruise either. The Disney cruise except for the dophins the animals weren't as nice. On our first Sovereign cruise the steward took my daughter's night gown and fashioned it into an anchor. That was great-and it has never happend again- but we have always been particular to put away our clothes. My daughter had slovenly left her nighty on the floor-so the "anchor" we thought was a sweet little reminder not to be a slob.

 

I do think the towel animals depends on the steward's talent. If your steward is especially talented you get better animals. We learned that when traveling with others who had staterooms not right next to us that we did not always get the same animals.

[kfgarrow]

Out of curiosity, I comparative checked the dotcom cruise agency we are using for a cruise in July. Rcl -Radiance,E.Carribean, in Jan., balcony, is $60.00 more per person than Carnival (valor). Sometimes price differences depend on the T.A. you use.

Don-

We usually book an outside guarantee with Carnival instead of a balcony when we sail. RCCL has a better past guest program but we like rolling the dice with Carnival's guarantee program, which RCCL uses much more sparingly. Believe me, I price check a lot and for the dates and cabins we were looking at, Carnival had a definite price advantage.

 

Kelly

[Coolcruise02]

We have not found that much difference in the overall cruise experience between the three lines we have been on. Of course there are small things that vary from one to the other but they are less noticeable, particularly when you consider comparable classes of ships between the lines. Try different lines and you will be the best one to judge what works for you.