sillysarah456

We did YTD and had a different server every night. We went to guest services at the end of the week and had them add $$ to our prepaid gratuities, to hopefully get around to everyone!

Thanks for input guys! I still have tons of research to do, but you have all been very helpful. I just found this itinerary on HAL which looks pretty good, inside starting at 999 in October. I am really not thinking about this cruise until next year, just trying to see where my best bets will be.

Athens--4pm

Kusadasi-8-6

Rhodes-8-5

Santorini-8-5

Katakalon-8-5

Sea Day

Naples 8-6

Rome

Monday at Sea, Kataklon on Sunday

:)

It is unlimited for the week? or just the dayfor 14.95

The whole week!

They are each only 15-20 minutes long, so not very long. They only play one per "session." So it is open from like 7-10pm and they just replay the same one over and over again. They would play a different movie if it was open from 10-1pm in the afternoon, or whatever.

We REALLY wanted to see planet earth, as that is the only "adult" one (we don't have any kids). But of the ones we saw, "Just the Rides" was the best!

Thanks everyone for your advice! Perhaps I will save a little more to get the itinerary I want. If anyone sees this, of those ports, which one would you be first to drop?

Hi Sarah. Did the hot chocolate warm you up the last night while you were watching the movie? Dan felt bad for you guys sitting out there in the cold. It was nice to meet you guys and glad you had a good time. It sounds like you did a lot in 6 days. I hope you have developed a love of cruising. The Breeze was a great place to start.

 

By the way I was cold on that ship most of the time too. I have been on cruises before in late January and the port stops were much warmer than these stops.

It was so nice to meet you too! Yes, that was so nice of him to bring us some hot chocolate, please thank him again fro us! It did warm us up! I am definitely planning our next cruise!

Thanks for taking time to write this review. As I will been sailing on the Breeze April 5, with the same itinerary I wanted to know if there are 1 or 2 elegant nights?

2 Elegant nights! We thought they were both the sea days going into this cruise, but they were the first sea day and our day in Grand Cayman. We (and several other people we saw) arrived to the dining room the second night in shorts, not realizing it was elegant night, and got turned away (well saw one person get turned away and turned around to go get dressed).

We were just on the Breeze and I will try to remember all the movies

I don't know the official titles, but I know the characters in them

Spongebob/Happy Feet Combo

Planet Earth

Ice Age

Happy Feet/Bamboo Express combo

"Just the rides"--which is all the most fun stuff from all the shows

Speed Racer and Log Ride combo

I think that was it. We bought the unlimited pass, we saw "Just the rides" first and we loved it, then we went to see Planet Earth, but the guy played the wrong show (Sponge bob/happy feet), and tried to convince us we read the schedule wrong (but we didn't), we had an unlimited pass, so he said we could come back later and if it wasn't busy in would play Planet Earth for us. We came back later, but a bulb was broken and they weren't showing anything. We came back the next day to try again, but it was busy, so they wouldn't show planet earth, but we stayed to watch Ice Age instead. For Ice Age, the chairs don't move! Just FYI, was not as enjoyable.

The problem is that your $1000 cost is not really reasonable unless somebody has a terrific last minute discount. The Emerald Princess does an itinerary (this summer) between Athens and Naples that includes Santorini, but you are going to probably need to pay at least $1400 per person for the cheapest cabin. The Celebrity Constitution has a very nice Sept 10 eight night itinerary between Rome (Civitavecchia) and Istanbul that includes both Athens and Santorini. IMHO that is an amazing itinerary and you might be able to get an inside cabin for about $1200-$1300. But keep in mind that airfares to Europe are pretty expensive and will add at least $1000 per person to your cost. And when doing these kind of cruises it is always wise to fly-in at least 1 day early (which means a hotel night) in case of airline delays.

 

As to web sites, there are some well known online cruise agencies that have excellent data bases that can be searched for this kind of info (it is where I found the two cruises I mentioned). But Cruise Critic posting rules do not allow me to disclose the name of any agency :(.

 

Hank

Thanks, perhaps I will try google again. But this is really my frustration. That there are a few cruises that go to these place for over $1000, and that's great, and then there are plenty of cruises that ALMOST go to all these places for a lot under $1000, particularly RCL and NCL. What makes these three places so special? Why wouldn't they include these three in an itinerary together?

And yes, I understand the additional expenses, this price requirement is just for the cruise, to keep me on budget overall.

Thanks

If you wants lots of things to do (which it sounds like you do), I would vote Breeze, we just got off the Breeze, I loved it! However, I think I am going to go with Conquest or Liberty for our next cruise, to try something a little smaller. Breeze holds a lot of people and I could tell! It might not be much better on Conquest, but I'll give it a shot.

I want a 6-8 day cruise that includes Naples (for Pompeii), Athens and Santorini (Mykonos would do, I suppose) for $1000 or less. I can't find it! Am I asking too much? I see ones that get really close...on NCL, RCCL and Celebrity...

The other ports are totally negotiable. Departure Port is up for grabs and doesn't even have to be round trip.

Is there a website where I can pick these ports and see all cruise lines that would offer them? I think I heard of this once, but can't find it.

Hi, I was curious....I have heard two different things, and we are doing that same itinerary this coming Sunday! Is there a white night party? Or a 70's disco party? How was the temperature on the boat, was the AC on at night? Did you need a light sweater? Inside? How about out on the deck at night? Thanks for any info!!

Hi, there was something call and "electric white night" party, I don't know about 70's. But I did not attend them.

I am always cold. So I found it chilly in most places inside the ship, but not horribly so, I wore a light sweater most of the time. The deck was lovely at night when we were closer the Caribbean. It was down right cold the night before we got back to Miami! You have complete control the the temp in the cabins, and ours worked very well.

I've only been on one cruise, but this was so cute! I lovingly took all of our towel animals and placed them on our window sill, but one day, in the move, the monkey(or something) lost one of his eyes! I could not find it on the carpet. The next day, our room steward had replaced his missing eye!! This made me way too happy, but very memorable.

Honestly, you can tell your husband if you ever find my alcohol on a ship, I don't care if it's the middle of the night. Please knock on my door instead of keeping what rightfully belongs to me, thank you very much.

Your husband was worried that it was too late at night? But not worried that they may be wondering what happened to their purchase? Hmmm....

Seriously though, glad you ended up doing the correct thing.

Maybe this doesn't need a response, but perhaps my explanation was confusing...so for clarification, I was worried it was too late, that's why we called GS instead of just knocking on their door. My husband was worried they were missing their alcohol, but we we SURE they would have received another one!

I was hoping to see an answer by now and that they got it to the correct person........

No, I need as much fodder as I can to show my husband he was wrong! haha

Okay, yes, we returned it, but by my insistence! It was actually pretty late, so I was worried the people in the room would be sleeping, so we called GS and they had someone come and pick it up. Also, if the had received a replacement they might be tempted to "steal" this second case, and if I had to be a good person, so did they! Let GS deal with it.

I'm glad to hear that Carnival will NOT replace it, once that room complained. This was my husbands argument.

Also, we certainly did not have enough room in our luggage for a box of Crown Royal! :P

I don't know if it was Carnival purchased or not, which could make a difference. It wasn't in the carnival "box," but it was in its own box so...

Thanks everyone for your thoughts!

On the final day of our cruise we saw our room steward in the hallway as we were going to our room, he just happened to be delivering our two bottles of alcohol we had purchased. The point of this being...he knew we had already received our alcohol.

We just went to the room for a minute and then didn't return til that evening. When we did, there was a Crown Royal box on the Floor with a sticker indicating it was suppose to be delivered to a different room!

What would you have done in this situation? Let me know, then I'll tell you what we did...nothing crazy, just want some opinions first, my husband and I did not agree!

WOW - sounds like you had a great time. We are doing this cruise in July, so the boat is almost sold out already. We have been on Royal's Oasis twice and never felt crowded except at the pools.

Do you have the daily Fun Times from this cruise that you can post. I am a planner and want to make sure I get to the shows etc.

 

Can't wait to see your pictures.

Same way on the breeze, it did not feel crowded expect by the pools, and a few "lines."

Sorry, no fun times! but the main shows generally started at 8!

Thanks for posting your review.

 

I appreciate how adventurous you are to explore "off the beaten path".

 

What were your favorite vegetarian items in the MDR?

I liked the burritos and the deli sandwich better than anything at the MDR. The soups were really good in the MDR (we didn't ask about chicken stock...), the entrees were very pretty, but nothing wowed us taste-wise.

I made this one!

Cucina Capitana for lunch!

The tower of beer that kept alluding us during pub trivia!

Grand Cayman and the prettiest thing we ate

JAMAICA

Cozumel: Another great day! Our tour was not scheduled to start until 11, and we could get off the ship at 10, I wish it had started earlier, but oh well.

We did the Mayan Ruins and Beach excursion through Carnival. We got off the ship at 10, looked around a little bit, and then found our meeting spot, where we met our guide, Jesus. He had us sign a waiver and gave us name tags that said his name! We left pretty close to 11, but not exactly, people were still trickling in. This excursion was of the ruins on Cozumel, not the mainland, I chose this so that we could do some other things besides see the ruins. And this is exactly what we got! Jesus was great, he was funny and so knowledgeable of everything Mayan. Even though they weren’t “huge” I was definitely impressed by the ruins and the stories behind them. That’s really what makes it for me, the stories. A lot of the other people in our tour did not seem as interested in Jesus’ stories. At the end, he shook our hands and specifically thanked us for paying attention! We had some time to shop at the end, and we bought some Mayan Calendars and some vanilla.

The original description of this tour included a tour of a tequila factory, which I was looking forward too! But a month or so out, I saw that they changed the description, and it no longer included this. I thought about asking the shore excursion desk about it, but then I didn’t. We did not do the tequila factory tour, but we did get a free margarita at the beach, which made up for it! I was happy.

The beach was Ocean’s Beach club, it was a beach, and was very crowded. We only had 1 ½ hours. We would have liked to take a boat out to a better snorkeling spot, but we were worried we would not be back in time. So we decided to just get some equipment (which was free!) and go out on our own. I’m certain it would have been better snorkeling out on the boat, but we saw plenty of fish near the beach. The snorkel didn’t fit around my glasses, so what I took them off and then what I could see was a little limited, but I still had a great time! We got back on the bus and headed back to the port where we bought more souvenirs and got back on the ship. Another lovely day!

Nothing special about our final sea day, again, I was never bored, and I’m not sure what else I would have “liked” to do, but it was nothing special. I did enjoy towel animal folding! We made an elephant for our steward (and left an extra tip), the final night, to show our appreciation. We thought our steward was great, but we did not ask him for a single thing. He cleaned our room and made us towel animals and that was all. We saw him a lot in the halls, he was chatty and remembered our names.

We did get room service once, and it was on time and fine for what it was.

We did the everglades tour with airport transfer on debarkation day. It was as expected but not awesome for us, the nature lovers. Our bus ride was great, and our guide, Juan Carlos, knew a lot and was very informative. Then we go to the safari park, and that was just okay. We saw alligators and lots of birds, but the boat was loud and scared the animals. This is what I expected from an air boat, but I thought maybe we would stop more and talk about the environment/animals etc. We went to MIA first, and then FLL. Overall, definitely worth the money vs. just an airport transfer. I would like if they maybe just did an Everglades hike/bus tour or something instead of the air boat.

Our flight home was non eventful. However, we arrived home to a flooded basement and no heat-house was 46F! It was a cold night and reminded us a lot of how we’d so much rather be back on that ship!!

Please feel free to ask any questions!

I would definitely sail with Carnival again, but it would depend on the itinerary. I am thinking Europe for our next vacation and Carnival does not do Europe well.

Port Days!

Jamaica: We did a non-carnival excursion with Island Marketing to Dunns River Falls and river tubing. I didn't do a Carnvial excursion because they did not have a Falls combo I liked. This tour was great! I’m glad it was our first excursion, because they just kept getting better! We met our driver, Calvin, who was very nice. He took us to the falls first so that it would be less crowded, which I think it was. We climbed the falls with the group, which was a lot of fun! Then we had a little time to look around the park. We got some great looks at some of the hummingbirds, including the Streamertails!

We did have to walk through the pushy market place, but they really weren't so bad. I do feel bad though, that had I decided I did want to buy something, how would I have been able to “shop?” Everyone just told us to put our heads down and say “No, thank you,” but what if I did want to look around, I think it would have been difficult/awkward.

Then we went river tubing, which was also a lot of fun. It was a little rushed, but enjoyable. We did get to stop half way and jump into the river. Saw a few birds. Our guides were nice and sang to us as we tubed down the river.

After this we just went back onto to the ship, we heard it was not worth it to “hang out” in this port, and we did want some time on the ship to do some of the activities without lines, like the ropes course and mini golf, which were both fun-despite the few children around!

Grand Cayman:

What an interesting and serendipitous day! Again, we were doing a non-carnival excursion-a hike on the Mastic Trail with a naturalist guide from the Natural Land Trust. The Friday before we left, I emailed our guide to make sure everything was still good to go. I’m glad I did, although did not realize how much right away! He emailed back saying everything was good to go, and that there was a very small chance that a “cold front” would come in and that this could mean the ships might dock at Spotts Beach instead of Georgetown and that if it did he would pick us up there, we were originally supposed to go rent a car ourselves and drive to the trail. This didn’t sound super likely, but I looked up some things about it here on CC and then forgot about it. Well guess where we anchored!! Spotts Beach! The waters were apparently very rough and this made a lot of water tours get cancelled. I was very glad we had decided to do a land tour!

Well when we got off at Spotts beach we weren’t sure what to do. We went to the information booth there and asked if they could try to call our guide, they tried both his numbers but said that neither were working! This was a bummer. We weren’t supposed to meet at the trail until closer to 9:30. With no other real options, we decided to wait until closer to 9:30 and see if he would show up. I did not respond to that e-mail (we were getting on the ship), so he actually didn’t know that we knew that we were supposed to meet him there! But luckily as 9:00 rolled around we spotted him! He was all set to meet us at the trail as well, and just before leaving his house had decided to check the Port schedule again, and saw that we were going to be at Spotts beach! We had originally planned to rent a car so that we could hike from one end of trail to the other-now without a car, we couldn’t do this. However, a few weeks before our trip, Stuart, our guide, had said there was a journalist interested in going on the trail and would we mind if they came along. I said no, we did not mind. It turned out to be a great thing, because they had a car, which allowed us to hike the whole trail! This cold front also meant the weather was amazing! Not too hot!

The hike itself was amazing! Stuart, from the National Land Trust was amazing, very knowledgeable, and full of fun stories of the Cayman Islands and the flora/fauna that live here. We saw so many species of birds and reptiles, and even an agouti! Most of these things we would have never seen had it not been for Stuart pointing them out. The highlights were the endemic Vitelline warbler, the rose-throated parrot, Cuban tree frog, and the Cayman racer (snake). There were quite a few other people on the trail (like maybe 10), I think because the waters were rough, people were finding inland activities. It is a fine trail to hike, but you certainly need to be able to walk several miles over “rough” terrain. We are originally from PA, which is known as the “rock belt” to hikers, so I’ve certainly hiked worse!

As we had originally planned to have a car for the day, what we were going to do after the hike (which took a little over 3 hours), was up in the air. The Mastic Trail is very close to Queen Elizabeth Botanic Garden, and Stuart was kind enough to agree to drop us off there if we wished, but we would have no ride back. I knew there was a bus that ran occasionally; Stuart suggested that hitch-hiking was not a horrible option, and worst case scenario we would call for a taxi. Our only other option for the rest of the day would be to go back to the port and figure something out…which sounded less appealing. So we went to the gardens and took our chances, it was getting late, so we did the “short loop” near the pond, saw quite a few of the endangered Blue Iguanas, and birds, and some plants, of course! It was nice. When we got back to the visitors center we inquired about the bus, and she said one had just been called (by someone else)! How lucky! She then said it was going to go out to the East End and then come back for us, but that turned out to be false, and the bus was there in just a few minutes! The bus THEN went around the East End, which was actually kind of nice, to see a little more of the island. The bus ride was close to 45 minutes, but it got us back to Spotts beach. At Spotts the line to get back on the tenders was horrendous, but did move very quickly, and they brought us some water.

Overall, another fantastic day, where lots of things could have gone very wrong, but turned into perfection! I certainly did not mind not having to drive on the opposite side of the road!

FTF note: Our room was on deck 1, we had planned to go upstairs at 8am to tell someone we were faster to the fun and get on the first tender, but as soon as we got to the elevator bank there was a hoard of people heading down to deck 0 for the tender already, we just joined in and got on! I was worried these were carnival excursion folks, but it didn’t matter, we got on the tender and at the dock in no time! This was definitely a plus of being on deck 1—not FTF!

First time review here from a first time cruiser! This was our honeymoon (2 years late)! We both work as biologists and are avid nature lovers. We are also both vegetarians, which will come into play in this review.

I will post the “words” review here in a few entries and then some follow up pictures.

We sailed on the Carnival Breeze 6 day from Jan 25-31st Ports-Ocho Rios, Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Mexico

Pre-cruise-I picked this cruise exclusively for the itinerary. My goal with cruising was to visit a lot of new places while only unpacking once! I’m all about the ports, this review will be port excursion heavy! I actually did not do a lot of specific ship research prior to booking this, but was pleasantly surprised to learn it was the biggest/newest ship in the fleet!

Pre Cruise Travel-We flew into Fort Lauderdale from Baltimore on Southwest because it was cheapest and convenient. I have a new found love for Southwest. They were great. I also changed the time of our flight twice and had no issues! There was fear of a snow/ice storm the Saturday we left, so I kept moving the flight earlier, to give ourselves more “options,” but in the end it didn’t matter, as the storm was just rain.

Had I known about cheaper flights to FLL a little earlier, I may have just sailed out of FLL because they similar itineraries, consider it a first time cruising mistake, but we did get on the Breeze, which was nice.

We stayed Saturday night at the Sleep Inn and Suites in Dania and they picked us up from the airport-van smelled a little weird. This hotel was perfect for our needs. The rooms are VERY tiny, but for one night, who cares. I’m glad we got there earlier than originally planned because we were able to walk the ~1 mile to the beach and see the sunset! I think it was called Hollywood Beach Park. It was a lovely walk and there was hardly anyone on the beach. A great start to our trip. It was little chilly for FL, in the 60s! There was also a nature center and a draw bridge on our walking route!

We then walked back to the hotel to look for food. Google says there are three options across the street, but both Pancho’s backyard and Don and Vinny’s are either closed permanently or just seasonally closed. The only option was Chinese-take-out, so that’s what we did, along with some beer and Ben and Jerry’s from the Walgreens. Dinner of Champions!

Embarkation day: We had a typical continental breakfast at the hotel. We hired SAS to pick us up at the hotel to go to POM. They said they would be there at 9:30. He was there at 9-early is always better! The van was completely full, but the ride was fine, driver was very nice.

We had FTF, but when we arrived at the port there was almost no one there. We were checked in, through security and in the waiting area by 10:30. My only complaint here is that some people had not filled out their health check forms, so we had to wait behind them while they filled them out, when ours were already done!

The ship did not board “early” we waited until almost 12:30 to board. By this time, however, the waiting area was extremely crowded and people were standing. I don’t know if this happens every time, or just when they don’t start boarding as early, but people were crowding the boarding area, and when they finally did call FTF, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to stand in this massive crowd of people (perhaps they were all Diamond/FTF?) or push my way to the front. We asked a few people if they were FTF (they weren’t) and then started making our way to the front. Glad we did. This was really the “best” time FTF worked for us, only other time was twice when we went to GS.

We got on the ship and had lunch, unpacked, etc. Our luggage was there as soon as we went to our room- also a FTF perk!

The ship was lovely. Our room was nice (bigger than our hotel room) and we had a forward Port-side Port-hole room at the interior room price. We never felt any major movement from the ship. There was a pretty consistent banging from somewhere every few minutes (maybe it was just doors?!?) I have no idea, but I was able to sleep through it and some of it I think had to do with the ship as it was just a few hours before/after leaving/entering the ports. I really don’t know.

The bed was fine.

Food good, even for vegetarians. Dinner was a little weird, in that they mostly had just one vegetarian entrée, but many vegetarian appetizers that we wanted to try. The first two nights we went to the dining room, one of us ordered the main dish, and the other just ordered three appetizers. The first day it worked out okay, the second day was a little weird. We got a little tired of being “different”, so we just ate at Lido the next day. We only went back to the dining room one other time, when they had two vegetarian entrees, it was more enjoyable. Dining room service was also a little slow, if there weren’t other things I wanted to do on the ship I wouldn’t have minded, it was typical “fine dining” timing, but we are “doers” and didn’t like missing the shows and such! We had YTD and were always seated immediately.

Vegetarian Lido food was delicious and abundant. Our favorite was Blue Iguana Cantina. We had breakfast burritos 3 mornings and regular burritos for dinner twice.

Lines were not horrible, or if they were we just found something without a line. The only time we had a problem was getting back on the ship from Grand Cayman, nearly everything was closed! I waited in line for close to an hour for a Deli Sandwich! However, it was delicious, the mozzarella/arugula sandwich ciabatta. Later, we went to the Q&A with Matt Mitchum and John Heald and someone complained about this. John said it was an “experiment” and would not be happening again, but had to do with staff hours/availability.

We did try the WCMC one night…hubby liked it, I did not care for it…I thought it had a weird after taste.

Activities on board: I think we tried at least everything once! We did both water slides once, ropes course, min-golf, went to the shows most nights, pub trivia, scavenger hunt, piano bar (Ben Gentry, very good!), Dive-in-movies (popcorn is not good…), Thrill theater, comedy show. All was nice! We were certainly never bored. I have two small “complaints.” 1. On sea days it was impossible to get a lounge chair, we spent way more of our time looking for a place to lounge than actually lounging. I think this is just a factor of there being so many people on board, so for our next cruise I think we would pick a smaller/older ship and hope it doesn’t sell out (I believe this one did!). Second, we went to the 8pm entertainment shows just about every night. Between 9-11 I feel like there was not as much to do! We were kind of interested in going to the night club, but it didn’t open until 11, we sat at the piano bar a lot, but generally got bored/tired and went to bed! I need a little more constant activity during these hours in order to stay awake!

But at least we slept well!