mamiamjo

Had one last week and really enjoyed it 🙂

We had a similar experience. No comps offered through day 5. DW approached Mihaela (casino host. Not sure of spelling), who said that all the restaurants were booked? Which didn’t make too much sense to us as they could’ve given us credit for Bonsai or Seafood Shack or Emeril’s or whatever. We just shrugged it off. Then the next day the same casino host called us in the cabin to offer us dinner at Rudi’s. I told DW that see, maybe her asking, prompted the offer, but DW informed me that when she had asked the casino host about the comps, she never told her, her name.

From last week

Spa Balcony Cabin: We were in Spa Balcony Cabin # 17283, which we enjoyed overall. Location: We loved that we were close to the elevators and that the cabin was very quiet. As I mentioned in the review this was probably the quietest cabin we've been in ever. No real noise form the hallway or elevators. No noise from the Lido deck (maybe because deck 17 doesn't open to the outside). We loved having access to the Spa Elevator and being just one deck down from Serenity. What we didn't like as much regarding the location was that deck 17 doesn't have direct access to the outside. We would have to go down to 16 or lower to get to the mid ship or back of the ship. This wasn't a real problem but something to get used to. Like to go to Guys Burgers we had to go down to 16, go outside then take the stairs back up to 17 to get to Guys. If we wanted to watch a Dive In Movie or some of the deck parties from above the Lido Deck, it made more sense to just watch from 18. Cabin Layout: I was originally concerned about the layout with the bed in the middle of the cabin. In reality, it wasn't as bad as i feared. Still the cabins are noticeably narrower than what we are used to and it is a bit tight trying to get around the bed all the time. I definitely wouldn't want to have more than two people in that cabin layout as it was still a bit congested. The good news was that I only hit my shin on the bed frame a couple of times. 🙂 Bathroom: We both thought the shower with shower door was an upgrade over the old shower with plastic shower curtain. The bathroom was a bit tight though, if both people needed to be in there at one time. TV: The TV was pretty big, but to tell you the truth, we turned it off when we got into the cabin and it stayed off the rest of the cruise. Also with it on the wall with the narrow walkway between it and the bed, just made it seem a bit even more crowded. AC: As I mentioned already there is some kind of AC issue going on in the forward elevator lobby and hallways on several decks and especially deck 17. I don't know if that affected the in cabin AC temperature or not, but imagine it could have. The AC was just OK but never seemed to really fully recover. We kept it at max cool and it never seemed to get quite cool enough. During the day it was ok but we do like it a bit cooler at night when we sleep. I basically had to sleep with just the sheet and still woke up a few times from being too hot. I still wonder if this is a maintenance issue or if the design causes the issue in that part of the ship. It makes me question our cabin choice for our Jubilee cruise 🤔 Spa Balcony Cabin Grade: Could've Been Better

Spa/Fitness Center: We really liked that we had the Spa Balcony Benefits of having access to the Thermal Suite with the heated loungers, steam and aroma therapy rooms and experience showers (I did use it twice and DW used it 3 times). We also like having the dedicated direct elevator. The Fitness Center was good but it would be better if we could get to it with the Spa elevator as well. It also seems from our experience, that they need more weight machines and cable stations and could probably take out some of the treadmills to make room. I visited the fitness center 3 times (once to see what they had and twice to work out) and all three times at least 90% of the people were trying to use the cable, weight machines or dumbbells, making some of those areas crowded with nobody using the cardio equipment. As a matter of fact for all 3 visits put together I only saw 4 people total (total, not 4 at one time) using either a treadmill (and there are 28 of them) or an elliptical (there were 13 of them) and nobody was using the stationary bikes at all. DW also had a massage which she enjoyed but just a head's up that they add an automatic "service fee" to the bill and they didn't let her know so she ended up double tipping. Spa/Fitness Center Grade: Good

The Ship, Size, Layout and Crowd: Overall we enjoyed the ship very much with a few dislikes. Being our first Excel Class ship it did take some time to get familiar with what was on which deck etc. I did spend quite a bit of time going over deck plans before the cruise and had the deck plan on my phone to refer to quite a bit as well which did help. We really enjoyed having all the options that the excel ships provide and we were surprised to find that with all the different venues (bars, restaurants, show rooms etc) the crowd naturally dispersed and the ship didn't feel too over crowded, except at Embarkation. We used the elevators a lot more than we normally would. We realized that when you have to go up 10 decks to your cabin, you might not want to take the stairs 😅There was some wait usually for an elevator but nothing terrible. As I mentioned previously there is some kind of AC issue going on in the forward elevator lobbies and hallways on several decks of the ship. The temperature ranged from a bit warm to noticeably hot and humid with condensation build up dripping from the ceilings (see pictures in my review). We did not really like the casino layout very much as it seemed to be stretched out into too narrow of a space. There is only 1 craps table jammed up against a wall/window and some of the slot machines are jammed into a corner or backed up to a wall etc. making them hard to get to. Celebration Central is a good concept, but deck 8 was not a good place to watch from as it was too loud. Deck 7 was a bit crowded with the hallway going right through Celebration Central. We didn't even try to get seats for anything on deck 6. Ship, Size, Layout and Crowd Grade: Good -

Overall Impressions: First of all let me say that we really enjoyed our cruise and the ship overall. The following are just some of my observations (both "good" and "could've been better"). Embarkation: When we arrived Embarkation seemed very disorganized without much clear direction given. It took us about 53 minutes from arrival to boarding (I know I said 44 minutes previously, but I just double checked the time stamps on my photos and I obviously made a math error before) 😔 While 53 minutes doesn't sound too bad if it also included a wait in the lounge to have your boarding group called, but we did not have to wait, they were already boarding Platinum when we arrived. The check in and security portion only took about 15 minutes which means that it took 38 minutes to get from security to actually boarding the ship. Part of this was undoubtedly timing but it seemed that there was a lack of direction given and people were lining up in the wrong place and others that were waiting for their group to be called blocking the line etc. Embarkation Grade- Could of Been Better.

I hope you guys had a great cruise as well 😎

Saw this on a plane. Signs saying that the water isn’t potable and do not drink, but then in the upper right of the picture you clearly see a cup dispenser 🤔😳

We had a great time! My wife is feeling a bit better, thanks for asking and following along! We really enjoyed most aspects of this cruise and are looking forward to Jubilee! I’ve thinking about how to get another cruise in before then but we still have 3 land vacations already scheduled so not sure if we can get to another cruise or not (maybe a 4 day cruise😉)

I love it when a plan comes together 🙂

How is the 11th floor hallway and your cabin AC holding up? We just got off Sunday as you were getting ready to board. We were on 17 in a Forward Spa Balcony and noticed the hall and elevator lobby was so hot that condensation was building up and dripping off the ceiling. It was like that on several of the decks in the front but we didn’t use the mid ship elevators much so didn’t see if there were any similar conditions there. Our cabin AC worked for the most part but at night I had to sleep with just the sheet as I like to sleep in a cooler room that what the cabin ever got down to. I'm not sure if this is always like that on the Excel ships in the front or if there is a maintenance issue? We have a cruise on Jubilee coming up next year and I'm rethinking our cabin location.

Someone needed to wash the blood and fingerprints off it?😁

We had them on Celebration too!

Based on our play, I'd say that yes the machines are a bit tighter than what we normally see on other Carnival ships

Debarkation was very smooth and surprisingly quick! We were supposed to report to the theater on deck 6 by 8:00 to wait for disembarkation. We left the cabin at 7:49 and were surprised to get an elevator that was only half full. 😎 Our timing was perfect, as when we got down to deck 6 they were already letting guests disembark from the theater. They had two lines going out and told the people getting off the elevators to merge with the second line which we did. The line moved pretty quickly and we were on the gangway by 8:04. We proceeded to get our luggage. I checked for signs of leaking liquor bottles, but was relieved to see that both bags were still dry 🙂 We got in the immigration line for those traveling with a passport, no issue or need to show our passports since our faces matched our profile and we were outside the terminal at 8:17 am!

When I got up, I noticed that my Carnival App had sent a notification that the Casino is Now Open! At first I figured this was sent last night some time, but looking closer I see that they sent it at 5:28 am. Don't they have enough of my money🤣

Disembarkation and Travel- As all good things come to an end, it was time to go home 😢 For the first day in over a week I was awoken by my alarm at about 6am. Looking out the window, I saw that we were already docked in Miami. (This picture was taken slightly later once the sun came up) Well, I wasn't standing on my head, but I can't seem to get this photo right side up (sorry) 😉

We usually do self disembark but DW tweaked her back while on Bonaire so we decided it was best not to risk having to carry the suitcases down 10 flights of stairs in the morning (if the elevators were full), and changed our plan to let Carnival take our luggage which means we had to pack our bags while leaving out what we needed for the morning. I always fear I'll forget to leave out something that I'll regret the next day.😬 It also included trying to pack our alcohol bottles in our checked luggage in way so they wouldn't break in the luggage getting off the ship nor on the airplane. For that purpose, I had brought a couple of double layered bubble wrap travel bottle bags from Amazon. The Grey Goose bottle fit in the bag just fine (although with it's long neck, it was a bit tight), but due to the shape of the Tequila bottle the bag wouldn't work. I was kind of afraid of that so I had also brought some separate bubble wrap with me just in case I needed it! In addition to protecting the bottles from breaking, we had to make sure our bags were still under the 50lb limit which took a little bit of shuffling items from one bag to another and also carrying some shoes and such in our carryon bags. While a little nerve racking, everything worked out just fine. We each had everything we needed in the morning, both bottles made it home in one piece and both our bags were kept under 50lbs, so no extra fees! 😀

For dinner that evening we had a reservation at Rudi's Sea Grill at 7:30. This turned out to be a great time as it gave us the chance to watch the sunset while having dinner.

Day 8- For our last cruise day we decided to spend some time on deck. We played miniature golf (spoiler alert, I lost 🥲 ). I wanted to ride Bolt but when I checked there wasn't anything available until around 5:00 so I didn't ride (Maybe next year on Jubilee). I will say however that if anyone is interested in riding they should check the app a few times as later that same day ride times became available, but unfortunately we were doing other things at the time.

Sorry the last day and today weren’t live, but we did get home a few hours ago and I plan to update the last cruise day, debarkation experience and maybe a few overall thoughts over the next couple of days. Thanks for your patience 😎

After lunch this morning came back to the cabin to find also received a carnival picture frame

Going to bed a little early (relatively) at 12:30, stopped at 10 drinks. Last day tomorrow 🥲 so don’t want to sleep in all morning. But I tell you I’ve slept the latest I have in years on this cruise! Very relaxing 😊

Watched Evolution in Center Stage for a while