aknguyen

We never could find the table to sign up so I went to Guest Services and the Carnival rep was able to sign us up in about 30 seconds.

Yes, it's $14 a person and yes, you walk up and pay. My family did this in June.

The day we spent at the beach in Mahogany Bay was the best day of any vacation my family has ever had. Don't lose the opportunity on fear. It was awesome.

I bought mine at Ulta. 

I would recommend a pair of flip flops to keep close by. I didn't see anyone have issues in the water works area itself but I saw several people (children and adults alike) slip when going to the slides. One poor little girl fell backwards and hit her head. And I agree that at certain times the deck will be very hot. Both my son and I were very uncomfortable walking to the slides with our bare feet. We started wearing flip flops and carrying them down the slides with us. Water shoes would be harder to get on and off for the slides.

I don't mind having a communal container of butter but I agree that the current crock isn't a good design. I think it would be better to have it be wider and shallower rather than narrower and taller like it is now. I observed the same thing several others have in that people get butter on their hands when the crock is less than half full. I think a different design of crock would be much better. But I really like the idea of piping butter into individual portions. That fixes everything.

They are providing a service so they expect a tip. It's no different than being a server or bar tender.

Let me add that I think it could be a better experience overall had we been prepared. We only brought 1 small bottle of water with us (for 3 people) because we thought it would be air conditioned and that we would have the opportunity to purchase more for the ride back. That wasn't the case. If we were properly hydrated it would have been much better. So if you go, bring plenty of water for each person. That will help tremendously. It's still a very fun experience to tube through the caves!

AI usually includes soft drinks, virgin smoothies, and bottled water and that can add up pretty quickly as well. We chose to do Mr. Sancho's AI even though we aren't big drinkers and had out 6 year old with us because the math still worked out to be cheaper for us. If you think about a $10 appetizer, $15 meal, a couple bottles of water at $1 a piece, a couple sodas at $3 a piece, an $8 dessert, you're already at $41 per person. If you get hungry again after a couple hours and want another entree or decide to get a smoothie you're close to the cost of AI anyway. So for us it made it worth it. Just something to think about.

It's hard to recommend, to be honest. The cave tubing itself was very enjoyable and I would love to do something like that again. Getting there, however, wasn't.

Our bus was advertised as air conditioned. In reality there was a fan that circulated the hot air that was on board. And the windows didn't open. Once you get close to the cave area, the terrain turns very steep and you have to get off the highway bus and get onto an old school bus to up up and over a VERY steep hill. When I say a steep hill, I mean that the bus was in the lowest gear and was very obviously struggling to make progress. I can't believe that POS bus goes over that thing multiple times a day. Truly amazing.

You don't see much of the beauty of the country because you're driving down a highway and there's only a few homes along the way once you're out of the city. The ride is very long. The time in the cave is short. Again, I'm not sure it's worth it.

Once we got back to the port, we were so hot and tired that we didn't want to do anything but go back to the ship. We did purchase 1 single souvenir and a round of bottled waters as we walked to the tender pier. That was all we could muster. 

I know there are private cave tubing tours and maybe they offer a better experience. If the bus hadn't been so hot it would have made all the difference. Everyone on board looked a little pale and nauseous. Edit: And we're from Houston so we're pretty experienced at the heat and humidity. This was even more intense.

Yes, they are magnetic. There is a coating on them that is part of the décor and it does seem to affect the magnets some. We had a banner hung up with magnetic hooks and it worked fine but did slide around some over time. A small or cheap magnet may not hold. I think you should plan to bring a separate hook to be safe. 

I'll eventually finish, I promise! As soon as I came home I was assigned a huge work project that involves ongoing travel so I haven't had must opportunity to sort photos and scan documents.

Here are the Fun Times for the day.

I forgot to mention that it was elegant night so we took some pictures. You can see the bruise on my son's forehead. 😉

That evening we explored the sports complex. We played mini golf and tried out the exercise equipment. Husband and son tried the bowling game. Heads up: It's $3 for 3 frames per lane. 

We were there 2 weeks ago and it wasn't a problem.

5 hours ago, beshears said:

I'm reading your review so far, and enjoying it, as well as the pictures.  I am in the "thinking" mode of taking my 3 sons and wives, as well as a friend next year on the Vista, only a different direction.  At least this way, I am getting an idea of what the ship looks, has to offer as well. 🙂

 

Question, I understand the ship has the I-Max Theater.  Is there a charge to see movies there?

Yes, there is a charge to see the IMAX movies. We watched a short 3D one about the oceans and it was $5.50 per person, which I felt was reasonable compared to what you'd pay for that at other places. I don't remember how much the other movies cost. I think it was around $12.

For lunch we had Lido buffet and Guy's burgers. (Don't judge me!) Those burgers are so good. They lived up to the hype. So, so good. One odd thing about the Lido buffet at lunch is the cake station. I'm pretty sure all of them except the chocolate ones are the same cake on the inside. They all look different on the outside and have a different description but...they look and taste the exactly.the.same. It's not a bad cake but it's really just one cake. Every day. 

In the afternoon we did Build-A-Bear. Surprisingly, the prices at sea aren't higher than those on land. (Can anything be any higher than the prices of Build-A-Bear on land? I'm not sure that's possible. We got a Pikachu there a couple of weeks ago to the tune of $57...) The only licensed character is the Carnival bear. All the others are the generic shark, t rex, teddy bear, etc. They do have the overpriced clothing but no voices, heart beats, and other totally unnecessary additions. They come with a backpack, which will be needed to carry this thing off the ship later.

By now it was almost lunchtime. I met up with my husband and son at the sushi place for a snack. Apparently my son had bashed his forehead into one of the water play things while I was in the casino. He still has the bruise today. Anyway, the sushi was good. My son's nigiri had large, thick pieces of salmon and he enjoyed them. My husband and I got a roll and it was quite large for the price. Water is served in cups made out of some kind of stone. My son and husband swore it made the water taste funny but I didn't notice it.

A group on the other website did a slot pull. I've never participated in anything like this so I decided to check it out. We all brought $20 cash and decided what machine we wanted to use. The organizer put all the cash into it and each person took a turn. It wasn't looking good because most people lost and the ones that "won" usually only got half of the value of the spin. It wasn't looking good at that point. Once the last person had their turn and we were all good and disappointed in how quickly this was going to be over, someone suggested we switch to a different machine so that's what we did. Everyone took another turn. We'd win a little and lose a lot. Win a little and lose a lot. We were down to $15. It wasn't very exciting. I think someone might have left at this point. Then one guy won over $300! You should have heard the screaming! Other casino patrons ran over to see what was going on because surely someone won some $50,000 jackpot. Nope. Just $300. The confusion on their faces was hilarious. So after that big win, we decided to change machines again. We started our turns again and started winning a little here and there. We got the total back to our original amount. Then someone came up and won $600! Again, we all started hooting and hollering. LOL We all voted to cash out at this point. We all wound up with $40. Not bad! It's not that often that you double your money! It was really fun.

We woke up some time around 8 AM. The curtain didn't quite block out all the sunlight so that was our alarm clock. But that's OK because we wanted to get started on the fun!

Our first full day on the ship started out with breakfast at the Lido buffet so that we could get the kid to the waterworks as soon as humanly possible. The offerings were varied enough that everyone had plenty to eat, even the picky kid. It wasn't that busy. I require caffeine to function and found the buffet coffee to be...sufficient. It's not the worst coffee I've ever had and it certainly wasn't the best. I drink a little coffee with my half and half anyway so fortunately that ratio helped greatly. I love that guava juice concoction they have. Love it. Between 2 cups of the juice and 2 cups of coffee I got real familiar with the locations of the restrooms on deck 10. 😉

Here's the Fun Times for the first day.

Here is the overall entertainment schedule.

Here is the schedule of activities for Camp Ocean. My son loved it. 

I agree that you'll have to choose. We just did the cave tubing through Carnival and only had time for a few minutes of shopping at port before we had to catch a water shuttle. It is truly an all day excursion.