pinguino

I just got back from celebrating a wedding with a group of friends on the Carnival Inspiration. These ships are known for short 3-4 day routes to Ensenada, Mexico, and back. They give you a little taste of cruise relaxation and activities, and are a nice little mini-vacation.

I'm going to drop some rants here..

1. Food. seriously. I'm pretty sure the dumpy cafeteria at my work has better food than your dining hall. The first meal was a spinach dip (okay) and a fancy lasagna (very dry). My cheesecake was gritty. GRITTY. Cheesecake should *never* be gritty. Sat morning we made up some stuff at the buffet, and that was fun. Sat night we had lots of lobster (rubbery but okay) and grilled shrimp (best thing on the ship). Sunday morning I had fancy breakfast- caesar salad with runny over-fishy tasting caesar dressing, and bacon mac + cheese that was just okay. At dinner I got fries, seafood pasta that I sent back, and crab cakes (yum). Every morning our room service was missing items, and the bagels were stale. I was sick Sunday night, and I think it was mostly from the food since I didn't drink much that day.

2. Drinks. Most of the cocktail specials were terrible, and that's from someone who loves sugar. Your energy drinks are horribly overpriced. Your lemonade was watered down. The saving grace were those unlimited soda cards, which gave you cans of soda. Since you can't screw up serving a can of soda, my soda was always fantastic.

Aside from those complaints, the ship overall smelled a little weird, and Long Beach especially had a weird fishy odor I never noticed before.

Great things about the ship:

- I needed to leave the ship early, and they let me off first even though I was roomed on the Riviera floor.

- None of the bars were excessively busy.

- Hot tubs cleaned daily was kinda impressive

- Security didn't bother us when we decided to have a 3a dance party on the top deck for a few hours.

- We were in an interior room with 2 bunk beds and 4 people. The size worked out really well. The mattresses were actually pretty soft.

- Awesome towel animals. Super love the new towel animal mascot guy.

If you were on the trip and saw a giant penguin, that was me!

Host Doug - we have many pictures taken by the on board photographers during the period 1981 - 1989. I'll dig them out and try to scan them. Also, we sailed on a Xmas -New Years sailing from Auckland to Sydney (1988 - 1989) when Princess first took over Sitmar. Chaos reigned!!

Hi Leonid! My boyfriend was actually on that sailing, the New Years one. He would absolutely love to see your photos- if you do scan and post them, it would be very much appreciated.

This is the first I've ever heard of it, but you can bet I'll look for it on our next cruise! The champagne drinks sound yummy :)

i didnt know the champagne drinks existed (aside from mimosas) before this thread

Most ships have a secret door...find it

secret door? to what?