8/31/08 Triumph Review Long with Pics

Like Most Long Reviews this one will be in sections and I'm gonna try to put a lot of pictures in them because that's always been my favorite part.

Background:

This was a cruise to celebrate my parent’s 25th wedding anniversary. There were 9 of us in all consisting of my Mom and Dad, and Aunt and Uncle ages running from late 40’s to early 50’s than there was my sister, cousins and myself ages 21-30. This will be everyone’s 3rd cruise all on Carnival, my Aunt and Uncle cruised once before on RCI, than switched over to Carnival with us. I will start with saying that this was our second cruise while there was a hurricane and we knew the risk when we booked but there were still some negatives of this cruise and they don’t include the weather. But overall we had a blast and are booked on another Carnival cruise during hurricane season again.

Aug. 30 Day before we embark

My folks and I drove to Arkansas from Kansas to meet up with Aunt and Uncle than fly out together. Our flight didn’t depart till 4:30 in the afternoon. So before we left for the airport we stopped by a local Mexican Restaurant to have dinner and that is where I officially started my vacation I ordered my first beer and didn’t stop. Till I got back on land on the next Sunday. After dinner we drove to the airport and after a long waits and playing gold fish, as well as gestures in the waiting area (we scared a lot of people away doing that)

we were ready to board the plane and off we went. We had an hour layover in Atlanta where we meet up with the some more of the group that flew in from Kansas City. The flight to Miami was just a flight nothing major happen. We landed got our luggage and went to find our shuttle to the hotel. We stayed at the La Quinta East for 90 dollars a night; they offered a free Shuttle from the Airport and to the Port.

Aug. 31 Embarkation

We all awoke very excited early in the morning. This is the first time I wasn’t able to sleep the day before a cruise. I was like a little kid at Christmas. After eating breakfast I went back to the Hotel room and decided to send a few texts out to my fellow crazies.

I’m one of the youngest members of the crazies and had to let them in on all the details up till I boarded the ship, and of course like all crazies I was lucky enough to have our Mach Scotts to chaperone me. So after all the bags are packed once again. We headed down to the lobby and wait for the shuttle. While waiting for the shuttle we got a phone call from the last two in our group. They just flew into Miami from Houston and were going to meet us at the port. They took the Carnival Shuttle for 14 dollars per person which they just charged to the S&S card. Everyone got to the port at about 11:30 we got into line and in a matter of about 15 minutes we were getting our pictures taken and were onboard. The Miami port has it down to an art and had us through all the lines in no time it was the smoothes embarkation yet.

Aug. 31 Finally on the Triumph

After getting on board most of our group went to the Lido Deck while Mom and Dad went to the purser’s desk. They got upgraded to and 8E there first balcony but the S&S cards were still keyed for there old room so it was an easy fix and they were up to the Lido only about 10 minutes after us.

After we got some food in us we all made our way to the deck chairs and lay out in the rain. Heck we are on vacation and weren’t going to let a little rain get in the way. While lying on deck we all partake in our first DOD’s or BoD (beer of the day) in my case.

My Uncle with his first Few DOD's

At 2:00 we all made our ways to our rooms. I roomed with my sister and cousin and had a 3 person cabin didn’t take any pictures of it but it’s just like any other ocean view room only had a pull down bed over the couch. At 3:00 our luggage was already arriving at the door so we were able to start putting things away, and seems how I’m the only guy in the cabin I was allowed to put my clothes in one drawer and one night stand, while the girls got to take over all the rest. But we had plenty of closet space for everyone even with the girls packing like they were going on a 2 month trip over seas. At 3:45 I had to hunt down our room steward to get another adult life jacket. This in it’s self was a chore. When I finally tracked him down he was rude about it and said we had plenty of jackets for everyone. I told him that we only had 4 life jackets 2 adults and 2 children. So after I helped him do the math he stormed off and came back a little later with another jacket. Unfortunately the room steward went down hill from there and he never introduced himself to us. Muster was just mustering hot and sweaty couldn’t hear the CD over the sound system and the crew was yelling at us to be quite the whole time, which was a first to me. In fact I never had any staff on a ship ever yelled at me but this cruise is filled with first. After Muster we dumped off the life jackets and ran up on lido deck forward through the secret doors for sail away, and it was a great view glad I read CC for that little tip and no one was out there too.

After sail away we got ready for dinner we had the 6:00 dinner time in the Pairs Dinning Room on the upper level. Our wait staff wasn’t bad, our head Waiter was Richard from the Philippians he wasn’t bad but his helper who’s name has left me, he still needed a lot of practice but after some time he will be pretty good. The food wasn’t bad wasn’t excellent but wasn’t bad and that is pretty much how the food was the rest of the cruise. After dinner we just wondered the ship and get used to the layout. At 10:30 we went to the Welcome aboard Show. There we finally meet the CD which is Lenny Halliday who was a very funny guy but never saw him out and about not even at the deck party. Also from the other cruises we’ve been on the “fun patrol” was always introduced during this show but like I said this cruise had a lot of “first” in it. After the show we all were wiped and turned in early.

I just love cruise pics!

Thanks for sharing. :)

Great review so far Boo.

WOOO HOO BooBoo!!! Lovin it, keep it coming!!:D

Scots look like they were having a ball too!!!:D

Keep it coming! It's great to finally get a review.

Aug. 31 Finally on the Triumph

After getting on board most of our group went to the Lido Deck while Mom and Dad went to the purser’s desk. They got upgraded to and 8E there first balcony but the S&S cards were still keyed for there old room so it was an easy fix and they were up to the Lido only about 10 minutes after us.

After we got some food in us we all made our way to the deck chairs and lay out in the rain. Heck we are on vacation and weren’t going to let a little rain get in the way. While lying on deck we all partake in our first DOD’s or BoD (beer of the day) in my case.

My Uncle with his first Few DOD's

At 2:00 we all made our ways to our rooms. I roomed with my sister and cousin and had a 3 person cabin didn’t take any pictures of it but it’s just like any other ocean view room only had a pull down bed over the couch. At 3:00 our luggage was already arriving at the door so we were able to start putting things away, and seems how I’m the only guy in the cabin I was allowed to put my clothes in one drawer and one night stand, while the girls got to take over all the rest. But we had plenty of closet space for everyone even with the girls packing like they were going on a 2 month trip over seas. At 3:45 I had to hunt down our room steward to get another adult life jacket. This in it’s self was a chore. When I finally tracked him down he was rude about it and said we had plenty of jackets for everyone. I told him that we only had 4 life jackets 2 adults and 2 children. So after I helped him do the math he stormed off and came back a little later with another jacket. Unfortunately the room steward went down hill from there and he never introduced himself to us. Muster was just mustering hot and sweaty couldn’t hear the CD over the sound system and the crew was yelling at us to be quite the whole time, which was a first to me. In fact I never had any staff on a ship ever yelled at me but this cruise is filled with first. After Muster we dumped off the life jackets and ran up on lido deck forward through the secret doors for sail away, and it was a great view glad I read CC for that little tip and no one was out there too.

After sail away we got ready for dinner we had the 6:00 dinner time in the Pairs Dinning Room on the upper level. Our wait staff wasn’t bad, our head Waiter was Richard from the Philippians he wasn’t bad but his helper who’s name has left me, he still needed a lot of practice but after some time he will be pretty good. The food wasn’t bad wasn’t excellent but wasn’t bad and that is pretty much how the food was the rest of the cruise. After dinner we just wondered the ship and get used to the layout. At 10:30 we went to the Welcome aboard Show. There we finally meet the CD which is Lenny Halliday who was a very funny guy but never saw him out and about not even at the deck party. Also from the other cruises we’ve been on the “fun patrol” was always introduced during this show but like I said this cruise had a lot of “first” in it. After the show we all were wiped and turned in early.

Love the picture of your Uncle. You'll be able to "use" it someday!

Great review so far Boo! The family will love these pictures!

Ready to read more.:)

Love the pic on Lido forward!!!!:D

Great review. Cant wait for more.

Sept. 1st Fun Day at Sea

This was supposed to be our day at HMC but upon embarkation we were given a letter saying that we would not call upon HMC and they gave us 20 dollar OBC. I woke up bright and early at 6 A.M. thanks to my cousin that sat her alarm on her phone the entire trip. I still have that ring tone stuck in my head. Well after lying in bed for a while and yelling at my cousin for waking me up so early on my day off, I got around and got dressed. We ended up meeting the rest of the family in the Paris Dinning room for breakfast. In fact we ate all our meals in the dinning room because for the most part I don’t like the food at the buffet unless it’s the 24 hour pizza or burgers but the buffet it self just doesn’t do a thing for me. After eating breakfast and already done with my first drink of the day, which was bailey’s and coffee we headed back to the room to change and head on deck to hang out. On the way back to our room we passed our room steward who just looked at us than walked away without saying a word. In fact we passed several crew members and not one of them said good morning to us. Will we got our suits on and I got my second helping of bailey’s and coffee, than we headed up on deck. We were surprised to see that we had no problem at all with finding chairs in fact we were able to find enough for 7 of us all in a row. We got on deck at about 11:15 and at that time I thought it would be good to trade in my coffee for a bucket of beer, which happen to be the first of many that day nothing like having the bar servers know you by name. We stayed up there for the better part of the day. At 1:00 they had the Ice carving demo it was suppose to be the Triumph but I guess I didn’t have a good enough imagination to see it, but heck I give the guy credit because they way he was hacking away at that block of ice I would probably be missing a hand or arm or both. After the Ice craving we had the Hairy Chest Contest. Now before I go into much more detail I just wanted to remind you all that I had a lot of buckets of beer by this time. So I entered the contest there was 6 of us in all. The first thing we had to do was dance to the judges than flex in front of them. I was the second guy in line to dance and I held nothing back, I busted out the weed eater, the shopping cart, sprinkler, and when they thought I had nothing left I busted out the Funky Chicken. The poor guys that still had to go didn’t know what they were up against.

After the dance contest we had to shake our butts, now I wasn’t as good at this as some of them but I was still able to make it to the final 3. The final three had to wrestle a “snake” which was nothing more than a rolled up towel than do a Tarzan call to the judges. I was the first one up. So I ran up to the snake and I throw out the peoples elbow on it. For those that are not familiar with wrestling it is when you jump up and land on the ground with your elbow sticking out and you are suppose to hit the other guy with your elbow. After I did that I kicked it a couple of times and made sure it was dead.

Over all I ended up getting second place at the Hairy Chest Contest. The guy that won was a man in his 60’s and he did a great job plus he got the old vote. After the Hairy Chest Contest we all ran to our room and changed in time to do the Country Line Dance Class. The only ones in our group that actually did the dance were my sister, cousin, and I. I’m from Kansas and both my sister and cousin live in Texas we know how to line dance, but thought it was a hoot to have some lady from Russia to teach us.

By they way that wasn't part of the dance

Today also was the Captains Cocktail Party so after dancing we all ran back to the room to get ready for the party. With me being the only guy in the cabin I was given a whole 10 mins to take a shower, shave, and get dressed and I was still the first one ready, not sure how that one worked out. At the cocktail party we had a few drinks and I was impressed with the speed of the service and this was the first time I had to tell a server I wasn’t done with my first drink yet.

The captain was not able to make it to his party due to the weather. We proceeded to dinner where the majority of us had lobster and prime rib except me I had some type of pasta. At dinner our conversation turned to room stewards and we were telling our table about ours. Everyone was shocked and my Aunt mentions that there’s been great and really friendly, their cabin was only 3 doors down too. After dinner we all headed back to our cabins there we passed our room steward and once again he didn’t say a thing. But right behind us was my Aunt and Uncle and our room steward stopped and carried on a conversation with them. It ended up that we have the same steward. We got in our room to see a towel animal but we still had empty beer bottles and cups in there. We got changed and went to the show. The show was a Wonderful World and I found it a little odd and confusing, but you got to keep in mind I’m a small town country boy and the Las Vegas style shows do nothing for me. After the show we all went to the Rio Lounge which is the Karaoke bar and the Karaoke host JoJo is great and a lot of fun. We stayed there the whole night because at midnight the Adult Comedy Show was in the same place. By this time my folks and Aunt and Uncle went to bed so it was just left to us 5 “kids”. The comedian was great and for an Adult show it didn’t have that much adult language or content in it, some but not a lot. After the show we all went up to the Lido deck and had some pizza before we called it a day. We finally made it to bed at about 2 A.M.

great review we were on the same cruise. you did a great job in the hairy chest contest. I think the older guy was good and it took alot of guts for some of his moves. We enjoyed JoJo in the Rio bar also..Waiting for more of your review

Karen

Are you sure you guys were on the same cruise as that lady from Idaho???? 'Cause it sure seems like you guys had fun? :confused: :confused: :D

Are you sure you guys were on the same cruise as that lady from Idaho???? 'Cause it sure seems like you guys had fun? :confused: :confused: :D

It's all in how you take it. If you know you are gonna have a bad time than you are. We go in with the mind frame that we are on vacation and nothing is gonna get in our way. Right now I'm working on the next Sea.

I think that lady from Ida...ho was on the wrong ship......or as someone posted, in an alternative reality!!!:D :D

I think this bunch needs to book an S & S cruise, they would fit right in!:eek:

Sept. 2 Another Fun Day at Sea.

Once again I woke at 6 AM thanks to my cousin’s dang alarm. So after rolling around in bed for a few mins I got up and dressed. Than we headed to the Paris Dinning room for breakfast, where I had ham and cheese omelet and I don’t like eggs but that one was good. After breakfast my cousin and I went on the top deck to find out it was raining. We didn’t know it at that time but there was no end in sight for the rain.

This was our only sunshine we had all day

I will start right here and say that I know that it’s not Carnivals fault at all about the weather, but I do have a complaint about the lack of activities for that day. Only planned games they had besides trivia and bingo was the newly wed game, and the Amazing race. We felt that they were not prepared for another day at Sea and had no activities planned for it. But enough with the negative, we were there to have fun so we made the best out of it. So at 10:00 we decided to try our luck at the casino we each threw a 20 in a machine. That 20 soon became 25 and than 30, I know not big bucks but if you know our kind of luck you would think that we hit the jack pot. So the whole day for us consisted of hanging out in the casino seems how it was raining and that there were no games really planned. At 1:00 the rest of our group found us and we all headed to the dinning room for lunch. After lunch we went to the Rome Lounge and watched the newly wed not so newly wed game. Lenny did a great job at the game and was very funny. It was great to watch and had a blast. After the game my cousin and I went back to the Casino and still hadn’t lost our 20 yet, that’s a good day in our book. At 4:00 we went to play the Amazing Race Game. This was our first time in playing it. They give you a list of places you need to go to and than when you are at that place you have to find an object. There were about 20 teams in all that was in the race. Than they give you 20 mins to run around the ship and get our stuff. It was a lot of fun my cousin was very intent on finding the right place and getting the right thing. I was more intent on trying to mess up the other teams by giving them false information. The game finally took us up to the sun deck to the Mini Golf, but due to high winds the door was roped off. But that just wouldn’t do we wanted to win the game so I snuck under the rope and went got what we needed. By the way it wasn’t windy up there at all just a little wet.

We finally made it back to the ending point where the social host tally up all our points to see who won. We came out triumphant (yeah I know lame pun) we got 19 out of 20 points not to shabby and each one of us were awarded a golden plastic ship on a stick. After the race we went and got ready for dinner. Like always I was the last one to get ready and the first one done. At dinner my Aunt and Uncle surprised my folks with an anniversary cake for there 25th anniversary.

After dinner we went and changed then went to the show. The show was a Comedian Juggler I had my doubts on this one but was pleasantly surprised and it was great show. He was very funny and did some pretty cool juggling moves. After the show all 9 of us made our way back to the Rio bar, to watch karaoke. We went to the Rio bar pretty much every night on the cruise and had a great time. There were some very good singers there and like I said before JoJo did a great job. After Karaoke we all went up to the Lido and grabbed a slice of pizza than headed for bed. We need our rest because tomorrow we finally get to see land.

Sorry but don't have many pictures of this day. Like I said there wasn't much going on.

Enjoying your review and pics.................can't wait to see the rest..................

Sept. 3 St. Thomas

Like always I woke bright and early to see that my cousin is already up and bought me a cup of coffee. I knew she was my favorite for a reason. So I got around and dressed, we tried to wake up my sister but it’s nothing short of a miracle to wake her up in the morning, so we let her sleep in a little longer. So my cousin and I made our way up to the Lido Deck Forward through the secret door to watch us pull into port. From there we saw a great view of St. Thomas. The weather was cloudy but we saw the sun trying to peek out so we were in high hopes that we were going to have a great day. While we were sliding into the pier I spotted a man and women on the pier with about 5 bags. My best guess is that someone was running a little late on their way to Miami.

After the ship docked we made our way to my parent’s room to see if they were up yet. At 8:30 they were letting people off the ship so we all made our way down to deck 0 to get off. While waiting in line to get off the sky opened up and started pouring down rain. At this point a lot of people were getting out of line and heading back to there cabin. The security guy asked if our group was getting off and I replied heck yeah didn’t go all this way to hang out on the ship. So we all got off the ship into pouring down rain.

We booked a Carnival excursion not sure what the name was but it was a shopping then a beach trip. Our excursion didn’t start till 9:30 so we had time to roam around the local shops. At about 9 the rain has stopped for the time being. We meet up with our tour guide where he offered everyone a full refund if they wanted it and not go on the trip. Not many people took this option from what I could tell. We all loaded up on the open air taxi and were on our way to downtown to hit the shops. Now usually I’m not big on the whole shopping thing and neither is my dad. But this day it was a little different there was one shop that we been looking forward to for a while, that is the Harley Davidson shop. For any other riders out there you know that there is an unwritten law saying that you have to go to any shop that you run across and buy a shirt or two. So the taxi dropped us off. So our group split up my aunt and uncle and there daughter and her husband went to hit the jewelry stores, while my folks, sister, other cousin and I all made a beeline to the Harley shop. It was a very small store but had a nice selection of shirts but only had one bike. After about 30 mins in the shop we left at this point dad and I only had one last place to go and that was to get some good cigars. After that we found a nice place to sit down while we waited for the rest of the group to finish shopping. Than all the sudden it started pouring down rain again so we moved from a park bench to the United States Post office to seek cover from the rain. At noon we meet up with the bus and it took us back to the ship to drop off our bags and changed into our swim suits. By the time we got back to the ship it stopped raining. We ran back to the cabin and changed and got back to the bus. We had about a 15 min ride to Magen’s Bay the ride was very pretty and both Dad and I were itching to bring our bikes and ride those roads, maybe some day.

We made it to the beach and the weather was holding out for us cloudy but no rain.

The view that the beach offered was great and there is nothing like it. But the beach it self was a little bit of a disappointment, it wasn’t very big and didn’t have the white sand beaches like I had imagined, kind of reminded me of a sand bar down by the river I go to back at home. We had a great time at the beach the water was so clear and not too cold. After about 2 and half hours at the beach we made our way back to the Ship. As soon as we got off the bus my sister, cousin, and I than walked across the street to the local Hooters for some great gift ideas.

By the time we finally made it back on board it was about 5 and we had dinner at 6. So we rushed and got ready for dinner. The dinning room was pretty much deserted. After dinner 7 out of the 9 of us went to my parents room to their balcony to watch us sail way. As soon as the morning ropes were thrown it started raining but at least we were indoors so it didn’t bother us. Over all the weather wasn’t to bad had some rain but it didn’t bother us at all. Than we went down to our rooms to change and saw a letter from the captain that we will no longer be calling on Grand Turk due to TS Hanna, instead we will have another sea day and 20 dollar OBC. We later found out that the day we were suppose to be at Grand Turk was the same day Hurricane Ike hit it. We then went down to the show. It was a magic act it wasn’t bad but in my opinon you seen one magic show you seen them all. Basically the same old tricks just done in a new way. After the show we all went to club Rio but didn’t stay too long. There was an Adult Magic show that night but none of us stayed up for it. But I do have to admit that the Adult Magic show did intrigue me because I wanted to know what made it an adult only affair, but I guess I will never know. Off to bed at about 11:30 tomorrow we got San Juan.

Wanted to say that I am enjoying your review and your pics

Cant wait for more

Hey Boo

You did a great job with the pictures..:p wow did we have a great time..

Anybody that didn't it was their own fault.

Your Cruisin Uncle Larry

Sept. 4 San Juan

I was able to sleep in a little today and my cousin didn’t wake me up till about 7 this morning. We all decided to do San Juan by ourselves. So we all met in our parent’s room at 9. We all left the ship and head out into town. Here we broke up in two groups, the guys and the girls. The girls had only one goal in mind and that was to head to the Coach store. The guys had two goals in mind one was to go to the Harley Shop and the other was to go to both Forts. So we helped the women find the Coach store it took a while to find it and had to do a lot of walking up and down the streets and hills to find it but we did.

After they found it we bid them good luck and kept heading north to find the forts. The first fort we went to was San Felipe del Morro this fort was huge. We did the self guided tour and between the information they gave us and the stuff we already knew we were able to get the full experience for half the price. It cost us 5 bucks to get into both forts than we took a cab over to San Cristobal for 3 dollars than walked back to the port. So with cab, fort cost, and a couple of bottles of water it cost us a whopping 11 bucks per person. But back to the fort, like I said it was huge and I won’t go into much detail because if I did this thread would have more post that the crazies thread. We spent over 2 hours there and saw everything that you could possible see and went every where you could go and some place you wasn’t suppose too. A brief history it was first built in 1539 and last use in the 1960’s. After walking about 5 miles in the fort and climbing a lot of steps we found a cab to take us to the next fort. San Cristobal wasn’t as good as the first one and there were a lot of places that you were not allowed to go to.

We spent about an hour at the second fort than made our way down to the Harley Shop where we got a couple of shirts, than walked down a block to Senior Frogs where we meet up with the rest of our group.

There we ordered our first round of yard margaritas and we heard all about the Coach Store. From what I been told they had great prices about 50% off and had a good selection. While we were eating dinner, the DJ asked who in the bar wanted a free beer. Well by this point I only been in there for about 20 mins and already drank my yard and had nothing to eat so I was a little buzzed up. I thought heck yeah I want a free beer. I forgot that there was a catch and boy did we find it. There were only 6 guys that wanted the free beer and my dad was one of them. So they made us all stand on our chairs, they gave us a double shot of tequila and a beer with a straw. What we had to do was take the shot than chug the beer out of the straw and the winner won free shots for the whole table. So the contest was on. I took my shot and began chugging, I finished my beer at the same time that a guy at the other end of the bar did. So we had to have a tie breaker. At this point I was really full and pretty drunk and didn’t want to finish and just give the other dude the win. But thanks to my family cheering me on (yeah I know great influence huh) and my competitive side kicking in I agreed to the tie breaker. All we had to do was chug another beer this time without the straw. So we began and about 4 seconds later I was done and the other guy still had half his beer I left. I won WooHoo but I was really full by the time I waddled out of there.

So we all left Senior Frogs and decided to go for more margaritas at Hard Rock by this time my stomach has settled down so I got another drink. By the time we left there my family had to keep a close eye on me to make sure that I made it on ship in time. We got back on board at 3:30 and my sister, cousin and I decided to go lay out on deck and I took that golden moment for a couple more buckets of beer. At 4:30 we all went down and got ready for dinner. I took a little nap while I waited for my turn in the bathroom. On our way to the dinning room we heard a PA announcement that three passengers need to check in, so I’m hoping that they found a ride back to Miami. At dinner I didn’t eat too much because I had no room left for food after all the drinks I had. After dinner we changed and went to the Rome Lounge where they had Game Show Mania. I was the first one called up on stage to be a contestant. The person that was hosting Game Show Mania is the same social host that hosted all the games I was in she knew me by name by the end of the cruise. I got second place at Game Show Mania, I’m pretty sure I could have done better if they asked some question from an era besides 1960’s also all the drinking in San Juan didn’t help.

After the game they had the show with Phat Kat the comedian he was great. After the show we had the Deck Party. This was probably the worst deck party I been to so far, still a blast but not the best. The CD was no where to be seen. They did all the regular deck party dances that of course we all danced in, then they had the team conga line. Lead by our social Host Jill she’s the one that knew me by name. I was right behind her and half way through the conga she looked back called me by name and told me to lead the way. So still a little buzzed I was whooping and hollering and waving the blue flag around.

After the dance they had a band come out and play and they wasn’t bad but no one was dancing. So our group stayed out for about another hour than we all headed to bed at about 2 AM. Tomorrow is another Fun Day at Sea.

Lovin your review boo. The pictures are great too. Looking forward to more!!!

Great review - thanks for all the pictures. I can't wait for 11/23.

:cool: Looks like a fun time was had by all!!!:D Great review!!:)

Great review.