Carnival Spirit Review 10/12-10/17 Inside Cabin 7282

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I've been a lurker long before I registered here at CC and always appreciate your reviews. I thought it would be nice to "give back" so here's my review of my sailing on Oct 12-17 on Carnival Spirit. We had inside cabin 7282 with 2 pull down beds. We did not use them but we did try one out for a nap it seemed very comfy :)

 

Embarktion - Overall very smooth, quick, well-organized we were onboard within 30 minutes and our room was ready right away. The lady who checked us in was not the greatest she didn't give us a deck plan or tell us if our room was ready. My inlaws were on this cruise and were also staying in an inside cabin rm 1207. Their check-inperson told them their room wouldn't be ready for another hour and also gave them a deck plan. We had to pick up our deck plan at guest services. We all went to our cabin rm 7282 which was ready so we dropped our luggage as well as the inlaws' there and went to lunch at the buffet.

 

The buffet - very spread out it is easy to miss your choices and there's lots of walking involved. The food in general on the cruise was very hit and miss compared to our prior sailings with NCL and Princess who rarely served a bad meal. I have to say CCL had a better buffet than what we experienced with NCL but it was comparable to the buffet on the CB Princess. We tended to prefer the buffet over the MDR as we also felt MDR's food was hit or miss as well and thus not worth the hassle. As others on CC have mentioned, the dress code in the MDR is not really enforced. It was fun for us to see the different types of dress there's a lot of diversity and we thought it was fun, did't bother us at all. Sometimes getting a high chair for our 17 month old son (in all dining areas) could be a little slow.

 

The biggest issue we had was on day 4 of our 5 day cruise. My husband went to buy contact solution on board ($12.99 holy cow!) and it was discovered that Carnival had mixed up the info/pictures attatched to my husbands'/sons' sail and sign cards so it showed my son on my husband's card and said he was 17 months old so my son had to purchase the contact solution and they had to clear it up the next day in port with security. Even the 1st time they tried to resolve it the changes didn't take and they had to re-take pictures a 2nd time. This actually held us up for our tour, we almost missed our tour (wine country tour) we were 16 minutes late and caught the bus as it was leaving. Not to mention we were docked at Ensenada and there was no announcement when we were able to get off in port and no signs showing us where to go, very disorganized. We had done a tour in Cabo but since it was a tender port crew led us off of the ship. So in Ensenada we were clueless and got lost a few times. A lot of crew I'm sure could tell we were lost and didn't offer to help but rather pretended not to see us and quickly ran off. One crew member did assist us but also insiosted we take an elevator, he wouldn't let us take the stairs (because of the baby.)

Moving on...

 

There was a lady (forgive me as her name escapes me) who was the bartender in the Atrium and she was the best at making cocktails. All the drinks we had at any of the bars were good but hers were the best. Speaking of cocktails, we purchased 8 drinks using BV ahead of time the coupons arrived as expected on the first evening and we signed for them at dinner. However, they didn't seem to make the drinks any cheaper b/c if the drink cost over $5.25 they ALWAYS added on the extra amt. of $ to my S&S acct.

 

Our room steward was the worst we've had in the 3 cruises we've sailed. We left the auto-tipping intact and also had given him $5- additional but we felt we were being generous and that he didn't even deserve that much. Just mediocre service at best, about average for land-based vacations but not up to par with our 2 prior cruises where the stewards we had were awesome.

Overall, it was better than a land based vacation in value. Normally with land based vacas we grab what we can food-wise (hot dogs, etc.) So the food was better than that for sure. However, we were the least impressed with our Carnival cruise in comparison to 1 prior NCL sailing and 1 prior Princess sailing. NCL/Princess had yummier food and way better service ship-wide. I myself would be willing to try a different Carnival ship and sail Carnival again. My husband, however is adament we not ever sail Carnival again period he wants to sail NCL next.

 

I have to comment that our fellow cruisers overall were very considerate of one another, moreso than we had seen in past cruises. I didn't see much line-cutting or many people verbally putting others down as we have in the past.

 

I made both tea times and loved it. I would recommend it. I heard people asking for hot cocoa both times and it seems like they were turned down, just an FYI if you want cocoa ask but be aware from where I was sitting it seemed like they all got stuck with tea. :)

 

Because we had a baby under the age of 2 we didn't make most of the evening entertainment and spent a lot of time in our cabin. Our cabin was set up poorly and used the space in a more cumbersome way... my inlaws had rm 1207 and their room seemed bigger because the furniture was set up differently (vanity, closets, etc. in different locations than in our room) If you want an inside cabin I would recommend 1207 over 7282 unless you need the 2 overhead beds in 7282, otherwise 1207 is a better choice. The shower was nice and roomy for us - but my husband and I are both thin people.

 

We did make Karaoke one night and I tried Karaoke for the first time ever in my life and although I can't carry a tune to save my life it was really fun and people were very gracious for not boo-ing me off-stage :)

For a 17 month old my son is pretty well behaved. Most people seemed to love him and were very nice to us in regard to us bringing him along... with the exception of one couple who made a snarky comment about not taking their kids along on a cruise till they were 30. Not many people - crew/cruisers - seemed inconvenienced by my son.

 

Speaking of kids, we took our son to the build a bear thing on the 1st sea day, he enjoyed it very much and gave his new pirate froggy a kiss. :) We had never done build-a-bear before and it seemed pretty reasonable we paid $28- for our froggy with a pirate outfit.