Triumph review: Dec 3-8, 2012

[gelo7]

Great review.

[k2excursion]

Thanks for your review!

 

This bums me out a bit -- is this true across the board as far as you know? We recently sailed on the Magic (a year after being on the Triumph) & we loved the music on the Lido deck of the Triumph. It was sad that the Magic Lido deck was just an iPod plugged in playing tunes (not really, but no DJ most of the time). It was pretty dull for the most part without the live music.

 

It does seem to be true on all their ships. I was terribly disappointed with the Magic, as far as this goes. The DJs were terrible. If you've got a good DJ, it can actually work. And the Triumph did have very good DJs on this cruise. Of course, I do understand what's going on right now with that ship. I'm only meaning that if the DJs on any ship are good, it can still be enjoyable. I enjoy the line dancing type of songs, and they would occasionally do some of those. They would even throw in interesting variations to the songs. And they didn't overplay too many songs. These in particular seemed to be more in touch with regular people than most DJs are. It's still not a Caribbean feel, but it was fun.

[macaddiict]

Interesting that we both were displeased with the atmosphere on the Magic. And a bummer to hear that they have stopped doing fun tropical music on the ships. Maybe people who go 15x got tired of it -- we sure hadn't!

 

Our Magic experience was such a lackluster trip, we were considering switching lines anyway. Maybe we are not Carnival's target market anymore…

 

Thanks for your reply, k2.

[battchief1]

Thanks for the review.

[k2excursion]

A few more comments regarding our trip, now that I'm about to go on another. With the Triumph incident, I did want to delay bringing this back up.

 

The two 18-year olds that we had with us will both be graduating high school next month and joining the military. They thoroughly enjoyed getting to take this cruise, but it felt awkward for them in the beginning. Having a military mindset, their default is more to serve themselves and others as opposed to being served. Within 20 minutes of being on board, someone dropped a tray with food on it just a few feet away from us near the buffet line. It seemed like it was only 5 seconds later that a worker had a caution sign put in front of the spill, and they were cleaning it up. All that we were telling them about the great service was on display right away. I told the boys that since they are planning to protect and serve us by putting their lives on the line in the military, they can take 5 days to allow themselves to be served. They were uncomfortable with it at first, but I think it was a good experience for them. The younger one, that I roomed with, told me that he enjoyed being able to get up in the middle of the night and go get ice cream. I didn't even know he had done that, so he was quiet in doing that. He got off of his workout routine for the week, but he was back at it when he got home. It's good to have a break.

 

The boys could have gotten into the teen club if they wanted to, but they never had even the slightest interest to do so. Some people have the notion that if their teens find someone (anyone) else their own age, that they will be hanging out nonstop the entire cruise. Not necessarily. Some parents try to setup their kids for friendships with others around the same age, and that just doesn't work with all kids. I have seen or known of many many teens/kids that spend most or all of their time with their parents or whoever brought them. These teen clubs do not appeal to everyone. When I was that age, I didn't automatically like being around just anyone my age. Many teens are turned off at the very concept of a teen club, including our 2 guys. My friends were okay with it, because they loved getting to spend that time with their nephews. It's a trip that the 4 of them will always have great memories of.

 

The uncle played one of the silly games (60 seconds) up on the big stage that they did to fill some time on the night of the talent show. He wound up winning it by doing all kinds of crazy games. The nephews were laughing so hard. They totally enjoyed that. He got himself a ship on a stick. He's one of those that just has that kind of luck. I could get picked to participate a thousand times, and I might make it passed the first round once or twice, and never win. His wife said that she's the same as me with that. It's strange how things work out like that. He would probably win every time. The same type of luck (good or bad to the appropriate people) was experienced by all of us in the casino. I made my small donation there, as did the others. But the uncle won $20 in about 5 minutes.