First Time Carnival Cruiser Thoughts (Breeze)

[MeHeartCruising]

I thought I’d take a few minutes to document some of my thoughts about my very first Carnival cruise. I now have 13 cruises under my belt, with most of them on NCL and Royal Caribbean. I was on the Breeze from April 9-17 on the Southern Caribbean itinerary.

 

First, a little about me… I’m 53, single, male and a seasoned independent traveler. I was on this trip with my best friend who is in the same demographics range as me. We are both easy-to-please types, with the vacation mantra of “It’s all part of the adventure” if something goes against the plan. We don’t sweat the little things and can usually find positives in most every situation. We are not overly picky about our food, generally. We also do not care for the more formal aspects of cruising, so we tend to go casual in most everything we do.

 

Bottom line… both of us enjoyed our Breeze cruise quite a bit. We both agreed that we would sail Carnival again without hesitation.

 

Things we really liked:

 

1. Ample space on the Breeze. We never felt crowded. There was always someplace to grab a lounge chair in the vicinity of one of the pools. Not necessarily beside it, but close enough. We found this far better than on the recent NCL ships we have been on (Epic, Getaway). I like the shade and my friend uses both the sun and shade. We always found places to do what we wanted to do.

 

2. Guy’s Burgers. We enjoyed these burgers and fries as the best meal on the ship and ate there a few times. I will confess that we do not care for the MDR or specialty restaurant experiences (on any ship), so keep that in mind as you judge me for saying the burgers were the best meal on the ship. We like simple and fast foods. :-)

 

3. Cabin 7204. We loved being at the very front of the ship and had a picture window in our cabin that looked out the front of the ship. The bathroom was probably the best one I’ve had on all my cruises. Nice size, very clean.

 

4. Cabin Steward. Jeffrey was the best steward I have had on any cruise to date and deserved every penny of the added gratuity we gave him at the end of the cruise.

 

5. Flow of the ship. The ship has a lot going for it. We liked the layout and the way the venues were spread out.

 

6. People watching and relaxing on the Lido deck or the deck above it on sea days and after port stops. It was a very relaxing atmosphere.

 

Things we didn’t care for so much:

 

1. Entertainment. We felt that Carnival’s entertainment was noticeably inferior to that of NCL and Royal Caribbean. The 4 shows done by the ship musical cast were a little difficult to sit through and they were all basically the same (set to different songs). The cast was hard working, for sure. But we didn’t really enjoy the shows. The magic act was extremely second rate in our opinion. The best “main theatre” act was the juggler and he was a B- act at best. In the atrium, we enjoyed the 3-man group that played the violin, viola(?) and cello quite a bit, but didn’t care for the other acts that played. In the 88 Keys Piano Bar, we didn’t really care for the performer’s personal style that much nor his repetitious play list and banter. I realize he plays a lot of audience requests, but he needed to mix things up a little more.

 

2. Warm food. Now, we ate most meals in the Lido buffet. So I understand it’s not supposed to be fine dining. However, even bad food should be served hot if it’s a hot food dish. And cold food should be served cold. Through the week, almost all “hot” food was luke warm at best. They really need to work on that. Also, the buffet variety was quite inferior to that found on NCL and Royal Caribbean.

 

3. Lack of a more obvious ship management presence throughout. I was quite surprised how little we saw of upper management out in the restaurant and pool areas. On NCL, there are always several managers out front making sure that everything is operating smoothly. I rarely saw anyone in the buffet correcting situations that arose. Around the pool, there was not really anyone looking around to make sure messes were cleaned up, rules were enforced, etc. And I think the quality of the product was lowered by this.

 

4. Outside the building at the port on embarkation day. I had read up on these boards and knew all about the new staggered checkin process. And we were happy to have a 10:00-10:30 checkin time. We used a taxi to get to the ship from our hotel (as we always do in Miami). After getting out of the taxi, it was very confusing for a first-time-Carnival passenger. The signs were inadequate and/or not visible from all locations. Since there were people outside waiting to get in that were not being let in yet, and also departing passengers from the previous cruise, there was confusion about what was a line and what wasn’t. We arrived around 9:45 and had to keep asking people where to go and what to do. It seems very weird that you have to go to the side of the building to drop off your luggage (and have to navigate thru lots of confused people to get there). Once we found the baggage drop off, we then had to figure out where to go at that point. You have to backtrack thru what you already just navigated with your baggage. We finally found the signs that said “Current Checkin” and “Next Checkin”, but since they were right beside each other, you couldn’t really tell what was going on. We just kept asking workers to point us where to go. Fortunately, there were a lot of port/Carnival workers out there to answer questions. But they weren’t doing much to proactively control the people who were arriving. About 9:50 we asked a worker near the “Current Checkin” sign where we should go since we had 10:00 checkin and she let us proceed into the line that was currently entering the building. From that point onward, checkin was a breeze. They just need a little more organization and signage outside the building. And I don’t quite understand why they don’t have porters greeting the taxis to take baggage from the arriving passengers so you don’t have to find your way to the side of the building. All my negative thinking aside, we did go thru the entire arrival process in about 20 minutes before we were sitting inside. So it was not awful.

 

5. I know this next topic generates a lot of mixed responses, so I’ll just state my opinion and let it go. I prefer some level of basic pool rule enforcement and Carnival didn’t do anything in that area as far as I observed. And in some aspects, there may not be a rule in place, but common sense should prevail and I would like ship management to make some calls. Every day there were toddlers in the pool clearly wearing some form of diaper under their swim trunks. I watched a mother holding her baby while seated in the pool… dipping the baby’s butt in and out of the water. I’m not a fan of this. On about Day 2 or so, the main pool was closed down and emptied for a while and I watched crew members cleaning it. I don’t know the reason, but I have to assume something happened that it had to be cleaned. I also saw many people eating while in the pool. Probably not against the rules, but a little inappropriate in my opinion. And sure enough, I was able to watch a Guy’s French Fry float by me while I was swimming. Ok. Enough on that topic. Every cruise line has issues in this area. But I will say that I have seen NCL enforce the “no diapers” in the pool rule on multiple occasions.

 

Anyway… These are just a few of my thoughts on the Carnival Breeze. As I said above, none of these negatives were show stoppers for us and we would (and will) likely sail Carnival again in the future. I would say that I prefer the NCL and Royal Caribbean products a little more than what I experience on Carnival, but not in a huge way. All 3 have positives and negatives. These are all “part of the adventure” of cruising.

[Frank12]

Glad you had a good time. Breeze is a nice ship.

[DisneyDatknee]

1. Entertainment. We felt that Carnival’s entertainment was noticeably inferior to that of NCL and Royal Caribbean. The 4 shows done by the ship musical cast were a little difficult to sit through and they were all basically the same (set to different songs). The cast was hard working, for sure. But we didn’t really enjoy the shows. The magic act was extremely second rate in our opinion. The best “main theatre” act was the juggler and he was a B- act at best. In the atrium, we enjoyed the 3-man group that played the violin, viola(?) and cello quite a bit, but didn’t care for the other acts that played. In the 88 Keys Piano Bar, we didn’t really care for the performer’s personal style that much nor his repetitious play list and banter. I realize he plays a lot of audience requests, but he needed to mix things up a little more.

 

I totally agree with this 100%. We are trying Royal Caribbean next month to compare, but we really loved the Breeze!

Edited April 19, 2016 by DisneyDatknee

[Clarea]

Confusing check-in process, thanks for the report.

[Keith1010]

Thank you for your report.

 

Keith

[wanttoBcruising]

Like DisneyDatknee, ITA on the Entertainment. Last few cruises, it was kinda like 'work' to find things good to do, juggle the schedule, stay up late for certain things yet have nothing going on other times of the day. Could not agree more on points 2, 3 and 5. I can eat so so warm food at home, that's something I always think can and should be improved. Ditto the lack of rule enforcement, which speaks to point 3 - the obvious lack of management and leadership. Totally apparent my last cruise, it seemed the only priorities were selling - drinks, gambling, shop souvenirs and spa; nothing else mattered.

 

FWIW if you're a craft cocktail drinker, there's one great IMO Carnival feature the Breeze doesn't have, it's the Alchemy Bar. That said, the Breeze is a lovely ship, glad you had a good time.

[Cruise, J.D.]

Thanks for the review. You are so right about the pools. On our last cruise kids were running around the pool and jumping in on top of others. The only employees around were the drink servers.