Review: Carnival Victory 11/21 4-Day Thanksgiving Cruise

[sunshower9]

This was the first cruise for me and hubby. We traveled with a church group (which was not my church, but we were invited by a family member who goes to that church). There were several other family members with us as well. This cruise sailed from Miami to Key West and Cozumel. We had a 2 hour boarding delay due to remodeling of some of the cabins.

 

First thing I'll say is that embarkation was the most unorganized, chaotic mess I have probably ever seen. Obviously I have no idea how it usually is, but there were people all over the place. Once hubby and I finally got checked in, we were assigned zone 12 for boarding. I wasn't sure where we were supposed to go after that, so I just started following a group of people who were leaving the check-in line. I thought they were going to a waiting area, but we ended up following them to where they take your picture before embarking. Right after that, we went up some stairs and I realized we were actually at the place where they board the ship. They let us right on the ship without checking our boarding zone or anything. So we literally went straight from check-in to the ship without even meaning to do so.

 

We had lunch right away and then went to our rooms to see if they were ready because it was around 2:00 by then. Got to the room, put in the key card and...nothing happened. Tried again...nothing. Soon we noticed that all the other people around us weren't able to get into their rooms either. We flagged down a crew member who told us that all the rooms in that area were only about 3 hours old and that we needed to go to guest services to get the key cards reprogrammed. This was on deck 7, btw (we were in 7286). So we got our keys reprogrammed, but they still didn't work. Long story short, someone had to come by and basically reprogram the lock itself in order for everyone's keys to work. We waited for over an hour before we could actually enter our room. So that wasn't exactly the best start. But at least we did have the remodeled rooms. And we got a complimentary bottle of Chardonnay, 2 liters of water and 2 tote bags as gifts for booking with a group. We also attended a complimentary cocktail party later in the week. Oh, and I kept reading on here that cabins only have 1 power outlet, but our room had 2. Just a tiny detail that crossed my mind when I saw the cabin for the first time. :)

 

Also, one of our bags was delivered to the wrong room. They delivered it to 7386 instead of 7286. I only knew because my aunt and uncle were staying in one of the 7300 rooms and they saw our bag down on their end. We had to go searching down the hallway for it. After I retrieved the bag I wondered why the heck my aunt and uncle didn't just wheel it down to our room because the room number was right there on it...lol :rolleyes: But I wanted to mention that because I took the advice of someone on here to put bright colored duct tape on the outside of our suitcases. I did that just in case the airline forced us to check our bags (we only did carry-ons) so they would be easily distinguishable during baggage claim. It turned out to be a good idea because that's how my aunt and uncle recognized that it was our bag and that it was in the wrong place.

 

It's hard for me to think of a lot of details right now, so I'm just going to touch on what I remember at the moment. The food was okay. We ate at Chopsticks once and we didn't really like it. I had the Lido buffet twice and it was okay. I ate pizza pretty much everyday because I'm a pizza junkie. :) It wasn't exactly great, but I liked it. Hubby liked the burgers from Off the Grill. We didn't eat at Comfort Kitchen. We were not impressed by the food in the MDR. We ate dinner there twice, breakfast once, and we had seaday brunch there also. Breakfast was actually pretty good (I really liked the hot chocolate), but we didn't care for the dinner options. I actually liked the appetizers better than anything else. I had heirloom tomatoes w/ blue crab and ahi tuna, duck potstickers, strawberry bisque, and romaine caesar salad. The only thing I didn't like was the caesar salad because the dressing had no flavor. The one entree I did like was the roasted duck. Besides that I had the salmon (it was cooked well but lacked flavor), blue crab ravioli (just didn't care for it), and black tiger shrimp (tasted okay but only 4 pieces of shrimp???). I think I had one other entree but can't remember what it was. For dessert I tried a malted chocolate hazelnut cake that I did not like at all, and the next time I tried the melting chocolate cake. I know a lot of people love the melting chocolate cake, but I was not a fan. It was basically a cup of chocolate sauce with a thin layer of crust on top. I was expecting more cake so I was disappointed in it. Hubby had a coffee creme cake that I had a bite of. It tasted pretty good. Definitely better than that hazelnut thing I ordered that night.

 

As far as entertainment, we really enjoyed Vroom and we also went to a couple of comedy shows. We saw a PG-13 show which wasn't that funny, but the R rated show we saw later was hilarious. I watched Livin' in America with hubby and my mom. All 3 of us fell asleep during the show. :) I don't know if it's because we just didn't enjoy it or because we had been hanging out on the ship all day and were exhausted. The complimentary cocktail party was nice because free booze! :D They only offered us 3 different kinds of drinks: rum punch, screwdriver and one that I don't remember. But it was still nice.

 

That's all I can think of right now regarding the ship. I enjoyed the ports of call. We didn't get much time in Key West so I didn't get to see most of the things on my list. Hubby wouldn't let me go in the butterfly museum, which was the thing I most wanted to see. My brother and his wife went and they loved it. That made me even more upset that I missed it. :mad: But we saw the southernmost point and the beginning/end of US-1, and of course I had to get some key lime pie. In Cozumel we spent most of our time at Nachi Cocom, which was the definite highlight of our trip. The beach was sooo quiet (maybe only 40-50 people there) and we drank ourselves silly with the unlimited alcohol. Plus the food was amazing - much better than anything on the ship.

 

Overall, we both really enjoyed the whole trip. We definitely plan to cruise again, but we want to visit some different places and we'll try a different ship next time. We'll probably do another Carnival cruise, but we want a ship with more/better food options.

 

I hope my little review was helpful. If anyone has any questions, please ask because I'm sure I've forgotten some things. Thanks for reading!

[riclop]

Thanks for the review.

[easyboy]

Your embarkation seemed Ike the usual thing in others. But your room key encounter was not. Glad that you enjoyed your first cruise. Thanks for taking the time to do a review.

 

 

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[Clarea]

Nice report, thanks!

[Keith1010]

I enjoyed your review.

 

Keith