Just off the Carnival Valor

[Tssweety]

Just came off of five nights from New Orleans on the Carnival  Valor. We have been on many Carnival cruises, but this was our first cruise with the Valor. Embarkation was great. No trouble. We were on the ship at 11 AM.

muster is great you just go to your station and sign in and listen to a 30 second  tutorial. Food was decent. Lido restaurant was good. Main dining room food has declined a bit but still good. Some of the stations had long lines especially pizza at night when nothing else is open and could not get a deli sandwich because the line was super long all the time. They must be good sandwiches. We stayed in room 6343 which was a balcony room. It was very nice and we enjoyed having the balcony.

 

One thing I don’t understand is how the shows have not changed in the past 15 years. The welcome show is exactly the same and the three shows that we did see are the same shows that we have seen on every other cruise. That is disappointing. 

 

Cruise Director Louie was great. Very personable, funny, and went around meeting everybody.

 

All in all a great cruise.

[groundloop]

We've been on both Valor and Glory out of New Orleans and have liked them both.  

 

I agree about the Playlist Production shows, and it's been discussed here a few times.  I haven't seen a new show in quite a few cruises.  It's a lot of work (i.e. $$$$) for Carnival to put together new shows, so we're probably going to keep getting repeats for quite a while.  Unless I'm with someone who's new to cruising I'll skip most shows and go the the comedy club.

 

I learned that there's a large "warehouse" in Florida where Carnival has built exact scale mockups of stages of each class of ship.  Cast members spend about 2 months practicing there before coming on a ship and then have a 6 month rotation on their ship.

Edited September 28, 2022 by groundloop

[Tssweety]

Yeah I thought so, but they really need to do something at least one or 2 different.  We enjoy the shows but skip a few now due to massive repeats.  Still had a great time on the Valor.  For an older ship she was really good.

[RSBCruising]

Can anyone tell me where or

if you parked?  If so, what is the recommended time to arrive at the parking garage to avoid the crowds?

[ledges1]

I park at Fulton Place. Less expensive than the deck next to the ship. Fulton Place provides shuttles to the ship and back.

[wikoffclan]

5 hours ago, RSBCruising said:

Can anyone tell me where or

if you parked?  If so, what is the recommended time to arrive at the parking garage to avoid the crowds?

We always park at the port - Erato St. garage. IMHO this is one of the best, easiest, most convenient port parking garages. It may be a bit more expensive, but the convenience outweighs any cost differential. Have never had any long wait time to get in.

BTW - the Julia St. parking (lot) is the pits. Disorganized, open lot, across the railroad tracks, long walk to the ship. I think it's only used for Royal and possibly NCL? I may use Fulton St garage when we cruise Radiance OTS in December..

[keels81]

8 minutes ago, wikoffclan said:

We always park at the port - Erato St. garage. IMHO this is one of the best, easiest, most convenient port parking garages. It may be a bit more expensive, but the convenience outweighs any cost differential. Have never had any long wait time to get in.

BTW - the Julia St. parking (lot) is the pits. Disorganized, open lot, across the railroad tracks, long walk to the ship. I think it's only used for Royal and possibly NCL? I may use Fulton St garage when we cruise Radiance OTS in December..

 

Erato is so greatness. I can leave my door and be parked and walking on the ship in 20 minutes thanks to that port garage.

 

Fulton will be a slight upgrade over the Julia Street lot, but not by a whole lot.

[Joebucks]

A really memorable experience on the Valor was when they played the Saints game on the lido deck. Obviously, there was a decent amount of locals on that ship. Really good energy and a really fun sea day. 

[wikoffclan]

1 hour ago, keels81 said:

Fulton will be a slight upgrade over the Julia Street lot, but not by a whole lot.

Good to know. Thanks!

[keels81]

30 minutes ago, Joebucks said:

A really memorable experience on the Valor was when they played the Saints game on the lido deck. Obviously, there was a decent amount of locals on that ship. Really good energy and a really fun sea day. 

 

It's always awesome when they do that!

 

Also, the crew love working the ships out of New Orleans because they can walk 5 minutes to the outlet mall or 7-10 minutes to Walgreens/CVS to get things they need and then get back to the ship while they're in port.