Carnival Victory Review 5/28/07-6/2/07

[joyluck]

The short of it is we had a wonderful cruise. A few mishaps along the way, but nothing that ruined the whole trip!!

 

Embarking:

 

Was a breeze. The ship was to set sail at 10pm and we arrived at the terminal at 1:30. They still had it closed, but the port security officer told us to come back in an hour and it would be open. We went and walked around Charleston for a while and came back at 2:30. Can I just say that Charleston has some killer bugs. I don't know what it was, but in that hour of walking around something chewed up my legs (killer mosquitos maybe) and I swear, I think I am going to have scars.:eek: Anyway, back to the terminal. We drove in and paid to park, followed the traffic and unloaded our luggage, parked our car in a warehouse, and took a bus the the ship. By 3:00 we were in our room and by 3:20 we had our luggage. All of it. We were amazed!!

 

Our Cabin: 6229, Upper Deck, FWD, portside balcony (AKA: AWESOME)

 

Seriously, we loved where our cabin was! We were right in between the Lido and the Promenade! We just felt like everything was a short distance away! Our cabin was right above the Caribbean Lounge, so I wouldn't recommend it for the early-to-bed or the folks traveling with small children, but it was great for us. Usually if we were in there late at night, we were on the balcony anyway. Our room steward was Derrick and he was good. We paged him a few times for things like ironing, etc. and he never came. We weren't sure if it was a phone issue or what, so I just chased him down when I saw him in the hallway and all was good.:)

 

Spa Services:

 

I got a pedicure on our first 'fun day at sea.' The girl did a wonderful job, but she was very hard sell on some foot oil I could have cared less about. I finally started ignoring her :o and I think she got the hint. A guy that sat at our dinner table got the gentleman's shave and he raved about how wonderful it was. He did look good and he said when he shaves he gets awful razor burn, but when they did it he did not. He said they used one of those Bic battery power razors. I know someone was asking about 'good spa experiences' a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I would throw that out there for you.

 

Dinner:

 

We ate at the dining room every night except for the embarkation night. The food was EXCELLENT. We were in the Pacific Dining Room for the 8:00 sitting. Our head waiter was Deori and his assistant was BB. They were both fabulous and we really enjoyed them!

 

Ports of Call:

 

Freeport:

 

We went into Freeport and it wasn't our favorite. I was expecting some pushy people, but I think I was unprepared for the severity of it. It just really made me uncomfortable. We had a snorkeling shore excursion planned for 2:15 and we went to the street to meet our guide. A cabby walked up to us (we had tickets in hand) and asked us if we were going on the snorkeling excursion. We told him we were and he told us it had been cancelled and he could take us somewhere else to do it. He was very pushy and there was no one from the cruise line anywhere around to say he was telling the truth. We went back in to the Pursers Desk to find out for sure and no one knew. She had us have a seat and in a few minutes she came over and told us that it had been cancelled. It struck me as off, because they had told us in the welcome aboard speech that they were 'in constant contact' with the excursions and the boat would wait for us if we were late, but then they had no idea that our excursion was cancelled.:rolleyes:

 

Nassau:

 

Nassau was much better. We went snorkeling on this day instead and it was absolutely beautiful! Our tour guide was great and showed us all sorts of interesting spots on the water and we had about an hour in the water. When we finished there we went shopping in Nassau. We checked out the Hard Rock, the Tortuga Rum Store, and various other places. We enjoyed the shopping in Nassau much better!

 

Our last Fun Day at Sea:

 

Well, we had some rain from Tropical Storm Barry, but we made the best of it by napping and eating! It was just a very relaxing day for us!

 

Disembarkation:

 

Well, this was no where near as efficient as embarking, as someone else mentioned in another thread. We had been told that we would be able to start leaving the ship at 7am. Our ship didn't even get security clearance until 8 or 8:30. We were on the port side, and we did see someone coming off in handcuffs though. Not sure what that was about, and don't really care. I am just mad if he's the one that caused disembarking to be such a pain. Ha ha. Anyway, we had opted not to do self assist and it was 12:30 before they called our deck and 1:30 before we finally got to our car. ::sigh:: It was a long process. In the terminal there was mass confusion too. Apparently someone had moved a rope and so people were not forming a nice neat line anymore and just kind of gathering. A lady had to come out and direct traffic to get us back into a line. She was doing the best she could, but man, there were some pretty irate people.

 

All in all, it was a great cruise! This was our first cruise, and we can't wait to go again!:cool:

 

ETA: I saved all of my capers, if anyone wants a look just let me know and I can try to scan them in and e-mail them to you or whatever.

[Cassinster]

Hi,

 

It sounds like you had a great time. We are going on the Victory to Canada in September, so I am glad to hear it. I just have a couple of questions if you don't mind.

 

My wife and I would like to start dancing and we hoped there would be places and opportunities for that on the Victory (we were on the HAL Volendam last year and there were not). I was hoping there is some sort of ball room with organized dances, etc.

 

We would also like to spend a lot of our time just sort of relaxing, so were there places where you could get away from everything and not be part of a crowd?

 

Thank you,

David