It’s the final day on the Carnival Celebration, and we’re at sea as we head back to the home port of Miami. This particular cruise is a pre-Spring Break cruise as when the ship docks and takes on new passengers tomorrow, officially Spring Break is underway. In fact, the next cruise has 1,600 cruisers aged 21 and under booked – nearly one third of the total passengers. Good luck to the crew over the next several weeks.
Before I get into this cruise’s recap, let’s talk about two of my complaints:
Crowd – yeah, it’s been very crowded. Granted, Celebration and all the Excel-class ships, can accommodate well over 6,000 passengers, I’ve never experienced lines and crowding on Celebration and Mardi Gras like I’ve experienced this cruise. Lines are everywhere! Want a chicken sandwich at lunch? Be prepared to wait in a line that extends out of the queue and nearly to the other side of the ship. Want a beer before dinner? Good luck. Bars at peak times are simply overrun and completely understaffed. The worst offender for this has been Latitudes, where I’ve waited upwards of 15 minutes waiting for a bartender to ask for my drink order. Alchemy is no different. One night, a guest loudly yelled, “You’ve made ten drinks in a row and have never asked any of us what we want to drink?”
Food – if you’re going to eat in the Main Dining Room, be prepared for uninspired menus, small portions, and low quality food. The same goes for the buffet during lunch and dinner. Food quality seems to continually to degrade in a push for guests to utilize the specialty restaurants over the free ones. A lot of people complain about the food quality on MSC Cruises, but having cruised extensively on MSC, I can say the food was much better there than on Carnival lately.
The usual activities took place during this final sea day, including the Groove for St. Jude event where guests are encouraged to donate to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital by purchasing a tshirt, teddy bear, or just having money charged to their shipboard account. On this particular cruise, we were introduced to a St. Jude family who told their story at the start of the event and ended up getting guest to donate a little over $6,000.
For lunch, I hit up the Seafood Shack located in the Street Eats area of the lido deck for some peel-and-eat shrimp. Priced around $12 per pound, they are steamed, seasoned with Old Bay, and served warm with drawn butter and traditional cocktail sauce. Grab some fries from the food stall next door and you’ve got a good lunch that beats the buffet.
For dinner, we decided to hit up the Main Dining Room for the first time this cruise. Why? We wanted to at least experience it once! None of the menus for the entire week so far were appealing to anyone in my traveling group and we figured for the last night we’d give it a shot going in with our expectations set low.
I started off with something you wouldn’t expect on a Carnival cruise, but yet…. frog legs were on the menu. The adventurous side of me took over and I ordered them. How were they? Well, they taste like chicken.
Next up were fried tomatoes. Now you didn’t see me use the word “green” in there. That’s because these weren’t fried green tomatoes, they were fried regular, red tomoatoes. While the breading was crisp, the tomato was a bunch of mush. Which is why you use green tomatoes for these!
When it came time for the main course, there wasn’t anything on the regular menu that I really wanted, so I opted to go for the $23 lamb chops from the upcharge Steakhouse Selections menu.
The dish consisted of three double-cut chops cooked medium rare. I must admit, these were well worth the $23 upcharge as they were cooked and seasoned perfectly.
For a side, I went with a seafood pasta dish off the regular menu that was penne pasta with a mix of mussels, calamari and a few shrimp. Overall, the dish was unremarkable with little to no flavor at all. But the pasta was cooked properly, so I guess you can call that a win.
Overall, service in the main dining room was on-point. The pace at which the food arrived was acceptable, we weren’t rushed, and drinks and bar orders were taken and delivered in a quick fashion.
Side note. Carnival Celebration was designed to celebrate Carnival Cruise Line’s 50th anniversary and there are plenty of nods and Easter Eggs to the company’s history spread around the ship. In fact, I put together a video that shows you a few of these which is below.
One thing I found interesting and can be filed under the category of, “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” is the telegraph on display from one of Carnival’s original ships, Carnivale, is now enclosed. Previously it wasn’t and guests could touch it. Well, apparently either for continued preservation or it was damaged, it’s now under glass.
Now onto the recap!
The Stateroom: I spend the week in an inside spa stateroom as part of a casino-free room offer. Cabin 17212 was located on Deck 17 forward and accommodates four people with two lower beds that can be converted to a king and a pull out sofa bed. Storage space for one or two people may be acceptable, but four people will find it hard to find space to put all their clothes. Plus, putting four people in any of these rooms is stretching the limits of how close I want to be to any humans – relatives or friends.
Being on the 17th deck made it easy to go back and forth from the lido, but going from decks 6, 7, and 8 where all the ship’s entertainment venues are located requires the use of an elevator unless you want to walk all those stairs. Being at the very front of the ship resulted in some early wake-ups on port days as you are vibrated awake from the ship’s bow thrusters maneuvering the ship during docking.
When it comes to the bathroom, the Excel-class ships have raised the bar in the Carnival fleet. Larger showers with glass doors replaced shower curtains and a more modern decor with plenty of storage makes the bathroom brighter and more functional. However, those of size may find the toilet difficult to squeeze into.
The Food: Each daily review touches on the food I had that night. I typically avoid the main dining room and dine at specialty restaurants, but gave the main dining room a shot on the last night of the cruise.
The buffet selections for lunch and dinner were very limited with an average of only 12 choices, including sides, and most of the offerings looked downright unappealing. With Guy’s Burger Joint and his BBQ restaurant, along with Seafood Shack, Blue Iguana for tacos and burritos, Big Chicken, and the Street Eats food outlets, you’re best eating in those spots rather than the buffet.
For this trip, the specialty restaurants I dined at included Fahrenheit 555 Steakhouse, Cucina del Capitano, Chibang! and Rudi’s Seagrill.
If I had to put stars on the various restaurants, they would be:
- Main Dining Room (Free) – ** (2 stars only due to the upcharge menu selection, otherwise 1)
- Cucina del Capitano (First visit free / $8 subsequent visits) – ***
- Rudi’s Seagrill ($49 pp) – *****
- Fahrenheit 555 ($49 pp) – *****
- Bonsai Teppanyaki ($42 pp) – *****
- Emeril’s Bistro 1396 (ala carte) – did not experience this cruise
- Guy’s Burger Joint (Free) – did not experience this cruise
- Big Chicken (Free) – **
- Guys Pig & Anchor Smokehouse | Brewhouse (Free and ala carte) – did not experience this cruise
Fellow Passengers: As I mentioned in almost every daily report, this cruise was packed! Moreso than any other cruise I’ve been on either on Mardi Gras or Celebration. With spring break just starting this was a good indication as to what cruises will be like over the course of the break. If you’re cruising this time of year, prepare yourself and expect long lines for just about everything.
The age of the passengers on this ship were varied, but there were very few young children.
Entertainment: Many of the production shows that relied on the large video screens in Grand Central for visuals were replaced with solo acts or bands as the screens are out of service. This limited the number of production shows this cruise. The entertainment that replaced those shows were, meh, not good. The solo or small groups that played in the bars throughout the ship were very good and entertaining… IF… you could get a seat to enjoy them.
Embarkation: A breeze! Carnival keeps impressing me with the embarkation process. From curb to ship in under 15 minutes is incredible. I absolutely hate PortMiami and the parking situation there can really suck at times as well as the gridlock getting in and out of the port, but the smooth embarkation process made the hassle of dealing with PortMiami made up for it.
Disembarkation: A few weeks ago on Mardi Gras they were testing out digital debarkation were you select a debark time on your Carnival HUB app. As I mentioned in that review, that provied to be a complete and utter disaster and I’m happy to report it wasn’t used on this cruise.
I opted to self-debark where you carry your own luggage off the ship rather than leaving it out in the hall the night before and collecting it in the terminal once you’re off the ship. I ventured down to join the line – because absolutely NOBODY listens for their muster station to be called to head down to debark – around 7:00 am. By 7:20 am passengers were starting to get off the ship and I was in my car by 8:00 am.
Value: As I mentioned several times, I was given a free interior spa stateroom as part of a last-minute casino offer, I paid the solo rate of $100 per person, which was given back in the form of $100 in onboard credit. I only had to pay the $161.65 in port fees and taxes.
Here’s what this cruise cost me at the end of the day:
- Cruise Rate – $0 ($100 charge was refunded as onboard credit)
- Port Fees & Taxes – $161
- Premium WiFi – $149
- CHEERS! Beverage Package – $420
- Gratuities, Special Dining Charges – $488
- Port Parking – $154
The total for this cruise came to $1372.
Casino winnings: ZERO!
Thanks for following along!
FunTimes for March 2, 2024:
The FunTimes for March 2, 2024, is also available as a PDF.