Carnival
Destiny
Southern Caribbean

Casey
Age: 32
Occupation: Engineer
Number of Cruises: 1
Date of Cruise: September 17th, 2006



I will try to be somewhat informative but I don't want to type word for word how the trip went so I will try to sum up how things went.

This was my first cruise and I would definitely cruise carnival again. In my opinion, cruising is the easiest way to vacation.

I thought the food and service was just fine. I honestly go on vacation to not have to do anything and enjoy that aspect of it. I thought the food was good, some people complain. But if you are going on a vacation to eat, well I think you need to get out a little more. Food was a second thought for me because I wanted to be taking in the scenery as much as I could. All the people that I encountered on the trip were very nice. The cruise director Steve was great, he was better then I expected.

Let's get on to Embarkation:
I don't remember much about it so it must not have been that bad. It was pretty easy to taxi to the ship from the airport. We didn't use Carnival system, we found our own. Just make you have your Carnival tags on your bags when you get to the ship. It will make it a little easier on you. We landed at 2:15 and I think was on the boat by 4ish. So that was fine with me.

St. Thomas:
This place is beautiful. We took a taxi to Meagan's Bay, take an open air taxi if you can. It is more fun that way. It is two dollars to get in to the Bay but worth it if you like a nice and peaceful beach without anyone trying to sell you anything. This was probably one of my highlights of the entire trip. It wasn't very crowded at all. And the drive to get there is real nice and a good taxi driver may take you to some overlook points for pictures.

Dominica:
We really wanted to do the Wacky Rollers tour but they were 75 bucks and they had left already. We just found a taxi and asked him to take up to the same itenary as the Rollers and he did for 40 bucks, but we probably still could have went cheaper if we would have tried harder. Let me just say this Island is beautiful, there are no beaches because it is a volcanic island but just driving around it was amazing. You must go to Titou Gorge and go inside of this. It is very cold but worth it. They said they filmed Pirates of the Caribbean 1 & 2 there. The Tralfalgar falls was pretty neat, i could have done without the sulphur springs tour but I guess it is something you can say you saw. Right now this Island only gets one cruise ship a week and they really need the business. So you could probably find cheap transportation if you look for it and talk someone down.

Barbados:
Like some other people already mentioned. If you go to the Blue Monkey you will get hassled all of the time to buy something or do something. The safety seemed fine with me. We wanted to swim with the turtles so we this is where we went. It was fun to see of these sea turtles swimming around the boat. We really couldn't get close to any of them once we were in the water because they went down deep. But it was fun nevertheless. This wasn't my favorite place but the beaches and water were nice and that is what counted the most. We went in the water just to avoid being hassled...but some will still come find you there.

Aruba,
This was a very nice place. It's too bad the Destiny won't be going there after this year. Make sure you take the local bus system like other people said. It's $2 round trip to most of the beaches. I can't remember what beach we went to but it was near the High rise hotel area. The beaches there are beautiful as well. We took the Palm Pleasure caterman tour and got to snorkel at a ship wreck and on some coral reef. This part was amazing. This was a 3 hour trip that included your snorkel gear, unlimited alcoholic drinks, fruit and sandwiches for $40 per person. I think it is definitely worth the price.

The days at Sea are nice to relax and walk around the boat. They always have something going on for you to do. Not saying you will like it, but you do have options. I would definitely cruise carnival again. I didn't see many kids on this cruise, but that could be because it was mid Sept. One thing to note about the cruise. Since it leaves out of San Juan, most of music is catered to Latinos. We went to the karaoke bar at night and you would have to sit through Spanish karaoke. That is something no one mentioned. I would say about 75-80% of the boat was Latino. Everyone was nice, but the cruise caters to the needs of the non English speaking.

Overall, this was great. We had a balcony room (8243) and loved it. I don't think I could ever have an inside room after this. The cruise is what you make it and for the price you can beat it. I would like to try other cruise lines just for different ship layouts but I would definitely do this again.

Debarkation was pretty easy. We had a 12:00 flight so we got the early flight tags so we could get of the ship first. We made it to the airport about 90 minutes before our flight so no problems.





 

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