Art Hill

Age: 53
Occupation: Educational Administrator
Number of Cruises: six
Cruise Line: Carnival
Ship: Valor
Sailing Date: December 26th, 2004
Itinerary: Western Caribbean

My wife and I have cruised for the past six years, and normally cruise on our own. This year we decided to take our two university aged children. In order to accommodate their school timetables, we elected to cruise over the Christmas Holidays instead of February when we normally go.

We chose the Carnival Valor for the destinations (Belize, Honduras, Grand Cayman, & Mexico), and the sailing dates from Dec. 26 to Jan. 2. We also liked the fact that this was the Inaugural sailing of this ship, and the Western Caribbean was only the second trip the Valor took.

Flying from Canada in the winter is always a concern, and many flights were cancelled or delayed due to a snow storm in Ontario a day before we left so we always try to fly down a day early. Carnival have a great program where we can stay in a hotel the night prior to the cruise, and can get a lot of the check in process done at the hotel saving time and lineups at the terminal. The hotel was beautiful, but the process to get from the hotel to the ship was terrible. In past years, Carnival collected our luggage at the hotel, and it went on a truck to the pier, but this year although it was collected in the morning, we were then reunited with our bags and put on a bus with them. I suppose that this could be due to security concerns, but it seriously slowed the process down, and we waited in a lineup for over an hour to get on a bus.

Actually boarding the ship, was relatively easy, with the obligatory photo session being the only thing slowing us down.

The ship itself is beautiful. Of course, with only one trip in the books, everything was clean and new, but the decorating was to my eye a bit more understated than some of Carnival ships, with more gold and chrome that Neon and day-glow colours. As on all of the Carnival fleet, this ship has a “Theme” related to it’s name, and each room was named after a “Hero” or a “Bigger than life” character, but at times it didn’t make much sense. The two main dining rooms were named the “Lincoln” and the “Washington” dining rooms, after American presidents, but the buffet restaurant on the Lido deck was called “Rosy’s” after the fictional “Rosy the riveter” who was supposed to inspire women to help out with the war effort during the second world war. The public rooms were all tastefully decorated with chairs and seats that were actually designed for the human form rather than some sort of alien as on some of Carnival’s ships.

The food was excellent in all the restaurants, and service was always great. The main dining room passed my steak test, and managed to deliver my “Medium Rare” steak done to perfection both times I ordered it, and other than the Lobster which never can compare to our real cold water Nova Scotia Lobsters, everything was prepared to perfection. Even my son who is a vegetarian was always able to get things to his liking. One nice touch not seen on other ships was the servers in the Lido buffet who came around to your table with coffee and juice refills.

The entertainment was first rate. One show based on popular music of the 80’s was one of the best I have every seen, and the regular “Talent Show” was converted to the “Valor Idol” and was entertaining past the performers to the audience and the crew. It was excellent. We have sailed with the cruise director, Josh on two cruises, and he is great. The main band playing in the Eagles Lounge was very versatile, playing an evening of C & W and then switching to The Beatles the next night. My children were unhappy with the level of activity in the disco, and were amazed that with the number of young people we saw cruising the decks, there never seemed to be anyone in the Disco. They ended coming into the “Old Folks” lounge with us to hear the “Beatles” night rather than going to the Disco.

Carnival really seemed to have solved the difficulty with deck chairs and room to catch some sun. We had a lot of rain, and the sunny days were rare, but one happened to be a “Fun Day at Sea” and everyone was on the boat wanting to take advantage of the one sunny day, but there was never any problem getting a chair and a spot. I have read stories of fist fights over deck chairs on the Destiny, but there were still chairs stacked and empty space in the sun on the Valor.

Carnival does have to do something about the tendering process. We were in Grande Cayman with five other ships, including two of the huge Royal Caribbean mega-ships. The lineups to get back onboard the Valor and the Conquest were so long that they extended for four blocks, and were blocking access to the others ship’s tenders. Royal Caribbean supplemented the local tenders with their own tender/lifeboats, and even though those ships are as big as Carnival’s, there were no lineups. Carnival Cruise lines looked really bad!

One other small complaint was that Carnival needs to post and enforce rules. They list the aft pool area as “Adult Only”, but nothing is posted around the pool, and the pool and the whirlpool were constantly full of children included diapered infants. Even though security was evident around the pool area, this infraction of the rules was ignored. I wasn’t going anywhere near those pools. It doesn’t help that both the Pizza and the Ice Cream are back beside these pools. Come on Carnival, does this make sense?

I was not happy with the Christmas Cruise, but this had nothing to do with Carnival. I normally cruise in February, and enjoy meeting and chatting with new people from all over the world, but I found that this cruise was completely different than I was used to. There were large groups of family members who tended to stay together, and they sat together at meals and went to events together, so really were not interested in meeting other cruisers. There were also way more children than usual. They were everywhere; at one point a group were completely blocking the hallway outside their cabin playing cards, and were not pleased when we had to walk over them, and refused to move out of the way.

We enjoyed the cruise, and I would definitely recommend this ship, but I will never cruise at Christmas again. There are certainly areas that Carnival needs to improve, but their ships are still live up to the reputation as “Fun Ships”.