Going on a Cruise was one of those curious things that I wanted to explore ever since couple of my friends went and were very excited about the whole experience. Of course the friends experience is more than 4 years old and I did try booking back then itself only to be cancelled multiple times due to Carnival Ship issues.
Guess the saying goes, third time is the charm but in our case we succeeded the 4th time. After much deliberations and discussions we booked our cruise for middle of December and were very excited about the whole prospect.
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Boarding the ship is probably one of the slowest things one can imagine, park the car, take the luggage, then the first step of document verification and next stop for one more document verify and boarding pass issued
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They claim to have done staggered boarding but still the boarding time takes a while, so be patient
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Once on board at around 3:30PM they will have the emergency drill at around 4:00PM which is mandatory and all need to attend, no exceptions. It is one of those “what you resist will persist”, they will make sure everyone shows up and no exceptions
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Once the drill is complete, you are free to roam around and on your own
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Neither the adults only pool nor the all access pools are heated, if the weather is warm then bearable else utterly cold (specially when docked in Galveston)
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We didn't get to try out much of the entertainment portion much for our daughter was happy being in the water and they had something or the other going on on top deck
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May be different in other ships, in ours the only place to cross across the ship end to end was on floor 5 (deck with casino and bar)
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We went with the ship onshore excursions for both Progresso and Cozumel, so no comment on off ship hiring
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Progresso has some sandy beaches and somewhat reminded me of Port Aransas, water is neither blue nor brown (like in Galveston) and somewhat in between.
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Cozumel is a totally different story, crystal clear blue waters, the ocean looks like one gaint swimming pool. If you are into swimming then definitely try snorkeling while there.
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The support staff on the cruise were from all over eastern Europe and Asia. Did meet a bunch of Indians in the support staff and one couple from Bangalore
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The staff were very kind and courteous.
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Food was great, even the oily burger and burritos were great tasting
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We could have potentially used room service but didn’t find any menu to order from and the suite itself was small that we were discouraged to use room service
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For Dinner out of the 5 nights we had Indian option on 3 nights ( one night we ate in the buffet)
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The best thing for me on the ship was being off the grid, I just put my phone in the locker and kept it there for all the 5 days.
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The vastness and calmness of the ocean was to a large extent therapeutic
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Be careful of the wind gusts specially in the night
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The passengers on the cruise were all sorts and kinds
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Did I say embarkation was painful, de-embarkation was even more painful. It took us almost 4 and half hours to get off the ship and start driving
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It is not the ship facilities but the terminal to check us back into US was the slow process
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Self checkout by carrying all our bags would have saved us around 30minutes of our time
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Everything costs ~1.5X on the ship that what it would cost on land, I have to mention the duty free shops at Cozumel port was beyond joke
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They had a big sale of watches on the ship on the last day and lot of people were buying too, may be Christmas time or they did see a genuine value in those watches.
All in all it was a fun experience and definitely recommended. We did not have any seasickness to any extent, I did learn a trick that a green apple a day can keep seasickness away (may be that explains the lack of red apples on the ship).
