We have been home from our Carnival cruise onboard the Radiance for a week now. It has been a busy week with both Kenyon and I feeling under the weather at various times. I am hoping this isn’t a permanent thing post-cruise as we dealt with this issue after our January Vlogger Extravaganza Cruise.
Today I’ll take you through the cruise itself
including the two ports of calls my thoughts on Carnival Cruise Line vs.
Norwegian Cruise Line. Next time I’ll
recap our pre and post cruise adventures.
(spoiler alert: we still love NCL)
We boarded the Carnival Radiance in Long Beach, California
about 2pm. Once we got onto the ship it
was a rush to drop our stuff in our room and grab a bite to eat before the
Facebook meet and greet at Red Frog Rum Bar on the Lido deck. The hours for Guy’s Pig & Anchor BBQ was
super limited as are the days it is open so we weren’t able to start our trip
with BBQ. Instead, we had Guy’s
Burgers. It was hands down my favorite
of the dining options.
We jumped into the meet and greet and while we didn’t
participate long, I really enjoyed meeting in person the hosts/moderators of
the FB group and others who joined in on the fun. While we didn’t hang out with the group
throughout the cruise, we loved saying hello and checking in when we passed
by. I broke out the new koozie and found
a big design flaw that my beer kept falling out the bottom! Thankfully it was unopened both times but
still…major design flaw.
We dined in the main dining room each night. The waitstaff was very friendly and made the
ambiance fun. The service was slow, and
I didn’t feel checked in on as much as when we cruise with NCL. All the review are correct, the food is just
not that great on Carnival (minus the specialty restaurants).
Our first port of call was Catalina Island. We rented a golf cart and spent an hour
exploring as much of the island as we could.
Afterwards we sampled some local beer and ate a famous pink donut before
boarding the ship again.
The second port of call was Ensenada. We wanted to go into “town” and heard about
the $4 round trip shuttle. It turned out
to be a dud and a learning experience for next time. We were dropped off in a tourist area where
we wondered a bit, shared some nachos at a local restaurant, and waited way too
long get back to the ship on the return shuttle. I tell ya, my view of Mexico isn’t as
glamourous as other people say it is. Maybe
I am missing something?
Our time on the ship was spent playing trivia with a
really fun trivia host and super fun guests, sampling many of the drink
options, and eating at every restaurant except the buffet and the Fahrenheit steakhouse. We hit up the 80s party and OMG our cruise
director Dieon made my whole cruise. He
has so much energy and is a super fun host.
We also hit up the white-hot party on the final sea day where he danced
on the bar in the atrium.
Our FB group hosted a shot glass exchange with about
40 people. It was a great way to mingle
once more with the group and while my shot glass choice was stolen from me, I
still left with a cute one from Oregon.
That about wraps up the actual cruise. Carnival Radiance is showing her age and I
really hated the design of the room safe.
The food is nothing to get excited over, but I loved their beer selection. The other big downer what how stingy they are
with the drink package. For the money
you spend, they are very strict about one soda OR bottle of water at one
time. I mean…come on! You were able to get an alcoholic beverage
and a bottle of water but if it was soda, you had to wait 5 minutes to get
another bottle of water. Asking for two
bottles, nope, not happening. While I
think the perk of specialty coffee, milkshakes, and bottled water is worth the
extra money for the drink package, I’ll take my NCL free at sea over Carnival
any day of the week.
Carnival is a budget cruise line, and you can
tell. It was good to experience it and I
won’t say I’ll never cruise them again.
If they have the port of call we want, we will sail with them
again. I just can’t find much more
appeal than that.
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