Jamie Asmus

Age: 34
Occupation: management
Number of Cruises: 2
Cruise Line: Carnival
Name of Ship: Destiny
Sailing Date: January 19th, 2003
Itinerary: Western Caribbean

Before taking our cruise, my wife and I searched high and low for information and reviews regarding the Carnival Destiny. Since this website was the most helpful and up-to-date, we decided to return the favor and write a review of our own.

Quickly about us…We’re a married couple from Phoenix Arizona. He is 34 and she is 42 and she has 3 children, all girls, ages 21, 17, and 15. We are a middle class family…enjoy the finer things whenever we can. We saved up plenty of money, so we didn’t really have a tight budget to adhere too, so we were able to shop and take shore tours without much hesitation. We went into this with a once in a lifetime attitude as far as going to the Southern Caribbean and getting to bring all the kids.

This was our second Carnival cruise. We’d been on the Elation out of Los Angeles last year on our belated honeymoon cruise and had a very good experience, so although we want to try other cruise lines soon, we opted to go on Carnival again. Another factor was that this time we would have our daughters with us so we wanted an environment that would be fun for them too.

Overall, we had a great time and we would have to look hard for anything that affected us in a negative way. On a scale of 1-100..we’d give this cruise a solid 90. Keep in mind that we are the type of people that make the best of any situation…we have a pretty high level of expectations but not an unrealistic one.

Here are a few key points of our cruise…

We booked our cruise through Expedia.com and our airfare through CheapTickets.com. Both companies were great and Expedia had a free upgrade deal. We did a lot of homework and found these sights to have the best rates. Just a note, we got the info from the websites, but then called direct to finalize the deal. We prefer talking to a live person and it gives us the chance to have every little question answered so we can avoid problems later.

We got to Puerto Rico the day before we set sail (got the room through Expedia too)…we highly recommend this. The day of travel takes a lot out of you and it’s nice to get a fresh start in the morning. There are a ton of hotels close to the airport and the seaport and an equal number of taxis eager to take you wherever you want to go. We stayed at the Comfort Inn Panama Princess for about $149.00. Everyplace takes US Dollars so don’t worry about that. The hotel was nothing great, but it was fine for us because we just wanted a place to sleep.

The next morning we told the front desk we needed a van/taxi and they had one there in less than 5 minutes. Keep in mind that on any given Sunday morning, there are 3 cruise ships in port and thousands of people in town trying to get to the ports so an early start is the key!. We got out of there at about 10:45 and headed to the ship. Carnival says you cannot board until 2:30 but that is not the case!! By getting there early, we hopped out of the taxi, walked right into the terminal, handed off our bags to the porter (the 5 dollar tip made him happy and I felt good that the bags would make it) and got in line. We were about 15th in line and after about 30-45 minutes, we were led through the check-in procedure and were on board by 12:30..NO LIE!!. You can’t go to your room until 1:30 because they are still cleaning rooms, but they were already serving lunch on the lido deck and we dove right into a few margaritas while we took a tour of the ship. Getting there early is awesome and gives you practically an extra full day onboard!

At 2pm we headed to our rooms on the Verandah Deck (Expedia upgrade). The kids were inside #8289 and we had a balcony #8265 (As per booking policies, we booked myself and 1 kid in 1 room and my wife and the other 2 kids in another, but once onboard, we switched and none questioned us the whole time) The rooms were clean and pretty roomy…the balcony is well worth the extra money!! We saw our Room Steward around that time and I slipped him a 20 and told him to take care of our kids. He seemed happy and did a great job the whole time. We found that if you treat the Steward (or any other worker) like a person, they’ll take good care of you. Be nice, Talk to them .Take their picture with the family. They love that and will appreciate your kindness. Only had one problem with the rooms. On day 4, the kids TV and power outlets did not work…we told the steward and when we got back after lunch, everything worked again!

Our dining experience...

Many reviews we read said the food left a lot to be desired and the service was mediocre.…OK.. maybe it wasn’t 5-star dining at every turn., but we found plenty of great food to enjoy!! In the dining room we had the late seating…..great if you plan on taking a lot of tours and you like to party all night (Like us), but if you go to bed early ,get the early seating. At first our Head Waiter didn’t impress us…instead of letting that bother us, we used the Be Nice theory…We talked to him, took pictures right off the bat and even got him on video with the kids…that seemed to lighten him up and once he knew we were fun, he was fun!! He proceeded to take great care of us the whole cruise, even bringing over extra starters and entrees when he could tell we were excited about them. The buffets were very good and had a little something for everyone. Sure, some of the meals were duplicated between the dining room and the buffet, but they have to do something with leftovers!! Overall…good food, good service and everyone gained a few pounds!!!(Always a good sign)

There was always something to do onboard…..nightly entertainment was OK.. nothing spectacular but what do you expect from a cruise ship? It’s not like going to New York City or Vegas!! The cruise director was very good. His name was Jorge, you could call him “George” or “Hor-Hey” he joked. He was very funny. I think he had a comedian background. The casino was great. We won more than we lost, so that disproves the theory that no one wins on a cruise ship! There were plenty of bars and even a disco that had teen hours early in the evening. The girls loved being able to go out dancing each night. There was a wide variety of people. Older, younger, single, married, foreigners from all countries and of course, plenty of folks from the US. Every night there were plenty of photographers in every corner of the ship!! Almost to the point of being annoying, only because my wife wanted us to stop at every one for family pictures! I needed to take out a loan just to pay for all the portraits!!!!

Our destinations included St Thomas, Martinique, Barbados, and Aruba.
In St Thomas we took the St John Trunk Bay Beach Tour. It was incredible!!! We swam, snorkeled, laid out and there were great facilities (bathrooms and showers) There was also a lot of great shopping to be done, I left that to my wife, she is the pro of the family.

In Martinique we took the St Pierre Island tour. People are right in that this is the most uneventful island of them all. The tour was ok, but got a bit boring after a while. We saw the Rainforest and the DePaz Rum factory, but nothing too exciting. If you are going to miss one island, this is the one.

Barbados was my personal favorite. We took the Catamaran and Snorkel tour. It was just awesome. The tour guides were great!!! (even got their e-mail addresses to send some of the pictures we took) We snorkeled with sea turtles, had a great buffet lunch and the drinks were free and there were plenty. They took really good care of us!!

Aruba was also great. We got up early for a glass-bottom boat tour and in the afternoon took the Hike and Snorkel Tour to Baby Beach. The hike part was fun, the Baby Beach was nice, but the snorkeling there was great. Tons of beautiful fish to swim with!

Overall, take the right tour and have a great day. Take the wrong tour and you could be very bored. Research the tours before hand, then put some time into deciding once you get onboard. Spending a little extra money might be worth it. A lot of people prefer their own tours…just getting a taxi and going somewhere. That can be great, just do your homework and be careful, there are always a few people that are out to take advantage of the tourists.

Tipping...

Carnival will attach the tips automatically to your sign and sail account. They do this the first night. We didn’t find any real lack of service, although some people feel this could have a terrible affect on how well you are taken care of.
You can have them removed if you like without any problem. We decided to see how things went before deciding what to do. Overall our service was good so we left the tips as they were. We gave a little extra to our waiter and his assistant and also to our room steward and let them know it was in addition to our sail and sign tips. I also found that throwing a few bucks to the folks serving drinks in the area I frequented kept my glass full and I never went thirsty!!

Getting off the ship is always a hassle but we had a pretty good experience. We chose to head down to customs early (why wait for them to call you, they don’t check to see what deck you are on). Most people go to breakfast first, then wait in line at customs forever. We got out of customs, then got our bags out of our rooms, headed to the breakfast buffet, loaded up on food, grabbed a table and waited comfortably till it was time to get off.

Once you get off the ship, make sure to get a porter to carry your luggage. Our guy knew exactly what to do and where to go (he does it every week) and he got us into our taxi to the airport while others were waiting in line trying to get a taxi! We also got a porter at the airport, and for the few extra dollars we tipped, we didn’t have to touch our bags until it was time to check them at the ticket counter!!

Once again Carnival gave us a great vacation. We found a lot of negative things on this website, and we’re sure not every cruise experience is a perfect one, but overall our entire family had a great time. Maybe some of the other cruise lines have fancier menus or a little better service, but for the average person who just wants to have a lot of fun, or especially for the first time cruiser, this cruise is the way to go! Make sure to bring a digital camera and a camcorder so you can keep all those great memories forever!

If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail us at Azziesdcf@cs.com  Thanks for letting us share our experience with you.

Sincerely,
Jamie, Sharon, April, Melissa and Brittany

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