Carnival
Legend
Eastern Caribbean

Janet

Age: 50
Occupation: travel agent
Number of Cruises: many

All in all this was a great cruise. I will try to detail the likes and dislikes we had. There were 8 of us from age 12 to age 81. We sailed on the Legend on Aug 9,2005

DECOR
I noticed right off that the ship has a renaissance feel to it. There is artwork all over the ship including the elevators. Some of it had nudity. I didn’t find this a problem but my parents (age80 and 81) did. I found that the use of urns on all the stair ways etc was a bit overdone. I might have thought better of it if they were gold instead of silver. I say this because the large baseboards and archways in the public areas were a very dark maroon and accented with gold. I didn’t understand why the urns would be in silver. It didn’t seem to match.

ENTERTAINMENT
I wasn’t particularly fond of the cruise director. Brett. He did a great magic act but he seemed more goofy than professional. There was no galley tour and only 1 ice carving demo. They had of course pool games and bingo and shows. The shows were good and varied from, Broadway type to magic to singers and comedians. Also they did have some adult only shows which were announced ahead of time so that you didn’t bring the kiddies to those.

FOOD AND DINING ROOM SERVICE
The Dining room and our waiters are fantastic. We were upstairs and our waiter was Albert, his assistant Edison. They were both extremely friendly and by the 2nd night Albert had each of our names down. When someone in our group wasn’t at dinner he would mention it, in a friendly manner, as Oh is Pete not feeling well? Anyway, we never had to ask for more drinks or bread. Many times Albert would bring a 2nd full dinner to one of our husbands saying, 1 won’t be enough for you!. I feel that Albert and Edison did an outstanding job for us and that I hope to see them on another cruise again. It really was the best service I have had on any cruise I have taken. More with food. The Lido Deck is broken up into sections. There is a NY style deli, serving great sandwiches such as turkey, pastrami, corned beef, tuna etc. There was a Chinese food area serving all the great things like lo mein and seafood in lobster sauce, sweet and sour chicken, rice, fried and plain. There was a rotisserie with things like chicken, beef, potatoes, vegetables etc. There were also the traditional hamburgers and hot dogs in another part of the Lido Deck. There is 24 hour pizza, calzones, Caesar salad and ice cream. And the desserts, what can I say besides YUMM!!! You can eat inside the air conditioning or outside in the air. The service on the Lido Deck was also very good. On 2nd hand information, my sister and husband give the Golden Fleece Supper club an outstanding review. It was 30.00 a person, but she says it is well worth it. Dave, my Brother in law had a 24 oz steak! Need I say he is a big guy!

CABINS
We all had balcony cabins and I have to say that I do enjoy the privacy of having a place to sit and look out over the water. Unfortunately our cabins were on the deck where the life boats were directly under us. In actuality they were even with the floor of our balcony so that if there was no rail you could step right onto the top of the boat. I personally didn’t like it for 2 reasons. You could not look down at all. All you had was this large orange wall to look at if you looked down. And 2nd on this level all the pulleys and ropes and gears are at eye level. Not great for picture taking. I would recommend that if you like your balcony rooms to pay the extra 100 bucks or so and go up another level. We were on the upper deck so go above that one for a better view.

PORTS OF CALL
We had a wonderful tour at San Juan. We did not go with the cruise ship as it was something like 38.00 a person and we just wanted to explore on our own. When we walked out of the pier there were people from different local tour operators. We hooked up with a great one. We were charged 10.00 a person for a 2hr tour. It was to both Old and New San Juan. We were giving the option of being dropped off downtown or go back to the ship. Mind you the downtown area is only about 3 or 4 blocks from the docks. We saw many interesting things and enjoyed this port.

Next stop was St Thomas. Here is where you should shop. There are 2 areas. If you don’t want to go to the main downtown area you can stay near the port. It’s only a 5 minute walk to a newer shopping area called the Havensight Mall. Its shops just like downtown without the charm of old St Thomas. You can basically get everything here as well as downtown. We opted to take a taxi to downtown for 4.00 pp. They dropped us off at a small flea market area, which was about 1 block from the "real shopping" There were ladies that were doing braids, basically if you don’t want to get your whole head braided you can do 6 braids for 10.00 and you pick the colors of the beads you want. You must look for Oprah there. She is a beautiful light gray donkey, her owner has dreads and is in African clothing. You give him a tip and you can take your picture with her. She is all decked out in a hat, sunglasses and lipstick! Then onto the main streets of shopping. I still prefer the old alleyways and cobblestone areas to the main street. It is really a shopping mecca with shop after shop after shop. You can find liquor for about 1/3 the price of the mainland. You can find tee shirts, perfume, jewelery,key chains and the like. We had a great time. This by far was my favorite port. We didn’t bother to take a tour because we knew we would be shopping and enjoying ourselves in this great port. I did hear that a 2hr tour was about 20.00 a person. Here again my sister and her family went on the sky ride to the top of the mountain (this was on their own, not a cruise tour). There were places to take funny pictures where you put your face in a hole and it looks like you are dressed up as clowns and things like that. They all said it was worth the "unairconditioned" cars of the sky ride. I am very afraid of heights and this is not something I could not do. She did get some beautiful pictures of the cruise ships in port and the harbor.

Our final stop was Tortola and my only question for Carnival is "why this port" Unless you did one of their cruise shore excursions there wasn’t anything to do. Yes of course there are beaches. We did the dolphin swim and were very very disappointed. We had done this previously in Nassau a few years back and the 2 cannot be compared. We had an older dolphin named Hippo. His trainer was not very nice to either him or us. He didn’t want to perform. We did complain to the cruise shore excursion desk and were given a 40.00 credit due to our disappointment. Basically the trainer was mad that Hippo wouldn’t co-operate. She kept on banging the water with a large pole, The most she got out of him was a hand shake, and a kiss for each person and the highlight was when you swam out to the middle of the water and Hippo turned onto his back, you grabbed his fins and he brought you back to the platform. We paid 159.00 per person for this tour and it was not worth it in the least. If you plan to do this at anytime, save it for Nassau as the experience is much more active and is really a once in a lifetime activity.

Our Days at Sea were very peaceful and relaxing. These are the days when you can jump in with 2 feet or simply do nothing at all. I was disappointed in the choices of activities although it was wonderful to just relax and enjoy the sun and be with my family. As stated before there were pool games but I never saw them in our daily schedule. They had the traditional old standards as the newlywed/not so newlywed game and the like, cruise feud. I did see kids running around the ship on several scavenger hunts. It was funny when they asked my sister if she was 6 feet tall (she is 5'7")

PHOTOGRAPHY
There are many many opportunities to have professional pictures done. Lots are the normal backgrounds, and we especially liked the ones with the pretend rail of a ship, bow of a ship in the background, but there were fun things too. Dress up like the 1800's, or get your face on a wanted poster. Some of the backgrounds are really unique and others are the same as on any ship.

SHOPPING AND CASINO ON BOARD
Both my daughter and I were disappointed in the shopping on board. They had several shirts that they only had in small, the copies of the little towel animals (the ones that the cabin stewarts put in your room) were limited to 1 style. There were snacks on board that were very expensive. A can of Pringles was 4.00. I don’t know why anyone would want to buy snacks when you have non stop food thru-out your cruise. The tee shirts and jackets go down to 50pc off once we got to the middle of the cruise. I would wait to purchase anything on board,until you have hit the ports of call.

As for the casino, I thought there is a large variety of slots from penny slots to 5.00 slots. They were also the gaming tables if you wanted those. Im not a great gambler but it was fun wasting 10.00 of pennies.

STAFF
I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that the crew of this ship is extremely friendly. Everyone seemed to be happy in their jobs. From the captain right down to the maintenance man that change a light bulb for us.

One really nice this on Carnival in general is that when you have a few cabins in a row for your group they can open the balcony doors between the cabins so that it can be a bigger shared balcony. We did this with our cabins and it was very nice. The other nice part of this little feature is that you don’t have to go thru the hallway to get to the other room. You can knock on the back door that leads to the balconies. I liked this because my daughter age 12 could go to her grandparent’s room without using a public hallway. In today’s day and age, Im all for extra security. And speaking of security. This ship has a lot. I saw security guard walking in the hallways, police dogs walking on the side of the ship while in port and you need to show your sign and sail card to get into the gates near the ship. I felt very secure.

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