Dean Freedman

Age: 43
Occupation: A/V Engineer
Number of Cruises: 3
Cruise Line: Carnival
Name of Ship: Ecstasy
Sailing Date: December 16th, 2002
Itinerary: Baja Mexico

We're a 40-something couple with two previous cruises under our belts. We live on the East Coast, but were in Las Vegas for my cousin's weekend wedding and decided to follow it up with Carnival's 4-day Baja itinerary from Los Angeles to round out our vacation. We booked the cruise a couple of weeks in advance through an online discount agent, Vacations to Go, and were pleased with their service.

For those of you who are in a hurry, I'll give you a quick summary up front: We had a great time and were impressed with the ports of call and how much we got for the price. If you're looking for a lot of details, including a few comparisons here and there with our other cruises, please read on.

Boarding

As you'll note in other reviews of this cruise, check-in at the port in San Pedro was chaotic, with a long wait in line (about an hour). When you arrive at the facility and join the line, porters will come up to you and offer to take your bags to the ship. We had forgotten to put our Carnival-supplied luggage tags on beforehand, so we had to fumble around in the rain getting the tags filled out and on the bags. You are allowed to take your bags through with you, right onto the ship if you want, but we were glad we gave ours to the porters since the process of checking in is cumbersome enough without having to tote around all your stuff.

The debarkation process was more organized, but you should expect to wait on long lines again. Although debarkation started at 8:00 AM, we weren't through with the process and in our taxi to the airport till after 11:00.

Food

When we got on the boat, we immediately went to grab some lunch on the Lido deck at the Panorama Bar and Grill. We wound up having breakfast and lunch there pretty much every day. The food at the Panorama was fair to good overall. For breakfast, we generally had the chef whip up omelettes, but I also tried the French toast and pancakes, which were both pretty good. Ham, bacon, scrambled eggs, oatmeal, cereal, and a few other items were readily available. The coffee was pretty pathetic and no real half and half (or light cream) was available -- just imitation creamer and milk could be had. Coffee in the dining rooms was slightly better, but I think Carnival really needs to update their java in a big way. The bread products in all dining rooms were so-so -- nothing like the delicious breads and pastries we had every morning on our Holland America Rotterdam cruise to the Mediterranean in 2000 (I never finished my review of that one, so I'm trying to be a little more concise this time -- but clearly not by much!).

We never had lunch in the dining room, finding the Panorama to be much more convenient. Besides burgers, hot dogs (very good ones, by the way), and pizza (more on this below), you could always get a nice hot meal for lunch. They always had a carving station set up with either ham, turkey, or beef, and generally had a few special dishes each day, like Chinese food or quesadillas. Much of this could be had 24-hours a day, by the way, so there's no chance you'll go hungry! The pasta dishes were so-so in general and the desserts were mediocre at best, I'm sad to say. The cakes and cookies seemed mass-produced and the ice cream tasted more like ice milk. But, we were very pleased with the free juice drinks (soda being an extra-cost option), especially the fruit punch and lemonade, neither of which tasted like they were made from typical powdered products.

Getting back to the pizza, which you could get any time of the day or night, I'd say it tasted like the very best supermarket pizza, but not like New York or Chicago pizzeria pizza. I had more than a few slices over the course of the cruise, so I'll give it a rating of one thumb up.

Now let's get to dinner. We were seated at a table of ten in the Wind Star dining room. Eight out of the ten of us got along great and we really enjoyed ourselves each night. One couple arrived very late the first two nights and this caused a lot of trouble. By the third night they were assigned their own table. The dinner served in the dining room was by far the best meal of the day. For steak lovers, a particular standout was the Chateau Briand. Don't miss it! We didn't order the prime rib but were told by those who did that is was very good. The biggest disappointment was the lobster tail, which was chewy and seemed to have a bitter aftertaste which we both found displeasing. However, at least one person at our table really liked it, so maybe it's just a matter of taste. In any case, you may want to order two entrees on lobster night, just in case. And, speaking about that, you can feel free to order multiple entrees, appetizers, desserts, whatever. The only caveat is that, for some reason, the ship has a rule that two entrees cannot be served simultaneously, so you have to finish dish A before you can have dish B. (Multiple appetizers and desserts could appear simultaneously, though.) Dinner desserts in the dining room were very good, especially the sherberts.

Service in the dining room was exemplary. Very friendly and attentive. Two thumbs up for sure.

Overall, we'd have to rate the food on the Ecstasy a notch below what we enjoyed both on the Rotterdam and the Norwegian Crown, on which we took a Caribbean cruise in 1996 (before Norwegian's adoption of their "freestyle" cruising structure). However, the food was still more than adequate -- and a really good value given the price of the cruise.

Accommodations

We were in an inside cabin toward the front of the boat on the Main deck (5). Our room was very well-designed, with enough storage space for all our stuff. The furnishings were somewhat worn from use and did not make a good first impression. Everything worked fine, though, especially the bathroom fixtures, which were all well designed and cleverly placed to maximize space. The room had two regular beds and two wall-mounted fold-downs (which we didn't use). My wife thought the bed was a little hard, so we asked for a mattress pad. Instead, she got a whole second mattress stacked on top of the original one and it worked great! Some people had trouble sleeping because the boat rocked quite a bit, especially on the first two nights out, but we felt like babies being rocked to sleep in a cradle. And, because our cabin was near the front of the boat, we heard pretty much zero engine noise and there was also very little vibration, so we slept really well the whole trip. This was very different from our trip on the Rotterdam, where most nights we were aware of engine noise and vibration, so we were pleasantly surprised that the Ecstasy seemed to be free of these problems -- at least where our cabin was located. There was a nice TV tucked up in a corner of the room, on which you could watch a variety of ever-changing programming, depending on what channels were available at the ship's current location. There were also several fairly current movies being shown every day and a text-only news channel. We were kind of disappointed that there wasn't a "shipcam" channel, which is nice when you want to get a view of the outside world from your inside cabin.

Our room stewards were very friendly and accommodating and did an excellent job keeping the place tidy, while leaving interesting towel-animals behind (you'll have to see 'em to believe 'em). The room also came with a nice care package containing some good quality disposable razors, a full-size tube of toothpaste, travel deodorant, breath mints, and some other goodies. All name brand stuff, by the way, not those dinky little hotel items. One extra note: Inside cabins like ours do not get those nifty Carnival bathrobes as standard equipment. We asked our steward for one and received it promptly. Two thumbs up.

The ship itself was clean and had a floor plan that was pretty easy to navigate. We didn't find it as interesting as the Rotterdam, though, which was laced with quirky little areas you wouldn't discover till you'd been on board for a week. We pretty much knew where everything on the Ecstasy was after a day or two. The only thing that was a mystery was the location of the self-serve laundry rooms. They're not indicated on any map of the ship we had, but we did find two. The one we used was all the way at the front of the boat on deck 7. Machine and dryer were $1 each (quarters only) and a box of detergent was 50 cents. You'll also find an iron and ironing board there, but expect a long line on formal night! The public areas of the ship were clean and well-kept, though most areas were a little on the dark side and it wasn't easy to find a good place to read. The outside decks (on the perimeter of the ship) were also kind of small and you could only comfortably put out a deck chair on the Lido deck and above. That wasn't much of an issue, since the highest temperatures on this mid-December trip were under 60 degrees, so time outside was kept to a minimum. Other than the area immediately adjacent to the casino, the ship was generally free of smoke.

Entertainment

The "Vegas style" stage shows were on the same level as those on the Norwegian Crown and the Rotterdam, and we were treated to a couple of good comedians, including one who also juggled. There was also a special Christmas show which incorporated many of the kids who were on board. Very nice. However, the ship was lacking in the quantity and quality of "games for adults" like trivia contests, etc. And, there were few to no prizes if you did win one of the not so numerous trivia bouts. Unlike our other two cruises, we did not come home with a bagful of goodies we won at various contests and events. Hey, don't laugh, I still use my Norwegian mug a couple of times a week and our Holland America mouse pad/photo holder is a prized possession!

The onboard background music was, well, not there. I remember being constantly entertained with the great music selections played all over the Norwegian Crown. I was also mildly entertained by the lackadaisically-chosen, but still present, background music in many public areas of the Rotterdam. But the Ecstasy was curiously silent. I suppose we should have gone to the discos if we wanted music! Speaking about that, we were too tired each night from our shore excursions and all that food to go out dancing, so we have no review for you of that.

All-in-all, entertainment will have to get just one thumb up.

Shore Excursions

We really didn't expect much, but we like to take a tour of any place we visit, so we signed up for an island and botanical garden tour of Catalina and the Bufadora (blow hole) excursion in Ensenada. We were impressed with how scenic Catalina Island was. In particular, the cactus-filled botanical garden was very unusual and interesting. Ensenada is a nicely-kept town with a lot of interesting shops. If you're thinking of buying a guitar, they've got 'em in all sizes for a lot less than you'd pay in an American music shop. The bus trip to La Bufadora was well worth it -- that blow hole really puts on a show. Be prepared to get wet if you get too close! The street you walk down to get to the blow hole is lined with little stalls selling all kinds of items, but we wound up doing our shopping in Ensenada.

Closing Impressions

Our previous cruises were both on very elegant ships -- the Norwegian Crown and the Rotterdam -- and the glitzy neon nature of the Ecstasy struck us as very different. I kind of liked it, but my wife thought it was tacky. Overall, even though we enjoyed ourselves and had a great time, I'd have to rate the overall experience slightly below our previous cruises. Don't let that stop you, though, if the price is right!

One final note on tipping: Carnival includes gratuities on the bill. It came out to $39 per person for the four days, which you can adjust if you want to give someone more or less. The maitre d' in the dining room is not included and an envelope is left in your room on the final night for you to fill with something and hand to him personally. Also, everyone at our table was so pleased with the service, we gave our waiter and his assistant a little extra.

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