U.S. Cruise Reviews

That's just about the best opportunity to visit the West Coast from top to bottom. No transportation hassles when the ship captain does all the driving and interesting places to visit where the people speak your language and like you, and everything feels familiar, like the money or even the measurements. Your cell phone works fine, and you feel comfortable. Planning what you want to see on land is much easier, and cheaper, so the experience can be quite good. Your can use AAA TourBooks to plan every visit, as I did. 

The cruise was nice enough and the ports were awesome, but we were some of the youngest people and I felt like I was in a nursing home.  The people were nice, but there was often nowhere to sit to eat in the buffet areas, forcing us to sit outside in the rain and/or cold. The balcony stateroom was nice, but the toilet area was too small for my husband who is a big guy. The buffet food was very repetitive and there was rarely more than one place to eat breakfast after 9 AM, forcing us to always eat at the buffet. The specialty restaurants were great!!  I had set up a payment arrangement once onboard and now that I am home, it looks like I may have been overcharged by $1000, despite what my invoice says...looks like I will be on the phone a lot. Fun.   I don't think I will sail with them again and I am kind of turned off by cruises now and this wasn't my first. 

Enjoyed the staff and the food. Excursions could have been better. The ship needs an overhaul. Disappointed the pool area did not have a cover so we could enjoy the pool in cool and rainy weather. 

We had a wonderful time on the cruise.  Emma the cruise director was amazing at entertaining the folks in the atrium area of the ship.  The shows, and staff were very good.  If we needed anything big or small they were their to get it for us. 

The best part of this cruise was the staff, they were helpful and pleasant. They are Carnival's best asset. Getting on and off the ship was easy, we carried our own luggage off and was out in a half hour.

Food and wait staff in main dining room was very good. Biggest issue was the lack of sea day activities. The entertainment was mediocre. Ports of call were not very interesting. All and all this cruise was not a good value for what we paid for it. I would not recommend this cruise. 

The NCL Gem is a comfortable ship. It's not as big as the newer ships, which is good ecause it allows you to get around faster and familiarize yourself with all venues available. Staff is always friendly and the atmosphere onboard is upbeat. It is newly redone and the changes are all positive. I recommend going to the specialty restaurants. The Gem provides a pleasant getaway. I cruise on it at least oncea year. It is like an old friend!

A complete review of my cruise can be found here:

http://www.bapcentral.com/2016%20Carnival/2016Cruise.htm

It includes everything I found aboard the Carnival Sunshine and the port excursions.

Summary:

JiJi dining room on ship was excellent. Comedians were fantastic. Food was average in other areas of ship.

We sailed with a group of four.  Fun for all on a very nice itinerary to Boston, Portland and the Canadian cities of St Johns and Halifax.  The crew was really friendly all around the ship  It was obvious that their kindness and warmth were a priority up and down the chain of command.  The food was wonderful, especially in light of the opposite experience with Royal Caribbean on a recent cruise.  Carnival's food service was far superior.   

Our room was nice and we had a large balcony which we enjoyed. The housekeeping crew were great and greeted us by name. The food in the Lido buffet was poor quality and generally luke warm to cold by the time you sat down to eat. The dining room food was a bit better and was at least hot. I was really looking forward to afternoon tea but was highly disappointed. They only had Lipton tea unless you paid an extra 1.95 for a different kind. Not much of a selection of finger sandwiches or goodies. If you wanted milk in your tea, they brought the milk and poured it into your tea. If you had a second cup, you had to ask for milk again. There were lots of entertainment and activity options. The spa was very pushy in selling additional services and their products.

Although we had driven to each of the ports a number of years ago, we decided to take the cruise because we didn't need to take an airplane, but could simply drive to the embarkation port in Brooklyn.  We had a beautiful sail away with great views of lower Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazano Bridge.  Our stateroom was extremely comfortable, the staff was outstanding, the ship,  especially the Piazza, was beautiful and functional, and the entertainment was exceptional.  They hired very talented musicians and they were very important to our enjoyment of the cruise. The negatives: the weather was not great and at least one or two excursions were in the rain; sitting on deck was not something we were tempted to  do.  We had also hoped to see some foliage, but learned that the trees usually change in the first or second week of October.  

Our favorite part of this cruise were the destinations. We enjoyed Peggy's Cove a lot. But feel we were not given enough time there to see everything. By time we climbed the rocks and looked at the lighthouse we had to get back to the bus. 

Portland, Maine was terrific. The seafood there was the best! 

We did not see any fall folliage due to the very warm weather the leaves were still green. Regardless, the scenery was beautiful! 

The Enclave was exceptional, except for the first day, where none of the steam rooms and sauna was hot.  This was very disappointing, since the first day set the tone for the cruise.

All the staff were very helpful and friendly.  Particularly Emma Nixon who gave the best entertainments and made us feel like home onboard.  Our dinner server, Bosco and his team also gave us the best dinning experience.

Great job Carnival!

Wai & Jennifer

State room #2178

I would recommend this cruise to everyone. Every port visited was beautiful.  Great excursions everywhere.  The boat was great.  The accommodations, food, entertainment and staff were great.  I had a great time.

Beautiful ship. The beds were very hard we couldn't get a good nights rest. Buffet was Very good, rooms and balcony seem to have gotten smaller. loved Boston, stop at Halifax was too late every thing closed at 5-5:30 ship didn't leave port til 10 pm. a lot of people had excursions they couldn't do, very limited, beautiful port. casino area wasn't big enough for amount of slots and tables. All crew were very nice and helpful. We were too early for fall colors !

Our favorite part of the cruise was Victoria, B.C.  It is a beautiful place.  We would like to recommend that you spend more time in this port.  Overnight, or at least until 9 p.m.

This was the third time that I sailed on the Explorer of the Seas.  While the Explorer is a great ship I enjoyed it better before they did the recent changes.  While the outside theater is a nice idea,  it does not always work when there is high wind or rain.  The inside screening room was nicer. I liked that they made more use of the Palace Theatre.  I missed the little private areas throughout the ship where you could just relax and read. They eliminated the card and board game room and combined it with the library.  This made the library very crowed and it was difficult to find a book with all the people in the way.  The main dining room did a nice job and the waiters that took care of us (Ieka and Oka) were excellent.  The room and balcony and bathroom and closet were excellent.  Only the mattress could have been better.  Lunch in the main dining room was a little bit of a disappointment.  We had eaten there on our last two sailings on this ship, and thought that offerings were better on the previous cruises.  There needs to be more communication between the shore excursion people and the food staff..  In San Francisco if you went a night excursion you had to leave the ship before supper . The wind Jammer Café close early after lunch and opened too late for people who had to go on a tour. In our case the tour was bus tour that did not stop to allow a meal.  Something must have happen on the last day in Canada because at lunch there were no vegetables to be had at lunch.  We were not the only ones to notice this.  I also missed some of the seminars such a music appreciation or music history as well as just some general history.  Also any possibility of having some additional channels for the tv.  While we did have some disappointments, we did enjoy our cruise.  The staff was great and friendly and very helpful.  The ship handled very well in the seas. One area I was worried about was the fact that in order to make connections to get home we needed a very early flight of 9:50 a.m.  The staff helped me by telling us we could use the express departure and  told us there would be cabs available.  That gave me great peace of mind.  We were able to get to the airport in plenty of time. Just a though.  We had to leave our cabin around 600 a.m. but all the eating areas were still closed.  Perhaps one dinning area could be opened with a continental breakfast fir those who leave early.

a great cruise west coast cruise was one of the best cruise i have taken , food and service was super,going to san franciso for 2 days was great . the shows were super .the service was great all over the ship.the pomanote deck was the place to be.

This was a great cruise for relaxing and getting away from it all. Two full days in San Francisco was nice, especially since the weather was perfect.

With so much going on on other cruises (day tours) this was nice in that they were limited so everything was more casual and not as rushed.

This is the secind time we have taken this cruise and it was a nice break from the usual Med cruises.