3rd best of my three cruise experience

Carnival Paradise Cruise Review to Mexico

ByunghwanS

Contributor Level: Deck Hand

Cruises: 2-3 cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 35

Overall rating:

3 out of 5

Verified Review

4 Night Baja Mexico (Los Angeles Roundtrip)

Sail date: November 21, 2011

Ship: Carnival Paradise

Cabin type: Oceanview

Traveled as: Family (young children)

Reviewed: 12 years ago

Review summary

This was the worst of my three luding another Carnival Cruise. The only good thing I found was the parking system, which stood out as the best among all the large-size parking system (e.g. airports, ports, etc.) This does not mean that every single aspect of the cruise was bad. In fact, most things were at least mediocre, if not great. -- inconvenience (long line) The cruise would not have been necessarily a bad experience unless the ship had more effective mechanism for allocating resources. For example, I had to wait for about 15 mins to get an egg fry, EVERY MORNING. I'm not talking about the check-in or tendering processes, the convenience by which is understandable and somewhat unavoidable. I'm talking about the inconvenience that I, and most of the passengers I believe, had to deal with everywhere. Things like this could have been easily prevented/corrected if Carnival had been at least marginally concerned about the inconvenience people had to go through. -- poor shore-excursion There was not very much to do in Santa Catalina, which is understandable given the weather. Programs for Mexico though did not seem to take full advantage of the tourism resources at all. Winery tour seemed the least-evil.

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

1 out of 5

In addition to the deli-like places, the ship had two formal dining places where the dinner was supposed to be taken. I booked the trip about a month before the cruise and the travel agent told me that she put my name on waitlist for the early dinner (6:00pm), the time slot I had to have due to my baby son. Despite her very positive presumption that my dinner time could be switched to the 6:00pm spot or the 'flexible seating', what I was 'sentenced' from the restaurant manager was simply that I had to be stuck at the 8:15pm dinner. He actually told me that the booking started at least 6 months from the cruise and there was just no chance that I could ever possibly get into the early dinner time. If I knew this, I would never taken this cruise. The food though wasn't bad at all.

Entertainment

3 out of 5

Given the shortage of shore-excursion, it seemed plausible to assume that there were more entertainment/activities in the ship, but I do not think there was any outstanding in-ship program provided. If I recall correctly, the last night was just filled with a bunch of stand-ups. I am a big stand-up fan myself, but it was a little too much and basically two comedians taking turns again and again throughout all evening-night.

Service and Staff

3 out of 5

I did not have any unpleasant experience regarding the kindness of staffs/crews.

Ship Quality

3 out of 5

Paradise was small. I did have the essentials of a cruise ship, but nonetheless, it was small.

Cabin / Stateroom

3 out of 5

The cabin was good. There was nothing to complain about it except for the temperature which I couldn't individually control (I could minimize the inflow of ACed air but it was still very cold). But I think this is pretty much the case for other ships too.