Carnival Splendor Cruise Reviews - Reviews

I have been on 2 other cruises before, both with Princess and loved them. I thought since they were owned by Carnival they would be about the same. No, a lot of kids running around alone, much smaller buffet and less attention to the guests. The weather was great, but a little unorganized when getting off the ship. They had good choices for dinner but not if you were a vegetarian. For adults looking for peace and quiet not a good choice.

This was a good trip, especially for the teenagers. Everyone had a good time.

the only exception was that the boys waited until the last evening, around 10 p.m., to play basketball and the court was closed for cleaning. The trip is great for families and the interior rooms have plenty of closet and drawer space if you don't over pack.  We booked our shore excursions through the company through which we booked the cruise and we wish we had booked them through Carnival. That didn't occur to me until we actually checked in for boarding passes. So if you want to increase the actual Carnival shore excursion bookings, please notify the guests as soon as you receive their booking (through a third party) that Carnival has its own shore excursions. This would have been quite helpful as Carnival's Nassau offerings greatly exceeded the choices offered by the company through which I booked the cruise.

I have celiac and have to avoid eating gluten.  In the formal eating area I could order my food for supper a day in advance, but all other grills and buffets I was limited to fruit and salad.  There was actually a sign on the buffet that said gluten free bread, but when I asked a worker they said that it was a mistake.  

Our experience was otherwise very good.  Thanks 

The ship is new and very well managed. The workers are fantastic and treat customers as we wanted to be treated and we have a lot of things to do while cruising. It's good for both kids and adults, that can do many activities all night and day long. 

Having gone on Carnival twice before with no problems, I was let down by the quality of the buffet food and breakfast items on this cruise.  We picked this cruise for the Ports, which were all great!!!

I have to hand it to the staff, their service was excellent!!  The waiter and room staff knew our names by the second evening and when they passed us on the cruise ship, they would say hello to my wife and I and call us by our first names.  That was a huge plus!!

We enjoyed the trip, we had enough time to walk around the ports, the staff was always helpful, the cruise had plenty of entertainment for you to keep yourself busy.

The food wasn't great and I felt the ship rocking the whole 7 days. Some of the staff wasn't the friendliest. I received a lot of good reviews about Carnival but the Splendor did not live up to expectation.

a lot of fun... lots to do, good food and excellent ports.

This cruise has a variety of stops to interest all types of people in the different ports.

The ship has a large casino and three pools for a variety of activity. There are many bars on the ship with different forms of entertainment.

Great trip weather not so good!  Really wanted to go into Belize but tender's were not aloud out because of the high waves.  Cruise member were great.  Food not the best but they have to cut something back with better rates.

This is my 10th cruise with carnival in the past  10 years, so I've become accustomed to expecting great things from Carnival's cruises. Unfortunately, we had very rough seas for 4 of our 7 days (11-23-14 to 11-30-14), but that didn't seem to affect much inside the ship, thankfully.  Rough weather& Seasaside,   overall, this cruise was about average... but this specific ship isn't as nice as the others carnival has in this same class that  i've cruised on recently...In short, for previous Carnival cruisers, i'd recommend any of carnivals other ships built after 2001 over this one. If you are a first time Cruiser, this would make a fine first experience with Carnival and you would be even more pleasantly surprised on your future carnival cruises, since i'd expect them to be even better. (FWIW, i don't cruise on Carnival ships built pre-2000, since they changed/improved the room layouts of ship designs so much around that time).

This ship was VERY clean and felt, smelled and seemed 'healthy'.

I've never had much interest in noticing much about the decor of previous carnival ships, but this one is so ugly, i couldn't help but notice..This ship's decor & lighting is HIDEOUS!

Even after 7 days of exploring the ship, i have no idea what the theme of this ship is... unless  'tacky and discontinuous'  was the theme. (Some of our fellow cruisers suggested it was a Dr Seuss theme, which could make sense, given the dining room ceiling that appeared to have 'sunny side up' eggs as the main decor feature)

Decor aside, the layout of this ship leaves room for improvement in some areas, most notably related with food service.  Why in the world did carnival set up drink stations where the cups are in the middle of the drink area ?? (ie,  with ice, water and sometimes lemonade on one side and coffee and teas on the other side of the plastic cups)  i'd expect them to understand that you first need a CUP before you can make use of the ice, water, and lemonade dispensers. Needless to say, this causes lines to go slower than they should and causes a little congestion in the front of the line since you had to pass the ice & water to get a cup and then return for the ice/water. it seems they are partially aware of this, since some drink stations had a portable dish stand with the cups on it beside the drink station, but not many.

The wait times for breakfast on this ship are the longest i've ever seen with carnival and unacceptable, even though everything was normal (not an overloaded boat, nor sick staff, etc).   I experienced 15-20 minute  lines for breakfast on several days..just to get the food! (then the drink line was next).

On the other end of the spectrum, the service during the sit down meals was excellent, with the wait staff service among the best you can expect at any upscale restaurant and much better than my last cruise on the Carnival Valor.

Unfortunately, the food at dinner left much to be desired.  the  filet mignon, (if you can call it that without laughing) was really bad, as was pretty much all of the steaks they served each day,  EXCEPT for the Chateaubriand, which was excellent.

the frog legs were among the worst i've ever tried, even by Carnival's standards (they had NO flavor and were a little tough,  like when you overcook chicken wings).

Ditto for the warm chocolate melting cake.. 4 of the 5 days i had that, it was undercooked and  closer to a soup consistency.

Next year, they should let an american prepare the Thanksgiving meals..  I've never had raw sweet potato pie before, but apparently that's how carnival thinks americans like them.

Also, it was hard to spot the stuffing on our thanksgiving feast, something i think most Americans would look forward to for thanksgiving dinner.

As a very bright spot with food, this ship had the Tandoori station ( indian food section), which was very very good every day- they had several non-spicy foods that were delicious, too.

I was disappointed to find a mini-golf course where the adult-only hammocks, hot tubs, & deck chairs used to be near the serenity spa, since i usually enjoy laying in the hammocks and the privacy of the adult only cabana chair area.

The water slide was nice and the water 'play' area was really cool!

The room attendants on this cruise were about average, they were nice but didn't give the extraordinary service i've experienced on the Freedom or valor. I had to ask to have my ice bucket refilled, probably 3 out of the 6 days... My sister had the same experience in her room with a different room attendant.

However, i got a turkey as one of my towel animals for thanksgiving day.. something i'd never seen as a towel animal before, so that was cool.

One of the great things about Carnival is that I normally want to do more things than i can possibly fit into each day, after going over the days activities in the fun times paper that you get each day.  Oddly for this cruise, i didn't have that problem, since Carnival seems to have removed several activities that i  enjoy. Most notable is that there was no 'welcome back' party for 2nd time cruisers. They still have the other special party for those who have cruised several times, though.  I never saw the galley tour as an option and was looking forward to that on this cruise.  I also didn't see the info for the tour of the bridge, although some cruisers said they heard about it but didn't attend. tea time was only so-so. 

My biggest gripe with this Carnival cruise (and probably in general) is that far too many of the activities have morphed into thinly veiled sales presentations, instead of being truly helpful for cruisers with no experience at each port.  Those sessions were infuriating, since they only focused on pushing merchandise available in the carnival linked shops (think diamonds international, del sol, tanzanite international, etc). These activities used to be helpful with orienting cruisers with each port, the unique qualities of each port/country and how to get around, in addition to mentioning the shopping opportunities.   This left me with a big negative opinion and i will likely go with Royal Caribbean for my next cruise, to see if they are also doing this.

We enjoyed our cruise.  We had good weather, except for two bad days of rough water that kept us from getting into Belize.  If I ever cruised with Carnival again I would like to see them do a better job with controlling unsupervised kids running up and down the hallways being noisy.

My disappointment with this first cruise is caused by me taking SEVERAL things for granted and not doing enough investigation to prepare myself .  I felt lost all the time on the ship and was bored - nothing to do that interested me, Before you go - check out everything and don't take the smallest thing for granted. A cruise is NOT LIKE any other vacation you have ever had. Casino full of cigarette smoke - lots of happy loud children and tons of free lunchroom quality food. Ship employees extremely accommodating and friendly. Lots of couples and groups - making single seating sparse. I 'MIGHT" take another one , but will use this experience as a guideline and will be better prepared if a next time happens.    

great ship, great food,  great staff  

lot of waste of food,  low    romeo was great to book cruise

So this time on the carnival splendor I was pleasantly surprised, things were much cleaner , food was taster, and staff was so very helpful. i give credit for these changes to Nickos D Batistatos  hotel director. As I went to see him on my last cruise on the splendor when I found something that wasn't right on the cruise and he immediately fixed the problem and helped me and the 100 guest I was with the most pleasant cruise experience he changed my mind about this ship, and I'm so glad he did. must do's on this ship Malcom woo hoo burn is the best cruise director Spa  it's the best spa and the service is unbelievable I just love the staff! Love the steam rooms and heated beds, hot tub was so relaxing after a long day on the beach and ports. next the piano barking Russell Blues this guy was great and such a fun and lively group of people every night inThere. next the adults only comedy club was great but the first guy wasn't so great Thomas brown but the next three were great Kelly Terranova. I love to laugh! i also enjoy my interior spa cabin and my room steward Tania she was the best! Room was always clean with many different animals, she was also are photographer every night  and we put on a cabin party and she helped us get items to decorate our door and kept our room sparkling when we had a cabin crawl. i like the casino, I pretty much stayed even with the cash for the entire trip. Other things we did on the cruise  we are involved with cruisecritic.com and we scheduled a couple meet and greets, a game of LCR every sea day, a cabin crawl, a wine tasting, a poker run,a slot pull, gift exchange, an port excursions. some people in our group did the steak house in the first night of the cruise and they got a free bottle of wine , so that's the best night to order the steak house, others did the chefs table and they said that's the best money they spent on the cruise. i loved the drive in movies with my boyfriend it was nice to be outside with a romantic movie and popcorn and it didn't cost $50 lol ( free ) don't get the wifi it's very slow caribbean dance party on Monday night was fun! tuesday night had the best enter active games I love the adult quest game. Make sure to be prepared and bring 8 quarters, pilots license etc... Adult team game look it up on you tube. the splendor has a nice adult only serenitydeck. karaoke was none by our neighbors and they said they had a great time. the dance classes are a lot of fun! sherry

My second cruise - 1st with Carnival, it was a great experience. Although the ship's structure was a bit disorganized (i.e. you have to get on the elevator several times to get to "the Black Pearl" which is the "my time dining" restaurant) the Lido deck's buffet items could use different variety of food for dinner each night, had lots of options for Lunch, however, very limited items for dinner (almost the same thing every night). They had a chocolate buffet on one of the days with outrageous amounts of selection of sweets which included countless variety of cakes, fruit and other dessert items. There was also a late night Mexican fiesta which was amazing. Overall it was a good vacation enjoyed the overall experience and paid the amount the trip was worth. Staff was very kind and friendly thru out the ship. The Ship had a Kosher Meal menu only in the dining room but its all frozen food and you have to pre-order each night. After ordering it once I didn't order it again, it was not the best tasting food and didn't want to take to a risk of getting sick on my trip.

I booked this cruise for my husbands 60th birthday.  Despite my request , there was no singing or mention of his birthday at his special dinner.  I was also told by my booking agent that this boat had laser tag.  Turns out, this bait does not have laser tag.  I had two very disappointed kids.  The dining room staff was terse and slow.  My past carnival experience was lovely but this was a sad comparison.

The cruise was very nice. It was comfortable and friendly. Really enjoyed the experience.  the food was good and the atomsphere was lovely.  No complaints. 

Your staff works incredible hard to make the experience a good one.  Although we found we preferred the only other cruise ship we have ever taken and that was a Holland cruise to Alaska.  Now that may be because of the place we went to but we also preferred the ship experience more on Holland.  The ship itself was not cartoonish in décor and the dining experience on Holland was preferable.  The craziness of song & dance during a 9pm meal did not appeal to me.  Maybe my husband & I were too old for it but it appeared as though most on the ship were in our age range.  A few more coffee stations would also have made things nicer in the mornings as the line for coffee never seemed to end.  I also heard one of your staff cursing about his new 'assignment' of the food areas.  We all have issues but I do not take a cruise to hear his issues.  All in all we enjoyed our selves but will not take another Carnival cruise in future.

Overall we had a nice time.  The room stewards were wonderful and the rooms were clean and replenished with towels efficiently.  The dining room waiters and Lido deck food handlers were always annoyed and over worked.  The dining room staff made you feel awkward and you had to ask for things more than once. At one point there were no dishes on Lido deck and I asked 3 people who seemed to ignore me.  Variety of food was good.  Saw one movie and it got to the last 10 minutes and the movie had technical difficulties and we regretfully never saw the end. Disembarking was very organized. Compared to other cruises I have been on.....we had midnight buffets and parties that Carnival did not offer, however this was only a 5 night cruise.

Great time, wonderful scenery and beautiful ship and crew.  Of course the food was fantastic and the service impeccable.  Took a tour (excursion) of the ship.  This was extremely interesting and I would recommend it to anyone that is interested.  There wasn’t as many Autumn leaves as we hope for but still it was a beautiful time of the year to go.