My kids first cruise!

Carnival Sunrise Cruise Review

Cruises: 2-3 cruises
Reviews: 2
Helpful Votes: 47

Overall rating:

4.2 out of 5
Carnival Sunrise

4 Night Exotic Eastern Caribbean (Ft. Lauderdale Roundtrip)

Sail date: November 21, 2019

Ship: Carnival Sunrise

Cabin type: Inside

Cabin number: 6341

Traveled as: Family (young children)

Reviewed: 5 years ago

Review summary

Super fun! People were friendly on the boat- everyone is in a Good mood. Grand turk was amazing. Loved the water!

Embarkation

5 out of 5
Went smoothly and very quickly. Our appt to show up was at 1pm but we showed up early and they had no problem letting us on! It was around 11-12

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

3 out of 5
The food was lacking the whole trip. The first buffet we showed up to- which was a special “family fun brunch” right when we got on the ship- had hardly anything appealing in it! And I’m not a picky eater. My kids pretty much loaded on sweets. The rest of the trip- every once and a while we had some great meals- the steak was tender at the MDR so we ordered that a lot. The desserts were extremely lacking!! The Lido buffet would just have a bunch of cakes and crunchy cookies. One day all they had was a selection of chocolate cakes! They need much more variety. Guys BBQ was good. Pizza was “eh” kids said they didn’t like it and wasted a whole pizza. Room service only provides cold breakfast items. the rest of the eateries we never tried becaus the lines were always long.

Onboard Activities

4 out of 5
Kids (and we) loved the water slides and hot tubs. The sport deck was fun too with fooseball, pool, basketball, shuffleboard and the ropes course. Heads up: you need close toed shoes for the ropes course! Luckily we had our water shoes and those worked! 👍 Miniature golf was on the top deck so it was always super windy up there.

Entertainment

3 out of 5
Shows- Scott the flying Scotsman is super energetic and is a great DJ and witty. He was great! the 20s show was alittle cheesy and not super entertaining for my kids since they have no experience with that era. This is definitely a party boat! They had activities well into midnight. We usually hit the sack by 9.

Children's Programs

3 out of 5
Dropped my kids off the first day for several hours and they never wanted to return. Ages 6, 8, and 10. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the program, I just don’t think it was fun enough for them to want to return.

Service and Staff

5 out of 5
Staff was always amazing!! They treat you like royalty! Super friendly right off the bat, remembers your names, our room attendant, Zaka, on the 6th floor fixed our dryer and broken Shampoo dispenser right away.

Ship Quality

4 out of 5
Super clean. Okay- everyone keeps talking about how hard it was to navigate this boat- HERE IS A TIP- if you are staying on levels 6-8, then you are in luck because the room hallway goes all the way from the front to the back of the boat! We were on level 6, so we would just remember which elevators were by the Lido deck (water slides, buffet) and which elevators were by the casino/MDR. so we either went to the right or left out of our room, depending on where we needed to go. It made it so easy to navigate and we hardly ever had to walk through the casino like everyone is saying. So again, if you are lucky enough to be on a level where the hallway stretches from the front to the back of the ship, use that to your advantage!

Cabin / Stateroom

5 out of 5
Great level to be on because the hallway stretched all the way from the front to the back of the ship, which made navigating the ship much easier! We had 5 people in This room together- 2 adults, 3 kids and we were comfortable. The king bed was huge so having a child in there with us was no problem.

Ship tip

If you’re lucky enough to be on a level where the hallways stretches from front to the back of the ship, use that to your advantage to navigate the ship!! We knew which elevator was closest to the Lido deck and which was closest to the casino/MDR

Ports of call

Grand Turk Island

5 out of 5
BEAUTIFUL water!! Super clear and blue! Took a boat out to Gibbs Cay to swim the with stingrays! Highly recommend!! We booked with Papa J Tours (not through cruise line) and it was much cheaper. Water is warm (November)

Ft. Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida

4 out of 5
No excursion. Got a day use hotel and hung out at the beach. Water is clean and warm but waves are lacking. Won’t be able to boogie board or surf which was a bummer.

Disembarkation

4 out of 5
SO much faster if you can carry your own luggage. They even tell you that. We could’ve gotten off sooner but we were killing time bc our flight didn’t leave for many hours later, and that was a mistake bc the line was super long by then. Oops.

Traveler Photos

Gibbs day stingrays Gibbs day
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3 Comments

cruisereckoning    4 years ago

Glad you all had so much fun.

Fiesta83    4 years ago

Eddiegarcia218    5 years ago

I guess I got lucky with the food. My family and I really enjoyed the Sunrise. It is definitely easy to navigate the ship...

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