Cruise Line: Carnival Cruise Lines
Cruise Ship: Carnival Fascination and Carnival Triumph
Cruise Dates: 1999 and 2001
Cruise Destination: Caribbean
By: Deven
My daughter and I traveled with our family on two different carnival cruises Fascination in 1999 and the Triumph in 2001 and had a great time on each of them. It's been a while and we are ready to cruise again. In fact we have booked our 3rd cruise with Carnival on the Valor (first sailing in Dec.


04) for June of 2005. I wanted to sail with RCI but my daughter insisted we go with CC because of what she describes as awesome teenage nightlife.

I thought everything on the ship was very nice. I guess I'm greedy because I thought the food was fine and ate like a hog. In the formal dining rooms I was disappointed in the amount of people I saw come in with extremely casual attire each and every night. Yes, I'm talking shorts and jeans on the men and women. I suppose this bothered me because being a single mother I don't get to go out many places that I get to dress a little nicer and thought from everything that I've seen and read that Carvnial would have been more forward with what they expected in the dining room. There were plenty of other places where the extremely casual could have dined.

My other big disappointed was the amount of night life that was offered to the adults. If you didn't gamble, smoke cigars or want to stand around a bar singing, you really didn't have too much more to do.

I thought there would have been more deck parties (Norwegian throws a heck of deck party) but there weren't. I would go down to the adult dancing facilites and they would be dark. The night life after the show really sucked.

Speaking of the show. I thought they all were excellent. But on the Fascination it was so dark that you could hardly see if you happened to walk in after the lights were off. Those nice white lights wrapped in a plastic tube would be a nice addition to the show room. At least across the the floor.

All of our shore excursions were well planned and fun. We did however rent our own taxi in Cozumel and Ocho Rios and had fun doing our own thing, which ended up being the same thing they did on the excursions for a lot less money.

The rooms were nice size, and well taken care of. We got whatever we asked for--razor and cream rinse--within a reasonable amount of time.

I heard a lot of people complaining about disembarkment. You know it's going to happen. You know you're not going to be the only one who has to get off the ship so prepare yourself for it. Bring some reading material, cards, whatever. Think about it, when you got on the ship for your week the rooms were clean and everything looked as if it was placed there just for you. Wouldn't you want the same for the next week's customers.

I think hearing people complain about someone not jumping as fast or as high as they wanted them to was the BIGGEST disappointment I had during my entire week on both ships.

I had a good time and would travel Carnival again (oh yeah, I am).

Have a good time whatever Cruise Line you decide to take. Don't always look for others to point you in the direction of having a great time. Boy isn't that sad. I even found it when the adult dance areas were closed. . . . and remember . . .
No matter how much money you spent or how much planning you do, stuff (sometimes big stuff) happens.

Happy Cruising