Adventure Time in Key West & Cozumel with Carnival

This past month I took a one week long vacation with my family & Henry. We went on a cruise to Key West, Fl and Cozumel, Mexico. Our choice of cruise line was Carnival. We departed on 1/10 at 6 am to get to JFK to catch our 8:30 am flight to Miami. After arriving at Miami, we hailed a taxi to take up to the port to get onboard.

However, as much as I hoped it would’ve been a funfilled vacation, it wasn’t—in fact, it was rather disappointing because of the décor, the service, the weather, and my immune system.

1.  Décor

One word: Tacky. Compared to the Royal Caribbean cruise ship I went on two years ago, Carnival’s ship looked super tacky. In addition, the dining room was so dim and dark that it just felt somewhat uncomfortable to sit in. The main lobby was this ugly teal color mixed with gold which just didn’t look good—it didn’t look as grand. In addition, the facilities sounded GREAT on paper, but in person, it was just okay. I LIKED that there were two whirlpools on the ship because the Royal Caribbean only had one, which made it annoying cause it was always filled with a lot of old people…so I didn’t want to go cram myself in as well. In addition, the pool was a lot larger, but FRIGGIN COLD—the water was FREEZING COLD and salty as heck—but I expected it to be salty. The water slides—which captivated me the MOST, was disappointing. No where on the website did they say that the water slides were ONLY for KIDS—NO WHERE! However, when I got there, they told me it was only for kids. Then the guy looked me down and smirked and said, “But you can go on too.” Look, I know I’m short -_-;;.  The mini golf court was indeed incredibly mini. I didn’t get to use it, so I won’t comment too much on it. The fitness center however, was a LOT more welcoming than the one on the Royal Caribbean—I enjoyed it quite a bit…aside from the immense nudity experienced in the sauna & steam room…

 

2. Service

Horrible. Just simply horrible. Well, fine, the waiter who served us was super nice, as was our room attendant, but there were some horrible ones. I understand that when on a cruise, they like to encourage all passengers to get to know one another, especially since seating is often limited. I travelled in a party of 6, so we weren’t a small group. For lunch one day, we decided that we wanted to go to the fancy restaurant to see what they had to serve there. When we got there, the dining room was basically empty except for a few parties. However, they decided to seat my party of 6 (50% of which didn’t even speak English) with this one, poor Hispanic lady who didn’t speak English either. It wasn’t like they didn’t have seats—they had plenty of LARGE tables that were just sitting there, but they just decided to cram two of us onto a table of four with that lady who took up two seats, and then MOVE two additional two seaters next to the table so that ALL of us would fit. Now, wouldn’t it have been easier to just place us at a larger table? Especially since neither parties could even communicate with one another? My parents started complaining to me in Chinese,  and the waitress who seated us clearly saw that we weren’t satisfied, but she had the audacity to cross her arms, tap her foot and then ask us in an annoyed voice, “Is something wrong?!” Besides that, service during lunch is just incredibly unorganized. My parents and my aunt had to wait a good twenty minutes after my brother, my boyfriend, and I finished our desserts before they even got their own desserts—and they only managed to get their dessert because we kept bugging them to get it for us. The waiters just don’t have good communication with one another during lunch. In addition, they’re very stubborn—they REFUSE to pay attention to ANY guests OUTSIDE of their zone, even if they see us waving our hands furiously, they just ignore it. It really pissed me off how badly organized and how badly trained some of the staff members were.

Another annoying thing with carnival is that they LOVE taking pictures of their guests—at ANY given opportunity. Everytime I turned around, there was a staff member there with a camera asking to take my picture. After they take it, they’d develop it for us to see and would charge us $20 for them. We didn’t even get to pick what size we wanted either. This is a HUGE problem—it’s not eco-friendly, and it’s friggin annoying. I have my own camera—I don’t really need you to come up to me every five minutes to take a picture of me.

One last thing that I wasn’t satisfied with in regards to Carnival was the lack of support when it came to getting to a new port. There weren’t really any support or material to tell us what each port had or even a map to better navigate around the ports with. In addition, the amount of time allotted at each location wasn’t too long, so it limited all travelers with regards to where we could go.  As a result, Key West wasn’t fun because it seemed like all there was to do there was to go bar hopping…which you can’t really do when you’re with your family and your parents are conservative. When it came to Mexico, our ONE shore excursion was cancelled due to the weather, so we stayed on board instead of venturing out because of the weather and our lack of plans.

3. Weather

We chose a horrible year to go to Mexico. It hailed. Yes, it HAILED in MEXICO. Florida was beautiful. Mexico was rainy, cold, went, WINDY, and icy. That’s basically all I have to say about weather.

4.  My immune system

I always thought I had a pretty decent immune system, but I was proven wrong. I got motion sickness all four days of the cruise—though I’m pretty sure it’s because the ship was pretty tiny (only 70,000 in tonnage) so it rocked like crazy—esp when combined with this weather. On top of motion sickness, on the third day, I came down with a fever—yes, a fever! Then my fever went away and I was left with a cold and a throat infection which then morphed into an ear infection as well on my plane ride home.

So yeah, that was my trip in a nutshell. In conclusion, I really hope to revisit Mexico and Keywest…just probably not with my whole family—probably just with my boyfriend or with a few friends and I will NEVER embark on a cruise with Carnival ever again.