Pretty Sassy

I just wrapped up my 4th cruise and I wanted to put some notes down comparing my normal cruise line(Royal Carribean) and Carnival.  I’ve never been on any of the fancy lines(like Holland American).

I had always heard a lot of nightmare stories about Carnival being a horrid booze cruise of barely clad springbreakers competing with each other to dive further into drunken debauchery.

But it wasn’t really like that.  I went on the 4 day mexican cruise with my mom, husband, brother, sister-in-law and my 80 year old 100% Japanese Grandma who kept hoping the captain would invite him to his table(and maybe even his cabin for a wild night of Yatzee). 

The mister summed it best “Carnival got the broad strokes right, but missed the details”.

Here are my notes
1. In Ensenada you can buy 3 tubes of .5% generic Retin-A for $24.00 or the name brand .5% for $20.00 a tube.  In the states it’s an outrageous fortune.  You better believe Grandma bogarted one of my tubes.
2. The slot machines on the Carnival Cruise were waaay loser.  It took a lot longer to lose my money.
3. The breakfasts were dissappointing.  Sub-par sweet rolls and bad, powdered scrambled eggs.  In the end we just preferred to have a pot of coffee and a few croissants brought to the room.
4. The lunches beat the pants off of Royal Carribean.  They we’re standard american food-court type faire done really well.  Sure it wasn’t fancy, but it was done well.
5. No ice sculptures in the dining room or bands by the pool.
6. The dinners were very, very good.  The Hot Fudge cake is so good it will make you slap someone.

Overall we had a very fun, very rum-infused trip, but missed some of the extra pampering we get on Royal Carribean.  If we needed a Mexican weekend to decompress I don’t think we would hesitate to book either cruise line.  Of course that doesn’t mean we aren’t dreaming of going on one of those really fancy pants cruise lines.