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Carnival Cruise Line

MS Carnival Triumph

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Reviewed by: Larry Orvis
# previous cruises: 3
Date of Trip: February 2, 2002
Itinerary: Caribbean - Eastern

Here is the text version of my review, if you would like to see the review with Pictures, Go To: http://lorvis.home.att.net/cruise.htm.

This is mine and Jennifer's 3rd Cruise, first time on the Eastern Run though. This cruise left Miami on Saturday (2 Feb), docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico (4 Feb), docked in St Thomas, USVI (5 Feb), docked in St Croix, USVI (6 Feb) and back to Miami on 9 Feb. We were in Cabin 6432 a Category 8A Balcony Cabin on the Upper Deck.

EMBARKATION - We arrived at the Port of Miami at about 1045 by Taxi from our Pre-cruise stay at the Carlton Hotel in South Beach Miami. We unloaded the Bags from the back of the Taxi right into the hands of the cruise ship porters. We headed inside where check-in was a breeze. We dropped off our paperwork, showed our passports and we were off to the 2nd floor of the Terminal to pick up our 'Sail and Sign Cards.' We picked up the S&S cards and headed to the waiting room. We had completed the Check-in process in 10 minutes. Now came the hard part of waiting til the Ship was ready to be boarded. We had to wait in the waiting room for about an hour, at about 1215, they started snapping the pre-cruise photos and we were on our way to the Triumph by 1230. Security was tight, all bags went through the X-ray machine and all passengers were scanned by the "wand." Some passengers had their bags opened and searched, etc. We entered the Ship on the 3rd Deck near the Capitol Bar, headed to the elevators and our cabin on the 6th Deck.

DEBARKATION - This started out pretty organized, but the crew lost control of this fairly quickly. We docked at the Port of Miami at around 730am. We expected to begin debarkation at around 930am, by color codes of course. Starting at around 9am, AJ started making announcements that Deck 3 needed to be cleared of people prior to the ship being cleared by customs and immigration. These announcements continued til around 10am. Still nobody had been allowed to debark the ship. At around 1030am, it seems as the crew had given up and the doors were opened, the line that had formed since around 930am had been allowed to exit the ship. No color codes or nothing. The folks that were told that they would be allowed to get off early due to early flights, ended up getting off later. We followed the crowd and by 1045 we were on the bus with our luggage and headed to the airport. Our flight wasn't til 1pm so we weren't concerned about getting off the ship as others were. The MS Carnival Triumph, all 102 thousand tons of her is in really good shape. It is a very large ship and took a few days to learn where everything is. Even towards the latter part of the cruise, I still found myself going to the front of the ship when I thought I was going towards the aft. There were several decks with plenty of things to do. The Rome Lounge was absolutely huge, seating 1500. There was always something going on in there, Trivia quizzes, Bingo, talks, etc. The Casino was one of the largest I've ever seen. We made our usual deposit there. The Casino Manager always had sessions where you could learn to play the variety of games, I finally learned how to play Craps. Jennifer played in the Slots Tournament, made to the finals and lost. Oh Well......

Plenty of Bars everywhere, all with different themes. The Nightclub had easily a hundred TVs, that's where we watched the Patriots upset the Rams........ They had a good sized Arcade with an underground cave theme. They had a Wine only bar and version of Starbucks, where all sorts of Coffee and Cakes were available. In each of the bars, there was live entertainment ranging form Karoake to a small orchestra.

The Deck Space for laying out in the Sun was abundant, but somehow by 8am, each chair had been 'reserved.' Jennifer usually laid out in the early afternoon and didn't have too much trouble finding a spot. There were four decks upfront that provided really great views at night.

The pools were nice and filled most of the time. There were plenty of Hot Tubs and there was always space available. I wanted to try the Slide, but never got around to it. The Gym was fairly large with lots of treadmills and plenty of weight machines. The hot tubs in the Gym were really hot and we liked those the best.

The Triumph handled nicely in the seas with only gentle swaying with seas of 1-4 ft. But for some reason, when we left St Croix, we encountered about 18 hrs of 8-10 ft seas, where we had some good rocking going on. It didn't bother Jennifer and I, but we heard of several passengers including some of the crew being sick. Lots of people wore the patches and the bracelets.

The food was ABUNDANT. The 24 hour Pizzeria was great. The NY Deli served the biggest Turkey Subs. The Coney Island Grill was all too happy to serve up a Double Cheeseburger. The South Beach Club served the Buffets with plenty of choices. The 24 hour ice cream parlor was awesome too!

For Dinner we ate in the Paris Dining Room, the other was the London Dining Room. There were four seatings per meal. We only ate dinner in the Main Dining Room. Dinner typically lasted about 90 minutes. The food was great. Service was good. On the last nite, I didn't particularly care for what was on the menu so asked for a steak, that's what I got. We ate Dinner at the South Beach Club twice at the Alternative Dining. It was pretty similar to Main Seating Dining except ALOT faster. We enjoyed that part.

We chose our cabin specifically for its appearance of a bigger balcony in the Carnival Brochure. The reason it was bigger was because the Cabin was in an "L" shape as it was right next to a set of stairs. We gambled that the stairs were not that often used and hoped that they would not become a noise issue. As it turns out, the stairs are only used for staff and emergencies, so no noise issue at all.

The cabin had a Queen Bed as opposed to the normal 2 twins which could be pushed together. The cabin was actually quite large and in our opinion, Carnival could even market this room as a higher category. The Balcony was 20ft long and 4.5 feet wide. Plenty of room out there. Lots of closet space, we even put all of our empty luggage in a closet.

The cabin had a 2 person sofa, TV and a telephone. The TV had 3 recent movies on all day that rotated each day. It had a news channel, NBC and usually TNT or CBS. It had two ship channels that they used to broadcast events that had been recorded by the ship staff the previous day (i.e. - the Shopping Talk and the Excursion Talk). It also had the Bridge Channel in which throughout the day one could view the exact position of the ship, speed, temperatures, etc......

Our Cabin Steward, Chaiya (from the Philippines), was really good. We'd step out for a second and return and find that the cabin had been totally cleaned. Jennifer loved the mint chocolate and the towel animals he left for us each night. We left the balcony door open nearly 99% of the time. We used the bungee cord that we had brought along to hold it open. We absolutely loved sleeping to the gentle rocking and sound of the ship steaming through the waters. The temperature at night was around 74, so it made for a very comfortable night. The cabin had climate control, sorta. The air conditioner remained on, but you could easily turn off the vents. We had the vents off nearly the whole cruise.

The entertainment was good, Magic Shows, Juggling Show, Plenty of Comedians and several Musical Shows. All were good and entertaining. We didn't make it to every show, but the ones we went to, we enjoyed. The Rome Lounge provides a great atmosphere to enjoy these shows.

The Cruise Director Andrew 'AJ' Jones was pretty good. We were somewhat disappointed that John Heald had left the Triumph for another ship, but AJ filled in nicely. He had some good funny moments. His only weakness was that he admittedly hasn't been in the Eastern Caribbean in over 3 yrs, so his knowledge of the ports wasn't too good. I don't know if he is just a fill in or if he is staying on as the permanent cruise director.

This cruise had 3 Ports of Call, not including Miami. Our first stop was San Juan, Puerto Rico. We arrived in San Juan at about 4pm (5pm San Juan Time). The ship only offered a few excursions, none of which seemed very good to us, so we decided to do San Juan on our own. We first headed to the Fortress which guards the entrance to San Juan. Unfortunately it was closed by the time we got there, but we were able to spend some time around it. We then walked through old San Juan and looked at some of the stores. We were back on the ship by 8pm and did some of the ships activities. The ship was pretty crowded, so we gather that most people did what we did. We departed San Juan at midnite.

The next day we stopped in St Thomas. We arrived pier side around 7am. There were 3 other ships in port that day as well, so the Island was pretty crowded. We had a diving excursion and then went downtown for some shopping. There were plenty of jewelry stores and souvenir stores. We picked up some souvenirs and headed back to the ship for a nap. We departed at around 6pm.

The next day we stopped in St Croix. We arrived pier side at around 730am. We were the only ship in port that day. We had a diving excursion this day also. On our way to diving, we went through the Rain Forest and along some of the highest points in the Island. After diving, we hit some stores for some more souvenir shopping and walked along the beach. Lots of people were diving and swimming right off the pier. The ship was to leave at 530pm, but we had to wait for some late and lucky passengers who had to do some serious running to get to the ship before it pulled out. The weather at all three ports was absolutely beautiful. Highs in the lower 80s and lows in the middle 70s. A brief rain shower now and then.

Diving Excursions - We had decided not to go with the Ship's Diving Excursions and instead we booked excursions with local companies via the internet and phone.

In St Thomas we went with LETTS DIVE owned by Bill Letts. The risk with booking with local companies is that there is no guarantee that they will show up. We knew this going in and thought we had done enough research and had picked reputable companies.

Unfortunately we didn't do a good job for our excursion in St Thomas. LETTS DIVE was a no show and left us scrambling for another diving excursion. Luckily Jennifer and her quick thinking found Water World Sports and booked us on an 2 tank dive for later that morning.

The water was a chilly 78 degrees and the visibility was only about 30-40 feet. The seas were a little rough and the bottom was pretty stirred up. Still a good dive trip though. I would not recommend anyone book with LETTS DIVE on St Thomas. In St Croix we went with Cane Bay Dive Shop. They have a shop right on the pier and provide free transportation to Cane Bay where we planned to do 2 beach entry dives. When we got to Cane Bay we were pleasantly surprised to find that we were going on a boat dive and one beach dive. We were going with one other couple from the Midwest. Cane Bay boasts to be home to one of the best wall dives in the world.

Our first dive was right above the wall. The water was just over 80 degrees. The boat was a small six passenger one. The seas were easily 4-6 feet and we were rocking! Once we arrived at the site, the divemaster unzipped the front part of the boat and we slid right in. Lots of wildlife and the wall was amazing. We went to about 65 feet and couldn't even begin to see the bottom of the wall.

Our second dive was a beach entry, which proved to be tougher than thought due to the rough waters. We had to swim out to about 100 yds from shore before submerging over the wall. On this dive we easily went to 100 feet deep. Again lots of wildlife and a great dive. I highly recommend Cane Bay Dive Shop.

In conclusion, Jennifer and I had a great time and hated when it came time to leave Miami. I would highly recommend this cruise to anyone and we can't wait to book our next cruise.

If you have any ??'s email me at larryorvis@hotmail.com