Carnival Sunshine Review, Part 3: Embarkationfeatured

I don’t know if it was the late night at Disney World or maybe the fact that this was our 19th cruise in the past 11 years, but waking up on the morning we were embarking on the Carnival Sunshine didn’t give me the exciting rush of energy I was used to.

Maybe our Europe cruise ruined me for Caribbean cruises. Maybe cruises weren’t as exciting to me anymore given that our family vacations over-index on cruise trips. I didn’t really know what it was. But I woke up and instead of feeling like Ahhhh! We get to get on a ship today!!!, it was more of We’re getting on a ship today, aren’t we? Fuck. I haven’t done any prep for this trip. Funny how that hits when the trip is underway instead of beforehand, huh? And it’s not like I wasn’t excited. I love cruises, especially when we’re visiting new ports we’ve never been to on ships we’d never sailed on before. But between the late booking (we booked within six weeks of sailing) and the crazy hours I was working (and traveling for work) leading up to this trip, I was in a quasi-denial that this trip was actually happening until we were actually going through the motions.

We staggered our wake-ups to allow us time to get packed up and ready without stepping over each other and being last, I kind of rushed a bit so we could get out of the hotel and get going, but that sense of urgency and Oh my God, we need to get out of here so we can check in early was missing. We checked out of the Gaylord Palms around 10:00 am.

The drive to Cape Canaveral was about an hour. We grabbed a quick breakfast on the way and played Spot the Whale Tail the way we usually do, but something didn’t quite feel the same. The anticipation and energy was just…different.

We passed a packed Budget rental car location, where there were dozens of people piled up waiting for the shuttle, and we contemplated how we would handle that if the situation were the same at Alamo. Thankfully, we didn’t need to resort to our option B or C plan – the good people at Alamo were pros at this cruise shuttle thing. After we returned our car, they took our name, the ship we were sailing on and number of people in our family and said they’d call us when our shuttle was here. No pushing and shoving to get onto the first shuttle – they had this down to a science. And we didn’t even need to wait that long: the driver heading to the Disney ship had a little extra room on his shuttle and offered to drop us off at the Sunshine after he did his Disney drop off.

It was nearly noon when we arrived at the pier – much later than we’ve ever arrived at a pier – and it was packed with lines that snaked in coils that led yards from the door. Thankfully, our VIFP Platinum status got us into the Priority line, which was slightly backlogged due partly because of a large party of people who literally couldn’t understand how to go through a security line and partly because the security agents kept giving conflicting information to the line (one told us to take all laptops out of our bags and another asked me why my laptop was in a bin because it was supposed to stay in my bag). Stephanie let them know she had two bottles of champagne in her bag, but they insisted on examining each one to ensure it was under the 750 mL size limit.

Once we got through the security check point, though, it was easy breezy. We followed the signs to the Captain’s Lounge, where our keys were handed to us as we were passed off to a waiting gate agent, who collected our health forms and took our S&S picture before telling us we could embark at our leisure and our room would be ready for us when we boarded (another Platinum perk).

And there, as we stood on the escalator heading up to board the Sunshine, that’s when I finally felt it: the anticipation of getting on a cruise ship. The relief in knowing that we made it through embarkation. The excitement of the adventure to come in the week ahead in visiting a new port and two others that I really enjoy. That was the feeling I’d been waiting for.

We boarded through the lobby and stepped into the Sunshine Atrium. The Carnival Sunshine was formerly the Carnival Destiny (built in 1996 and one of the largest passenger ships to sail at the time!) and after a large and comprehensive refurb where nearly the entire ship was gutted, the ship was renamed and relaunched in 2013. Part of those comprehensive changes included the removal of a pool, part of the main theatre and other public areas to create more cabins, which meant more people and less space. Reviews on the Sunshine were mixed, and I was curious what our experience would be and how we’d feel about her.

We headed to our room to drop off our bags and took some time to relax before heading up to lunch. We didn’t have many options on rooms with our late booking, so we ended up in an Oceanview cabin on deck two (cabin 2133). I found our room to be surprisingly spacious, with more closet and drawer space than we’ve had on any other Carnival ship and a shower that was nearly double the size we normally find on cruise ships. Plenty of room for the three of us.

We headed upstairs to the Lido deck for lunch and, if you know me, you’d have already guessed that I made a beeline for the Blue Iguana Cantina. There are all kinds of options on Carnival’s ships for lunch, but in my opinion? The tacos at the Blue Iguana are the best.

There’s two separate lines: one for made-to-order burritos and one for tacos. If you opt for tacos, your options are chicken, fish or pork. They have steak as a burrito option, but not a taco option. Sometimes, they’ll make a special order for you if you want steak tacos. Sometimes, they won’t. I’ve had it both ways. But it never hurts to ask. So, with a polite smile, I asked if it was possible to get steak tacos and the response? “We don’t normally do that, but since you’re on vacation, it’s no problem.” And with that? Our cruise was off to a delicious start.

While we were enjoying our lunch, I hooked into the Carnival Hub app I had downloaded before we left. The Carnival Hub app allows you to peruse the Fun Times, connect with your family and see what’s going on around the ship. It’s also the portal to buy an internet plan. For $25, you can hook into a social media package, which allows you access to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and a few other sites. Beyond that, there’s good/better tiers at various prices for a week. I purchased an unlimited plan at the lowest tier ($60 for the cruise) and found it to be adequate for checking in with work, perusing my news feed and posting pictures and videos to my social media feeds.

After lunch, we set out to explore the ship. The Sunshine was decked out in her Christmas best, with garlands, trees, lights and gingerbread cities throughout the ship.

We also checked out the Liquid Lounge, which serves as the main theatre in the day and early evening and transforms into a night club after hours. It was obvious that some of the space was taken away to make way for (likely) more cabins, and for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine how they’d be able to accommodate everyone wanting to take in a production show.

After we’d finished our lap around the ship, we headed back to the room to check and see if our luggage had been delivered yet. We don’t travel lightly, and it took a little while for all of our pieces to be delivered, but we were able to get almost everything unpacked (and make our dinner reservation!) before we had to go to muster drill.

So muster drill. Funny story. The Sunshine still does muster drill the old fashioned way where you have to line up on deck, packed in like pickled fish in a can. Mom almost always insists we leave early to get there before the elevators get crowded. A seasoned cruiser knows the one rule of muster thumb is first one in, last one out. You want to be the last people there because they’re the first to leave. So we don’t go to muster drill early. We take our time. But we don’t take enough time because we’re still early. So we go to the Library Bar. There are people hanging out in there, reading books, playing games, you know. Doing their thing. After awhile, when we’re still sitting there waiting for muster drill to start, we realize this is muster drill. Somehow, we’ve found ourselves in the special assistance muster area (a place we used to know well from our trips with our grandma). There’s no real instruction going on in there. Muster drill is going on and everyone’s just going about their business, reading their books and playing their mahjong. Stephanie has a crisis of conscience and bolts for the regular muster drill. Mom and I are sitting there trying to figure out if it we should just sit there and stick it out or if we should track down Stephanie and roll into our muster station halfway through the drill. And then, while we were still trying to figure out how we missed muster drill and if we should actually proceed to our muster station or not, the drill was over. 19th cruise. Still couldn’t get muster drill right.

Anyways.

They let out the special assistance people first. We sit in the back because we still don’t know how we missed muster drill and we don’t need to clog the elevators. We meet up with Stephanie, who proves my hypothesis correct in being the last person to arrive to her muster station and ends up being the very first to leave, and we head up to the Serenity deck for sailaway.

Serenity is Carnival’s adult-only space and it’s one of our favorite places (mostly because they have hammocks and if I love nothing else, I love a good hammock nap). One of the changes the Sunshine underwent in her transition from the Destiny was the addition of a three-deck Serenity area, complete with it’s own waterfall pool. Most Serenity areas on Carnival’s fleet only have hot tubs, but the Sunshine has this big, beautiful pool area that serves as a safe haven for adults seeking some peace and quiet. With only one other pool onboard and sailing during Christmas week when there would be plenty of children onboard on their school breaks, this was our oasis to sun and swim in peace.

And, since the bottom level of Serenity looked out over the main pool area, it was the perfect place to take in sailaway. We were slightly delayed in our departure, but our Cruise Director, Jaime, was already getting the fun started with a dance party by the pool.

We’ve sailed with some good Cruise Directors. We’ve sailed with some awful Cruise Directors, too. And we’ve sailed with some absolutely amazing Cruise Director’s who really leave an imprint on our memories (even though we aren’t the type of cruisers to get overly involved). And Jaime is one of those Cruise Directors. Mom actually has a soft spot for her because we’ve sailed with Jaime before, on the Dream, back when she was an Assistant Cruise Director. It was our last cruise with our grandma and Jaime helped us get off the ship a little early so that grandma could debark peacefully. Mom never forgot it. And when we got onboard and found out she would be our Cruise Director, we knew we were in good hands for the week. We hadn’t even left yet and Jaime was up on a table, leading 50+ people in the Cupid Shuffle.

The sun was starting to set before we even departed, which meant two things: one, we had a gorgeous backdrop as we left Port Canaveral, and two, it was getting pretty cold out. I use cold relatively because I’m currently sitting in a Chicago high rise where the temperature outside is a cool 11 degrees below zero. It was in the low 60s. But it was cool by Florida standards. So once we hit the open waters, we beelined for our room.

Elf was playing on one of the ship’s movie channels and after 12 days in Europe on the Vision of the Seas, where our TV choices were usually limited to old episodes of Sex and the City dubbed in French or the Cruise Director’s show, I swore to myself I’d never take advantage of the fact that Carnival offers movies through in-cabin television ever again. Stephanie loves Elf so she insisted on watching it while I finished unpacking my toiletries and, for the first time in all of our cruises, we were all completely unpacked before our first dinner. There truly is a first time for everything.

We hadn’t killed enough time in the room before our dinner reservation, so we headed out to explore the ship some more, stopping in Ocean Plaza to check in on the offerings at the Taste Bar and on the promenade to watch the coast drift further into the distance. The Sunshine felt familiar in so many ways, but enough of it was unique to keep things fresh.

Ocean Plaza started to fill up with My Time diners checking in for a table (unlike the other ships in Carnival’s fleet where you check in for a table at the dining room, on the Sunshine, cruisers with MTD check in at Ocean Plaza and are either given a ticket and sent down two decks to the hostess reception in the dining room or given a pager to wait it out) and we headed up to the Lido deck to check in for our dinner at Cucina del Capitano.

A few cruises ago, when we’d grown tired of the Night 1 menu in the main dining room, we started a new tradition of going to Cucina del Capitano for our first dinner. Mostly because the food and the atmosphere are fantastic and it really gets our cruise off on the right foot, but also because if you dine in on the first night, you get a free carafe of wine, and you’ll never have to say the words “free wine” to me twice to get me anywhere. There’s a nominal fee of $15 per person to dine at Cucina del Capitano, but we’ve always felt it was a fair price for the experience.

As we waited for our wine carafe (red…always go with the red), Mom and Stephanie perused the menus as if we don’t all order the same thing every time we dine here. Stephanie’s obsessed with the chicken parm and Mom will wax poetic about the short ribs if you get her started (so if you ever meet my Mom, for your sake and mine, don’t mention the short ribs).

We placed our orders and settled in as the restaurant started to fill up. And then our carafe arrived and we toasted to the start of another adventure and listened to the Italian-Cuban fusion playing out around us.

I say this in all of my reviews where we dine at Cucina, but since this is my trip report and I’m going to do what I want with it, I’m going to say it again: the bread board served at this restaurant is one of the most delicious courses we’ve been served onboard a Carnival ship, which is always so odd to me because of how mind-numbingly simple it is. Grilled bread, sliced tomatoes, roasted garlic, ricotta, black pepper. Of course, it’s not really that simple. The ricotta is hand-whipped to delicate perfection, the bread is ever so slightly grilled (just enough to give it a little crunch) and the garlic is roasted just enough to give it a little sweetness. But it’s really the perfect way to kick off the meal.

And, not to be outdone, everything else we ordered was equally fantastic. The arancini is to die for. The Caprese was garden fresh. And…we’re not going to discuss the short ribs (I know you’re reading this, Mom. Yes, they have Cucina on the Vista. Yes, they’ll have your short ribs).

Nonna’s Meatballs

Insalata Caprese

Il Capitano’s Signature Arancini

Pollo Parmigiana della Cucina

Bistecca alla Griglia

Brasato al Barolo

Rosemary Potatoes, Spaghetti with Captain’s Tomato Sauce and Broccoli with Peperonata

Magic Tiramisu

Crostata di Mele Coppetta

We polished off the carafe as we finished our dessert and settled the bill, satisfied from such a great meal and so, so full. I was ready to roll straight into bed, but there would be plenty of time for sleep on this cruise and there was an entire ship to explore, so we decided to hit the shops.

A squacky little towel animal of a bird was waiting for us when we returned to our cabin. Our room steward, Fauzi, was a towel animal master and left us all kinds of new friends when he turned down our room throughout the week.

Stephanie loves to do the whole door decorating thing, especially when we sail across holidays, and she’s made an art out of translating the random crap she finds at Dollar Tree into a festive decoration. So she settled in and worked on her masterpiece while I contemplated whether I wanted to go out to the piano bar or if I wanted to put on my sweats and go watch a movie outside.

Movie won over bar, so we headed upstairs to catch a showing of Night at the Museum 3. The Dive-In Movies is one of my favorite parts of cruising and certainly one of the most relaxing, in my opinion. There’s nothing quite like laying on a lounger, covered in a fleece blanket with a box of popcorn (free, by the way!) and catching a movie under the stars, with the Caribbean air breezing around you.

We popped into the Marketplace to grab some tea after the movie before finally heading inside to watch some Saturday Night Live and go to bed, ready to get an early start to enjoy our first day at sea.