Thread: Josh's long overdue Splendor review

Let me begin by first saying that I was actually pleasantly surprised with our time in Long Beach. We were to sail on Easter Sunday, but drove down at the crack of dawn Friday to try and squeeze in a little mini vacation before we got on the ship (the cruise goes by too fast, so we wanted to stretch the week out by a couple days). We stayed at the Holiday Inn Downtown (which wasn't really downtown), and it was nice, nothing mind-blowing os awful, but they had a shuttle that would take you anywhere within 3 miles, which is what ultimately hooked us. Other than being able to drop us off and pick us up from the ship, they took us down to the Pike/marina area where we spent most of the weekend.

Now, having been spoiled by growing up a relatively short drive from the exceptional Monterey Bay Aquarium, I was curious to see what the Aquarium of the Pacific was like, but didn't expect to be blown away. I have to say though, they did an amazing job of putting together a very interactive, fun aquarium that I would put a close second behind it's counterpart in Monterey. Its location was actually great as well, it sits right between the Pike (which seemed a lot more interesting onliine, but wasn't terribly exciting in person) and the marina, so we spent the day just wandering around and taking it easy. I would have to say that hands-down, the highlight of our time in Long Beach was the kobe beef burger I had for dinner Saturday night, which (like Pavlov's dog) still causes me to salivate merely at its mention. The only thing that was a bummer about Long Beach was that we were there the week before the Grand Prix, so they already had the streets all blocked off and set up for the road races and events that were happening the wekend we were there as a precursor to the GP. Well, that and the 6 car pileup that closed down both directions of the PCH when we decided to go cruisin' a bit on Friday.

So enough about Long Beach...

One of the things I recall most vividly of our first cruise last year was seeing the Spirit for the first time, standing on the ground looking up at what seemed like an expansive behemoth. With that in mind, I was expecting to not be as blown away this time, if for no other reason than the fact that this wasn't our first cruise, so some of the awe factor would be gone. Couldn't be more wrong. Against the crystal blue sky, the fresh white Splendor gleamed proudly in the morning sun, a far better Easter morning discovery than extra jelly beans.

She's an absolutely stunning ship, sleek ship, and we were anxious to get on board! Now with it being Easter, we had some good and some bad luck. Being the rocket scientist that I am, I totally forgot it was going to be Easter, so my plan was to have a nice brunch somewhere and then head over to the ship. Good luck with that. So with nowhere worth having breakfast that wasn't jam packed with people, we opted to just head over to the cruise terminal and hang out. Afterall, it was a perfect 70 degree Sunday morning, not a cloud in the sky, and nothing beats a little people-watching.

It was actually only around 10am when we got there, and the Carnival folks had only just begun to set up, so we wandered around a bit and found a spot we could sit and just hang out. Little shade, nice soft breeze, and only a matter of time until we're on board. Life doesn't get much better. Or so we thought. One of the gentlemen from Carnival came over and told us hey hadn't opened up check-in yet, but if we wanted to, they'd let us early. So we did our thing, got our Sail & Sign cards, and got put into the first group to board after the VIPs. The only downside to that was the accelleration of our anxiousness to get this show on the road!

Finally, and actually a little early, the VIPs head inside, and we follow quickly behind them. We wind through the check-in setup in the hangar that used to house the Spruce Goose, take our "welcome aboard" (before we're on board) photo, and away we go. Perhaps we're still enough of rookies at this, but as we reach the end of the gangway and take our first steps onto Carnival's newest floating playground, I felt an anxious, nervous excitement.

But enough with my Samantha Brown moment, we're on board! And by getting on so early, we flew straight to the deserted Lido to poke around and grab some lunch before the invading hoard takes the place over while waiting for staterooms to be opened up. Immediately I find myself impressed at the lunch selections. Which is not to say that the Lido food on the Spirit was sub-par, but truth be told, I found a much wider variety on the Splendor. Michele grabbed some chicken fingers (an item not present on our last cruise) and a surprisingly fresh green salad, and I ventured to the Mongolian station, more even more brave than hungry, and hoping for the best. Once again I find myself impressed. You have your choice of duck, very large shrimp, or chicken with a variety of fresh vegetables, noodles, and either taryaki, thai bbq, or sezchuan sauce. I opted for the duck and Thai bbq, which proved to be an exceptional choice.

We grab a table on the outskirts of the Lido's lower floor, just beside a window through which we look down on the Queen Mary, a ship that's enormous size from the ground now seems an optical illusion as we tower above her. More importantly, from here we get a panoramic view of the Lido, washed in blue hues and shiny metallics, stretching upward through a second level. I am quite fond of this setup. Being able to sit upstairs gives you a little spacing from the kids when the pools are hopping, and keeps you close to the upstairs hot tubs should a soak seem a more appetizing dessert than the strawberry soft serve. However, one of my very limited complaints is that there is a almost no food in the upstairs portion of the Lido buffet. There is plenty of room, but yet they only have a small rotisserie station. Albeit a nice station, but it appears to have been exiled among a gathering of always empty tables and chairs.

Back to the deck...

The giant screen on the Lido is a nice touch, and proved to be quite popular as the week went on. They ran a constant beach scene screen saver, so there was always something on, with a Headline News style crawl on the bottom of the screen with notes and info. Much easier to see with the roof closed on days it is brutally bright and cloud free.

It is at this point that I find myself abandoned. As luck would have it, our 5th anniversary falls mid-cruise, and my sneaky wife has carefully crafted some sort of surprise, which requires her to get to our cabin before I am allowed in. So while the other passengers are still being herded onto the ship and into the Lido for lunch, I take advantage of the sparse crowds everywhere else on the ship to explore the Splendor. Thanks to her size, it takes me a while to wander my way through the Serentiy (adults only area - which I will touch on later) section, the water park and slide, the mini golf course, and the open promenade. I have a ton (probably actually a ton and a half) of photos I'll link to this at some point so you can see for yourselves, but the ship is just very well designed. All of the outdoor areas have a unique decor to them that is understated, but still very cool. Perhaps as an homage to the QM (assuming the plan had always been to station this beauty in Long Beach), the foreward and aft bar areas have models of classic oceanliners, and have the bars themselves painted accordingly.

Just as I have begun to echaust my ADD-diminished attention span (oh look, a birdie!), I get the call. Time to get my butt to the cabin. Rivaling my excitement level as we first boarded, I am intrigued to see both what Michele has in store for me, as well get a look at my first aft balcony. Which is conveniently located on the aft of the ship, and I'm all the way forward. Full of lunch and carrying a laptop, an a bottle of champagne in my backpack, I make the trek aftward, wishing the deck were tilted slightly down so I could let gravity do its thing. Undeterred, I venture on, ducking inside to check out the interior decor, which lives up to the hype, VERY pink. Not obnoxiously so, but VERY pink. The atrium has a lot of soft pink lighting that magnifies itself against the hammered brass shaft vaulting upward to the sky.

8450. I knock impatiently. Michele, who is probably more excited than I am, instructs me to close my eyes as she opens the door and relieves me of my backpack. My eyes open slowly to what has been a perfectly executed collaboration of my amazing wife and the great folks at Carnival. Fornt to back, corner to corner, side to side, dangle Happy Anniversary banners in sparkling white and silver. Complimenting this, Michele has plastered red hearts all over the cabin, which upon closer inspection, have written on them the many notes we wrote each other in the early days of our courtship (did I just use the word courtship?). What blew me away more than anything, on the main mirror above the desk were two hearts with our wedding vows on them. At risk of sounding corny, I still get a chill recalling it to write this. I was at a complete loss for words, which any of you still reading will know is quite a feat!

But alas, work calls, and I need to start a fund for next April on the Dream, so off to work I go, more to follow tomorrow....

Oh the suspense! Waiting just whets the appetite for more.

Good start and I must say you are quite the wordsmith.

You are also a romantic!

Nice Josh. Will be waiting for more.

Ok, so it's still day 1, I've regained my composure after Michele blew me away, and there's still a lot of afternoon and a lot of ship to explore!

Before we headed out, I wanted to check out our first aft balcony. The sheer size impressed me, I'm not one who needs a wide balcony, but having the depth of an aft balcony was a real treat, it's nice to be able to stretch out. Probably the nicest part of the balcony was (as I made a post about a while back), ours was one of only 2 aft balcony cabins with an extra 4 feet or so of room on our balcony because it overlapped the suite next to us. We were a bit concerned because we were on deck 8, immediately below the Lido, but only heard chairs getting moved around one morning, not bad.

We still have a little time to kill before muster, so we go to check out our dining situation. Now don't get me wrong, we're very social when we cruise, we ended up hanging out with a lot of different people, we just would prefer not to be 2 of a table of 150. Due to her size, the Splendor has 2 main dining rooms, the Black and Gold Pearl. Black is midship, Gold aft. After long days, it's often a stroke of luck we can get ourselves together in order to make late seating at 8:15, so we do the late seating, which we got. We got stuck in the Black Pearl though, which was no biggie, I can survive a third of a ship walk to dinner, but they had us assigned to a table of twelve. As luck would have it, we actually got bumped back to the Gold Pearl, and managed to land a table for two, especially nice treat since it was our anniversary.

For as bright and intense as much of the Splendor's decor is, the Gold Pearl was a delightful change of pace. A softly lit, soothing mixture of golds and off-whites, the Gold Pearl was an inviting place to enjoy a meal after a long day. After a full first day, we headed to dinner with high hopes, having been so impressed with the food on the Spirit. Perhaps it was just being the first night of the second Mexico run for the ship, but ti seemed all the waitstaff were kind of all over the place. Our main man was Joseph, a rail thin gentleman from the Philippines who kept trying to convince everyone his support staff were all sons of his, despite a difference of maybe 5-10 years in age. Once everyone got in the groove, things went flawlessly, and continued throughout the week.

As I had hoped, dinner was scrumptious, and as it turned out, Michele had one more trick up her sleeve. Joseph and his crew brought us a white, heart-shaped Happy Anniversary cake, and before I could gather what my sneaky wife had done, they were all singing to us! While I was flabbergasted with this turn of events, I was somewhat concerned that it was a little showy, and might annoy the neighbors, but we were fortunate enough to be surrounded by festive, good-natured folks who voiced their approval with a thunderous applause. Now forgetting all that, the most important aspect of this whole thing... the cake was soooooo good!

So let's see, we had a remarkably easy embarkation, a couple of delightful meals, a couple phenominal surprises, our cabin's a winner... things have gone too well, I'm nervous. Rightly so. Like cattle, we follow the herd through the ship to the theater, which I can't begin to say enough about, stunning! Though a superbly crafted, surprisingly high tech theater is only as good as the talent filling it. Which brings me to Wannabe Elvis Jr. As someone who is a major audiophile and long time musician, I tend to expect a lot, and while I was far from blown away by either of the lead singers, the guy, whose name I've already purged from my memory, made me ill.

A hack of otherworldly proportions, this guy shouldn't be the understudy to a fourth-rate Elvis impersonator in a lounge WAY off the Vegas strip (by way off I mean, Tonopah maybe?). With a voice not even a mother could love, no inflection or emotion to his perfomances (if Websters will allow me to bastardize the definition of performance for a moment), and an uncanny knack to make some of the greatest rock songs even penned sound so hokey they'd make Jack Jones uncomfortable, I wouldn't book this guy to play a lifeboat on the Titanic, let alone Carnival's latest and greatest.

What broke my heart about the shows was that the band couldn't have been better. There was a rock show one of the nights that let the guitar and trumpet players really show their chops, and both killed. To top things off, the dancers were equally sharp, as good as any professional theater troupe I've ever seen. The sets and stage designs were incredible, and made it hard to fathom that all this was stuffed into a ship miles from land. If the Splendor had been staffed with better lead performers, the entertainment could easily have been the most amazing part of what was a thrilling, and absolutely fantastic cruise.

And we've made it through day 1... I promise the rest will go much quicker lol

Thanks again Josh. I guess tomorrow brings more?

What a great first day! And Michele realy helped to make it memorable with her little surprises!

Can't wait to hear more. Michelle's a keeper, right Josh?

Indeed, needless to say I am a very lucky guy... who has to go to work today.. d'oh! More tomorrow, promise!

Josh, this is great! Will be looking forward to more tomorrow!

We awoke Monday to a splendidly warm, clear morning. For our first breakfast on board, we decide to try something we never managed to try on our first cruise, breakfast in the dining room. Since we found ourselves up fairly early, we head to breakfast around 8-ish, and find the Gold Pearl nearly deserted. Just as we begin to make our way over toward an empty table, we are informed that "open seating" only means we don't have to stay at our regular assigned dinner table. So we get seated at a table of 8 with an older couple and a group of three who depart shortly after we sit down, having made the same discovery we just did. So no biggie, we're not antisocial, and we have our table-for-two at dinner, so we stick around (partially because we find ourselves at a table just beside the window, and it is such a marvelous day outside, the view is tough to beat).

As it turns out, the much smaller dining room staff still managed a pretty good (though much more frantic) job, and the remaining couple at our table with us were delightful, so it was nice. The food was great as well, I had pancakes with a stewed banana in sauce on top that reminded me a lot of Bananas Foster. So not a bad experience, not what we expected, but it was fine. We never did go back for breakfast, we just enjoyed eating on our balcony or the Lido and getting some of the morning air.

Your first cruise is always a blast, an ongoing adventure that has you learning and figuring things out as you go. Your second cruise is even better because you already have a feel for what you're doing. So this time around we knew better than to try and ltierally do EVERYTHING listed in the capers everyday. Don't get me wrong, we had some plenty active days, but for our first day, we decide to just explore a bit since I did most of mine without Michele. We headed up top to work our way down, and as luck would have it, happened by Camp Carnival before it was overrun with little ones.

I had heard a lot of great things about Carnival's kids program, but I was truly taken aback. Not only was everything brightly decorated and very warm and inviting, and full of friendly staffers who genuinely seemed to love kids and enjoyed their jobs. Upon further inspection, they had sectioned off areas for various age groups, with age-appropriate toys, games, and other distractions. The whole setup was first class, I don't think I would hesitate at all to let my kids (that I've yet to have lol) hang out here.

Moving on... I liked the way the main levels were laid out. Deck 5, I believe, which had the shops, etc., was nicely spread around so that the stores and Formalities weren't all crammed into the same small corridor, there was more room to maneuver. They also a handful of plush seats and tables scattered about, which made for a nice place to take a load off and regroup between things. Now we didn't actually gamble this cruise, but the casino was quite nice, more windows (or at least bigger, most floor to ceiling) than the Spirit so it was very bright, it seemed less Casinoish (which is to say it didn't seem like a knockoff Reno poker joint).

All in all, the layout of the ship is great, the walkways are plenty wide so that there was very rarely traffic congestion. If there was one thing I found to be kind of a pain, with the 2 dining rooms, the one midship spanned the beam of the ship, which meant that on deck 4-5, you could not walk from the front of the ship to the back (or vise versa), you had to go up/down a floor or two to make it around the Black Pearl. At the end of the day, not a huge problem, but as you'll read a little later on, when trying to make one's way back to their cabin after a long day of drinking in the sun, having to navigate extra stairs can be a challenge!

Without a care in the world, we head back to the cabin to hang out on the balcony for a bit and enjoy a cocktail. I raided BevMo before we left and brought a dozen little, plastic airline-sized booze bottles and some plastic bottles of Diet Coke, so we were able to have a few drinks without having to whip out the S&S card. Now at this point I have to stop for a moment to give my highest praise to our room steward Russell. I find myself saying this over and over about things/people, but we had such a great steward on the Spirit, I didn't see much room for improvement, but Russell was amazing! You'll hear more of why as we go, but he took exceptional care of us. For starters, when Carnival told me that none of the cabins on the Splendor had refrigerators, I was really trepidatious about keeping my insulin cold. Turns out, the rooms all have a mini-bar fridge (which I asked about, and was still told there were none) inside a locked cabinet. Russell opened us up and emptied the fridge for us, so I could keep my insulins and booze cold. We even joked about it with him and he made us a deal that he'd bring us ice twice a day if we promised not to vomit in the trash can if we over-indulged. Deal!

So with ice and booze, we had a quick (almost) afternoon cocktail and just watchwed the world disappear in the ship's wake. This is now where I have to admit one of my bizarro traveling preferences... I really like to be high up. Even if we just go to Disneyland for the weekend and stay at a 3-story Best Western, i want to be on the 3rd floor. When we went to Hawaii for our honeymoon, I was all happy because they got us a room on the 15th floor. I'm absolutely retarded about this, I can't begin to explain it, it's just one of those goofy quirks that make me so delightfully fun to travel with (but don't ask around on that...). This of course meant that I was stoked to get the highest level of aft balconies. Maybe it's just the view, I dunno... anyway, it was actually nice because the overhang from the Lido above us stuck out a ways further than the edge of our balcony, so we always had a completely shaded area (there was plenty of sun to be had, so not getting any here wasn't a problem).

So a couple Limon and Diet Cokes in the shade, and our stomachs began to give us that little nudge to encourage us to maybe head out to explore lunch. And this begins our affair with the burrito bar. As we approached, it was if the lights somehow dimmed, everything began moving in slow motion, and cheesy porno-style music began to play in the background. Aw yeah baby, it's time to get down!

I was impressed by a number of things about the burrito bar. Right off the bat, you had your choice of chicken, carne asada, or giant shrimp grilled to order. What really got me were the tortillas. Instead of boring flour, they were almost a pale amber color, and while I believe they were actually still flour tortillas, they were herbed, but not overly so, which made a superb compliment to the fresh fillings. You have of course, all your basics, grilled onions, peppers, refried or black beans (delicious!), a cilantro lime rice, cheese, sour cream, a guacamole that even my anti-guac wife (I've sorta won her over to liking mine, but it's an ongoing battle) enjoyed. The kicker for me, was that you had a couple types of salsa and pico de gallo. The salsa verde was to die for. All told, I think we made 4-5 more pilgrimages back to the burrito bar before the week was out.

After lunch we decided to check out the indoor hot tubs on the upper deck of the Lido. Of all the innovations and new concepts employed on this vessel, this may have been my favorite. With the tub placed against the windows (which opened when it got a little warm), one could lose themself while watching the sea pass by below. These were probably the only things we hit more than the burrito bar that week. I must say, it would be nice if Carnival had someone to make even a token effort to keep all the unattended kids out of these (when there were signs clearly prohibiting it). Just the same, we enjoyed ourselves plenty in there, and spent many an afternoon soaking either pre or post sunning.

Slowly the rest of the afternoon melted away into an evening announced by a breathtaking sunset. In no particular hurry to do anything at all, we milked what sun we could from the dying afternoon before heading back to the cabin for a shower and some dinner. Once again, we had another sumptuous meal (I actually had or order a second lobster bisque, the first time I've ever made myself double up on anything!). Luckily for us, the anniversary cake we got was too big for one sitting, so we were able to enjoy it once again. Which reminds me, I want to make sure and give props to Joseph who took care of our cake, keeping it cold for us so we didn't have to figure out how to keep it fresh in the cabin.

Another great day, which became a lovely night, another lousy performance from Junior Wannabe Elvis, but nothing a couple Miami Vices couldn't fix... and a moonlit stroll was about all we had left before calling it a day.

I'll have more tomorrow, our second sea day was actully quite eventful!