Sunday Dec 4
Carnival Wine Cruise 2005
Carnival Liberty was a new ship launched in summer 2005, and the very first ever Carnival wine cruise was held Dec 4-10 2005 on this ship. I was interested in both wine and cruising, so I signed up promptly when I saw this opportunity! Carnival president Bob Dickinson was going to be on board, as well as many winemakers and other luminaries.
We were fully packed on Saturday night, but my website workload kept me up until 2am. Since we had to leave around 5am for the flight out, I decided just to stay awake through the night and make sure I was as caught up as possible before we left. At 5am I woke Bob up, and soon we headed out to Logan. The snow started falling as we headed into Boston, but luckily it was not heavy enough to stop the flight from going out. Bob got stopped in security for his metal objects - including foil wrappers on our low carb bars. Odd! JetBlue did some deicing of their plane before we took off, but the flight was smooth enough that I finally got a few hours of sleep down to Ft. Lauderdale.
Baggage claim was easy enough. There were cruise line reps from each major cruise line waiting near the baggage area. We asked the Carnival rep what our options were to get to the dock, and she explained that her shuttle was $10 a person each way. She said she didn't know what a taxi would cost. We'd heard it was about $15 total each way for a taxi, so we gathered up our bags, got into the taxi line, and in about 5 minutes were in our taxi.
The taxi only drove maybe 5 minutes before it was at the dock area. We had to go through a security check, with passports shown, to get into the dock area. That is, there was a booth the taxi driver drove up to, and all of us in the car had to show ID to the guard there. It was like crossing a border. Then it took another 10 minutes because of heavy traffic to actually get to the dock itself. Total charge - $20 including tip. I guess that wasn't much of a savings over the Carnival van!
There were TONS of people waiting outside the building here. A gigantic line stretched along one whole side of the building, about 8 people wide by maybe 100 people long. Various baggage carts stood in various spots. We went to put our bags onto one of the carts - we'd already put the tags on them that we'd gotten with our tickets - and a porter "put them on the cart" from the ground. We apologized and explained we didn't have any change to tip him for that action. We'd expected to get change from the taxi for our $20 and hadn't. The porter went to his supervisor, and the supervisor chased after us, threatening us that if we didn't pay the porters for their work, how could we trust that our bags would actually arrive on the ship. This despite a big sign on the wall saying that porters should NOT be tipped as they were on salary.
There were no line posts / ribbons / etc. set up to keep the lines in order - and people were joining randomly in all sorts of places. There were no crew around to talk to or ask what was going on. We joined one line and worked our way in. Eventually we got into the building. There were rope line guides inside the building. We did a maze in one room. Next we moved into a room with long lines of seats, where the line squiggled back and forth through them. The next room had yet another set of maze lines, with a photo opportunity there for those who wanted to get a snapshot. It was an INCREDIBLY long and tedious process before we finally got to the actual security desk. We had heard about this line from the cruise forum and were carrying water and snack bars to fortify ourselves. I highly recommend doing this.
Despite the fun pass (pre-registering on line) promise, there was no separate line at all for fun pass people. Everyone got into the one gigantic line and plodded along. I was exhausted by the time I got to the security desk, and I can only imagine what the older people felt like.
The security desk itself was quick, because we had pre-checked in, filled out our Bahamas customs form and had our passports ready. However we saw other people who didn't have passports who were having problems. It really did seem best to have the passport as a clear permission to go on. The customs lady said that they all worked at this location 4 days a week (Fri-Mon) and most had other jobs for the other days. She said even though they did this work routinely that the Liberty's lines in particular were pretty bad so far.
I do want to note in particular that the couple next to us was trying to get on with military ID only - and was told that it's really not a guarantee of being a US citizen which is exactly what the customs people are trying to verify. It is *critical* you have something that explicitly indicates you're a US citizen (or I suppose a citizen of whatever country you're from) - i.e. a passport primarily, or at least a birth certificate.
When security was done we were each handed a room key. Here's a photo of it -
Our name, dinner time and location and group # were on the card. Our room number was NOT on the key for security reasons. Next we moved along to the wine club booth, and verified that our wine club memberships were set with David Gould. He put 2 stickers on the card, to indicate that I was a member of the wine club. Then we moved on to the security - Bob was worried that they'd be strict, but they were actually far easier than the airport was. We had to walk through a metal detector and send all our carry-on through an xray machine, just like at an airport.
We got into a short line where we went to a station where they took a quick picture of each of us for their security system. Then we were finally on the gangplank. It was rather steep, but soon we were up and on the ship! For good photos of the gangplank, look at Saturday's pictures of us leaving the ship.
We were greeted by 2 different crew members and given small deck plans to help us navigate the ship. We moved around the "Garden" main atrium area to get to the elevators, and got on glass elevators up to the 7th floor. The glass elevators were a cool idea - but poor design. They were very tiny and pretty much nobody remembered to hit the number as they got into it. The "entryway" to the elevator was very narrow and hard to get in and out of with bags.
The garden area itself was lovely - a multi-story high atrium with a bar at the bottom and changing colored lights in the light fixtures. You'll see MANY photos of these throughout the travelogue. Soon we were on the 7th floor and heading down the hall to our inside room.
We were REALLY pleased with the room itself. There was a full sized bed in the center, nice lights on either side, and a wood art-deco styling. The bath area was nice sized. Now note that none of these areas were HUGE. Cruise ships are notorious for having tiny rooms. But that being said, I had 5 formal dresses and 6 sundresses with me - and they all didn't even take up 1 of the 3 closets given to us. There was plenty of room for everything we had, and in fact our bags were waiting for us by the room so we quickly unpacked everything.
I was exhausted from not getting sleep, so I laid down to rest while Bob went out in search of food. I kept hearing ice filling up - apparently the room staff was filling ice buckets from a hidden ice machine. This worried me, that the room would be noisy, but this is literally the ONLY sound we heard on the entire cruise, and only this one time. We never heard our nearby cabin-neighbors at all, nor any noise from any other deck.
Bob quickly came back with a very delicious pizza. He said the buffet lines were rather large, but that hardly anybody had discovered the grill or pizzeria. The pizzeria hand made him a full pizza in under 10 minutes, which was quite tasty. We ate that quite happily.
Soon the PA system came on asking all visitors to leave the ship. Shortly after that, the PA announced the fire drill would soon be underway. We gathered up our life vests and headed out to the proper spot. They did the whistle blasts, waited for everyone to join us, and then did a short demonstration of how to use the vests. It was maybe 15-20 minutes in total, and then they let us all go.
We returned our vests to our room and headed to the aft pool bar to meet up with other cruisecritics members. I even had my Mardi Gras beads on. I didn't see ANYBODY there!! I tried to get a drink for 15 minutes but with the crowd I was never helped. The bar itself was quite nice - there were ceramic medallions embedded into the bar top, with a clear glaze over them. The pool area was on the small side, but very quiet. The 2 hot tubs were up higher than the pool itself and were marked for adults only.
We gave up on drinks and went upstairs to the aft railing and took pictures of the sun setting, the other cruise ships, and the general scenery as the Liberty slowly sailed out to sea. The weather was quite lovely. The back pool was not in use at all, and the 2 hot tubs were empty. This was the "adult" area and was very clearly separated from the other pool area. After a while we checked the bar again for beaded people, then walked over to the main pool area. This area did have a kid or two in their pool, but most people were drinking or eating.
I want to note here that some cruisers worried about being pressured to drink. We were *never* approached by anybody to drink anything. No pressure at all. Even during the departure festivities, if you wanted to drink, you went and asked for it.
It was now around 6pm and the wine Champagne welcome was scheduled for 7pm. Bob looked for something non-alcoholic to drink but both soda machines he tried were completely in need of refill. On to our next task. We went to the internet cafe, because the last cruise we'd gone on it took me 3 days to track down someone with the net information. Unfortunately the Liberty is not always laid out very well. We had to go through another room - the Cabinet smoking room - to get to the internet cafe - and that other room was holding a private function. We felt very guilty / silly tromping through their private function to get to the public internet room.
The instructions in the web room were very straightforward to self sign yourself up, and there was a raffle to enter to win 100 free minutes. We both entered that. The cafe itself was really just a small room with a few desks in it. There was a nice wood theme on the desks, but it was very small and was a "dead end".
We went back to the room to get showered up. We both found that the shower - even on the lowest water settings - backed up to make puddles on the floor. We figured it might just be the overload of everyone showering before dinner, and decided to test it again tomorrow before reporting it in. We dressed up and headed out.
We went down to the Victoria Lounge. This lovely lounge is rather large and has a tiered seating, with many curved 4 person booths in addition to the 4 person tables. There were circular ceiling lamps, and nice wood tables with embedded tile designs. Free champagne and appetizers circulated around the crowd, and we got to hear from many of the Carnival staff, including president Bob, the new chef, and many other luminaries. Things were shaping up to be a fun week.
We took a number of photos, and then as 8pm approached we headed down to the Silver dining room. There was a rather large line of people waiting outside the doors, so we sat on the stairs. Right at 8pm the doors opened and the hordes headed in. We found our table on the 2nd tier (almost a balcony) of the dining room area. It was a rectangular table by one of the large windows, very nice. A group of women came to join us. The dinner selections were quite tasty. I had the salmon, the thai style chicken with peanut sauce, and the lamb. Bob had the steak and found it a bit overcooked, so it was good that I had the lamb. We ordered a bottle of the Virgin Shiraz which was rather tasty for the price. We only ended up drinking half the bottle, and they said they'd store the rest for us until tomorrow.
Dessert was chocolate mousse which was quite nicely layered, and Bob had a sugar free apple cake which was very mild but nice. By now we were exhausted. We did walk through the Gold dining room to visit the library and Chinese style room at the front end of the ship, both which were pretty much completely deserted. The library had one couple in it and the Chinese room was completely empty. It goes to show that even on a ship this huge, you can always find quiet spots if you wish.
That being done, we returned to our room for some blueberry/mint foot massage and a well deserved sleep! I do want to comment, while I sat here typing my notes, that sitting up in the bed means your head is leaning against the picture on the wall. It's VERY low. Also, I could feel the vibrations of the engine even though we're on the 7th floor. The ship didn't "rock" but it vibrated noticeably.
Photo Collection from Sunday
Carnival Liberty Winecruise main travelogue page