I recently traveled with Carnival Cruise Line for the first time in a decade. As someone who loves cruising with Royal Caribbean, it was fun to experience something that felt completely different from what I’m used to.
Each cruise line adds its own unique flair to the cruise and each cruise ship has its own personality. While Royal Caribbean’s mega-ships are filled with on-board excitement and amazing entertainment, Carnival Cruise Line focuses on creating a party-like atmosphere on its ships.
Last month, I sailed on Carnival Ecstasy for a 4-night cruise to Mexico from Mobile, Alabama with my sister. Although this was the oldest ship in Carnival’s fleet and one of the oldest cruise ships sailing for any major cruise line, we were both excited to see what Carnival had to offer.
Since it had been so long since my last carnival cruise, I really didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t want to be disappointed, so I kept my expectations understandably low.
My last carnival cruise was during spring break in college and it was pretty wild – and pretty cheap. The main reason we actually booked Carnival that day was because of the cheap cost compared to other cruise lines.
These days, I prefer to take a more relaxing cruise kicking back with a drink on the pool deck, enjoying delicious food and plenty of rest. Lately I’ve also started prioritizing cruises that have unique or exotic itineraries. The world is wide and I have so many places I want to see, and sailing is the most efficient way to do it!
The minute we walked aboard the Carnival Ecstasy, we could tell that the carnival culture was going to be different than what we’re used to on Royal Caribbean. The music was loud, the drinks were overflowing and people were there to party – including a loud grandma on the cruise!
After getting familiar with Carnival’s style of sailing, I found myself letting loose more than usual during a cruise. I was staying up late doing all the fun and having more fun than I ever imagined.
In fact, I found some things I liked better about Carnival Cruise Line than Royal Caribbean. Here are my top 5 things that I liked significantly more than Royal Caribbean.
Morning Late Morning SeaDay Brunch
I really didn’t expect anything on this cruise to feel fashionable, but we absolutely loved Carnival’s SeaDay breakfast.
Although this brunch was available in the dining room, food was served until noon. On Royal Caribbean, breakfast is only served until 11:30 a.m. on sea days. Since we stayed up later than normal and slept in, we appreciated how late breakfast was served.
SeaDay’s lunch had some very fun menu items, like fluffy pancakes and 12-hour caramelized peach toast.
Since our cruise had 2 sea days, we were lucky enough to have SeaDay brunch both days and sample many things on the menu. These were some of the best breakfasts we’ve had at sea! The French toast was probably the best French toast I have ever had the opportunity to eat.
Shorter activities
Cruises are packed with non-stop activities and entertainment options – just one of the reasons we love cruising so much! However, on this cruise, we were pleasantly surprised to find that Carnival keeps their activities to just 30 minutes. Each event was held immediately in the 30-minute time frame.
On Royal Caribbean, it is standard for events to last at least 45 minutes, if not up to an hour. Some of the full Broadway shows can last up to 2 hours! This means that you cannot always do multiple activities in the same evening. I think we usually have to pick an event each evening that we want to attend before we head home for the evening.
With shorter activities, we were able to transition from the nightly comedy show to karaoke and then trivia. We felt like we could do a lot on board every night because of the way the events were structured; This certainly cultivates the fast-paced onboard environment that Carnival is known for offering.
Afternoon tea on sea days
On our first day at sea, we were surprised to see afternoon tea in the dining room as an option.
While I’ve heard of cruise lines offering afternoon tea, I really didn’t expect Carnival to offer something like this.
Since Carnival is all about creating a party-like atmosphere on board, afternoon tea just didn’t seem like something that would be part of our Carnival cruise.
We were served a delicious variety of desserts including a rich chocolate layer cake, lemon sponge cake, fruit cake, peach crisps, macarons and clotted cream.
I’ve never seen afternoon tea as an option available on Royal Caribbean – even when I’ve traveled around the UK or Europe where I would expect something like this to be offered. But this was a very nice change of pace from everything else we had been doing on board.
Afternoon Tea gave us an opportunity to relax and enjoy ourselves, that’s what cruising is all about!
Activities tailored to the younger demographic
While Royal Caribbean is known for attracting families of all ages, Carnival is definitely known for being the holiday cruise line.
Although Royal Caribbean may offer daring water slides for kids and fun Broadway shows for adults, we found that most of Carnival’s events were geared toward a younger audience.
The minor themes included Harry Potter, The Office and Friends – something I’ve never seen before on Royal Caribbean. We also watched Pop Top Hits music trivia, which we absolutely loved. It was fun to have so many events that appealed to us, as Royal Caribbean tends to offer such a wide range of themes. While my parents might love Name that 60s Tune, we think it’s a slumber party.
Having so many engaging activities for us was an aspect of our Carnival cruise that we really welcomed and it definitely played into how much fun we had on board.
Casual atmosphere on board
As I mentioned, there was an initial period of carnival culture shock when we boarded the Carnival Ecstasy. The first night, we couldn’t believe that people were walking into the main dining room in bikinis and shorts.
On Royal Caribbean, the ambiance is more refined and people tend to clean up the evenings on board nicely. I usually pack clothes that are worn specifically for dinner parties and I always put on makeup.
On the last two days of our Carnival cruise, we discovered that most of the people on board weren’t dressed for anything. It was extremely casual on board and until the last day, I didn’t even bother to dress for dinner. Although I had packed 4 dresses to wear each night of the cruise, I didn’t bother to make any extra effort to get dressed by the end of the cruise.
It was suddenly nice to have such a casual atmosphere on board, giving us more time to have fun on the ship!
