Cruising can be a fine line between awesome and awful and our 4-day cruise on the Carnival Splendor out of Sydney had a bit of both. For us, this cruise was a way for many people who had previously worked for the same travel company between 1995 and 2005 to reconnect, spend quality time reliving our youth and talk up how good we were when we were younger.
We arrived in Sydney early Sunday morning after an overnight flight from Vietnam. Sydney Airport has improved immensely since my last entry into Australia, we were through and out in no time. The public transport connection to Circular Quay is excellent and a train delivered us to within eyeshot of our ship in under 30 minutes. We were grateful to immediately drop our luggage at the ship at 10.30 am allowing us to go for a stroll, have a coffee and rest unhindered. While officially our boarding time was 1.30 pm, by midday we were allowed to board. The boarding process was seamless, and after a brief stop at our muster station to learn how to put on a life jacket we were at the Lido deck buffet having our first taste of ship food. With an hour before we could access our stateroom we headed for the R18 back deck area, secured some prime deck chair real estate and had a snooze in the sun.
1.30 pm was the time that the rooms were available, we were in ours by 1.31 pm freshening up and preparing to sail away. Unfortunately, our luggage hadn’t arrived by the time our 3.30 pm scheduled gathering with our former colleagues ticked around. A liberal spray of deodorant was layered over our flight clothes and off to the Lido deck we went. This is where we had our first shock of ship prices for alcohol, at AUD 25 for a cocktail and AUD 12.50 for a beer we braced ourselves for what our potential bill might be after 4 nights.
One of the downsides of the cruise is that after the initial layout of funds for the holiday is not too painful they try to extract money out of you at every turn. Staff are continually floating around offering to sell you pre-made cocktails in souvenir glasses, drink bottles and drink holders. To read any bar or restaurant menu or to book into any restaurant you need to use the Carnival app. In some respects this is quite handy but… to use it you have to connect to the ship’s wifi, this is free to use the app only but simultaneously it blocks your phone’s ability to roam. You can buy a wifi package or pay $8 to use the chat function to communicate with your fellow cruisers but if you don’t want to buy either you find yourself continually turning the wifi on and off so that you can communicate with the outside world or your friends on board, receive emails etc… and then back on so you don’t miss notifications from the app about upcoming activities you’ve expressed an interest in or that your dining reservation is ready.
It was great to reconnect with old mates, and meet some new people, on the first night and see whales splashing about off starboard after we left Sydney Harbour, but after a cocktail, a can of beer, a glass of wine and some bubbles I peaked early and was tucked up in our room with a little balcony by 8.30 pm. Of course I blamed jet lag.
(The decor of the internal area of the ship was enough to bring on a migraine)
The Carnival website says the ship takes a max of 3,734 passengers, we were told during a quiz that there were 3,850 on board. I’m not sure where the extra 116 people were sleeping but at times it felt like all 3,850 people, many in large groups, identifying each other with their matching garish Hawaiian shirts, were in the same place, at the same time. The buffet was best avoided most of the time, not only because it was packed, but often the only redeeming feature of the food was that it was edible. It was a good place to grab an iced tea, a coffee or to fill up your water bottle. A much more pleasant way to dine to was reserve a table at the restaurant. The frustrating part of the restaurant experience was using the app to reserve a table, it was not straightforward to book a table for a group who weren’t all either on the same booking or connected via the app. The other frustrating thing was that at the time you booked, it gave you an estimated wait time. The wait time could go from 30-40 minutes to less than 10 minutes in a matter of seconds. Once your ‘table is ready’ notification pings to your app you had 10 minutes to get to the restaurant or the booking would be automatically cancelled and you’d have to start again. If you’ve never been on a cruise you may not appreciate how incredibly confusing it is to navigate the 14 levels and to work out which way is forward and which is aft when you’re inside and can’t tell which way the ship is travelling.
We asked for a paper menu each time we dined as having everyone at the table staring at a menu on their phone felt very antisocial, the wait staff were friendly and efficient taking orders for entree, main and dessert all at the same time. Don’t be shy, you can order more than one of each course if you feel the urge and somewhere that didn’t feel hideously expensive was buying wine by the bottle.
(I even found a reader fan on board)
While we participated in a few quizzes and watched karaoke, Deal or No Deal and Bingo, the entertainment that won our hearts was the pianist who played each sea day in the Piano Bar. Young Australian pianist Trevor Stockton (insta @trev.stockton FB https://www.facebook.com/trev.ellonmusic/) said this was his first Carnival Cruise and he had our group of party animals from the 90s in the palm of his hand. Banging out all the old singalong favourites we spent two nights with Trevor in the Piano bar singing ourselves hoarse.
The cruise had a day at sea, a day anchored off Moreton Island, followed by another day at sea. We didn’t book any excursions for Moreton Island’s Tangalooma Resort. I had looked before the cruise at the cost of hiring a paddle board which for an hour was $39, the cost of booking the same on the day the ship was there was more than double. As it turned out it was less than ideal conditions for paddle boarding but watching learners try did provide for entertainment as we took a refreshing dip in the choppy sea.
While there are downsides to cruising we couldn’t fault the staff and it is an easy way to holiday with a group of people. You can do as much, or as little, as you like. Food is available day and night and if you try all the options (you need to eat approximately every 30 minutes on a cruise) you’ll find something you like. There is always company if you want it, but retire to your room and you have as much peace and quiet and uninterrupted sea views as you like. Unlike a land reunion where you try and catch up with a mass of people on what they’ve been up to for the last 30 years in a few hours over the noise of a DJ, on a cruise you have days to sit around over a coffee, a meal, or a few drinks, really reminisce and be reminded why these people will always be well on the awesome side of the line.
Gillian Scott Creative 