In December of 2013 I went on my first cruise. This was a girls weekend away with one of my friends. We chose to take carnival cruise line and purchased our four day cruise for $200 each. We had two days at sea, 1 day in Nassau, and one day in Freeport. The nice thing about a cruise is you pay the money and that includes your food, most drinks and your room for four days. However, there are some exceptions as to what is included in the price. If you want to eat at any of the speciality restaurants that will cost extra, all alcoholic and soft drinks will cost you extra, along with any excursion you choose to do. In order to offset the cost of this most cruise lines will offer dinner packages, soda packages and packages for your drinks.
We were on the Carnival Ecstasy ship, which did offer a alcoholic package. We had looked into purchasing one, but the cost was too much in our opinion. It was $59 a day, every person staying in a stateroom had to get it, and you were cut off at 10 drinks in a 24 hour period. Each cruise line allows each person to bring a limited amount of alcohol on the ship with them. We chose to do that and just purchase whatever drinks we wanted.
This ship was an older ship and you could see that around the boat. Our state room was pretty spacious as was our bathroom. I really surprised about this after reading reviews about the staterooms being small. We had plenty of space for the two of us. We chose to pay a little bit more for an exterior room with a window. The interior rooms were running about $50 cheaper, but I was afraid of getting claustrophobic.
 |
| Our stateroom |
We had our towel animals waiting for us every night. We loved the surprise of a new animal every night.
The food on the ship was surprisingly good. We ate in the dining room 3 nights and one night we grabbed food from the “cafeteria” and ate outside. I had dessert every single night . . . mainly the hot lava cake.
We also can’t forget those delicious late night drinks that occupied us to the different shows.
This ship had shows every single night and we took advantage of them. We really enjoyed the Hasbro Game Show and Newlyweds. The pool on the ship was relatively small and always crowded. That was disappointing, but it comes with the territory. They also had a waterworks area on the top of the ship with slides and a waterpark for the children. One thing I really liked about this ship was the serenity adult only area. This was at the back of the ship with lounge chairs, hammocks, hot tubs and a bar for anyone 21 and older. It seems like this is was the place for parents to escape from their children, because of this it was sometimes hard to find a lounge chair open.
Overall this was a nice weekend getaway for a relatively cheap price. The cruise was $250, our excursion was $150 and about $100 in drinks for a four day vacation. Cruise ships are not my preferred travel style. I like to visit a place and immerse myself into the culture and try and find every nook and cranny wherever I go, and that is impossible to do on a cruise. However, if your looking for a cheap relaxing weekend getaway then I would definitely recommend a cruise. The shorter cruises mainly go to Nassau and somewhere else in the Bahamas and that is nice to do every once in a while. The longer cruises have some fun destinations, but you only get a couple hours at the destination. While this isn’t my preferred travel style I can still see myself every once in a while going on a cruise.
Keep an eye out for our Nassau excursion review!!
Who prefers cruises as their main vacation style?
I enjoyed this! I haven’t had a cruise experience, so it is nice to read about it from someone else.
Looks like lots of fun!
I haven’t been on a cruise yet but it looks like so much fun – that lava cake looks amazing!