We had a really good vacation recently on the Carnival Horizon...
With stops in Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel, Mexico.
In this video, I'll show you some of the things that we really loved about the Carnival Horizon...
Including a private area at the back of the ship that most passengers aren't allowed in to.
I'll share with you some of the cool experiences we had during our cruise.
And I'll show you the downside of cruising during the summer months...
The ship was more crowded than any cruise I’ve ever been on!
I'm Jim Zim, a cruise ship fanatic...
And this is my wife Kellyn, who I've been married to for 38 years.
We've been on 48 cruises together and we've already got numbers 49, 50, and 51 booked!
It looks I'll be retiring from my real job next year...
Which is going to make it possible for us to do some really great cruises in the years ahead!
We've spent a total of 338 days on cruise ships since our first cruise back in 1996.
Our cruise on the Carnival Horizon sailed out of Miami, Florida...
One of the greatest cruise ship ports in the entire world.
The cruise lines tend to base their best ships in Miami...
And Carnival Horizon is indeed, the current top of the line for Carnival Cruise Line.
It's their newest ship, and is a nearly identical sister ship to Carnival Vista...
Which Kellyn and I cruised on in 2017.
The thing we totally love about Carnival's Vista-class of ships...
Is an area at the very back end of the ship known as the Havana pool area.
This is a special part of the ship that most passengers don't have access to.
Only people who pay a little extra to stay in the special cabins at the back of the ship...
Get to use this area during the day.
We never saw it get any more crowded than this...
This was on a sea day with everyone onboard.
During quite a bit of the cruise, it looked a lot like this...
Nearly empty.
Here I am, like a billionaire on his private yacht, with the whole place to myself!
The Havana pool is just the right depth that on a hot day in the Caribbean...
You can stand up in the pool and your head will still be above the water line.
The chairs under that Palapa roof are shaded for those wanting to avoid sunburn...
And there's lots of additional shady seating here in this area.
But of course, lots of other seating areas that offer full sun.
Now to help you appreciate the un-crowded nature of the Havana pool area...
Here's a video I shot on a sea day of the mid-ship pool area that all Carnival Horizon passengers have access to.
And here's the other pool that all passengers have access to.
Now compare those to what peak sea-day crowding looks like at the limited-access Havana pool.
And out at the main pool there is loud music and a lot of loud events with the Cruise Director talking over the PA system.
For me, as a 61 year old guy, the Havana pool area is much more my style.
All you have to do to have unlimited access to the Havana pool area...
Is book one of the Havana cabins with the cute little patios.
These are located on deck five.
Or if you'd prefer a traditional balcony...
Book any of the aft-facing cabins on decks six through nine...
Which overlook the Havana pool area.
We booked cabin 9471...
Which is a very unusual cabin located in the aft starboard corner of the ship.
The best feature of this particular cabin is a gigantic balcony...
That starts at the back side of the ship and just keeps going...
Wrapping all the way around the corner of the ship to a little sitting area on the starboard side.
I'll be working on a cabin tour video that'll show you this particular cabin in much more detail.
There were a LOT of things I loved about Carnival Horizon, and a few things I didn't.
Let's start off with the stuff I loved.
And this first one was actually a surprise.
I didn't expect to love it.
It had been a couple of years since my last Carnival cruise...
And during that time, Carnival phased out the old Red Frog Pub...
And came out with a whole new concept...
Combining a brewhouse with a barbecue joint.
It's Guy Fieri's Pig & Anchor Smokehouse.
If you've sailed with Carnival before, you know all about Guy's Burger Joint on the Lido deck.
And it has always amazed me that Guy Fieri was able to make a burger that was so much better than anyone else's burger.
You know, you can get a burger at a hundred thousand different restaurants, and burgers are always good, but...
How is Guy Fieri able to make them so much better than anyone else?
They are so incredibly tasty!
On our six day cruise, I had a burger at Guy's Burger Joint six different times!
So I guess it shouldn't have surprised me that his Pig & Anchor Smokehouse would be so good.
From the appetizer menu, Kellyn had chicken wings...
And I had a little something Guy calls "Trash Can Nachos".
I am so glad that we went to the Pig & Anchor for dinner on the very first night of the cruise...
Because that meant that we had five more days of the cruise left...
And we went back and ate there again two more times.
This here is the salmon that Kellyn ordered, which she loved.
It came with cole slaw and corn bread and corn on the cob.
I ordered the brisket, which was absolutely amazing.
I totally loved it.
In my review of the Norwegian Bliss, I said how much I loved their Texas smokehouse.
Well, this was even better.
Both the food, and the fact that on Carnival, at the Pig & Anchor...
They had live music performances.
This is a super talented duo that was playing there the first night we ate there.
They call themselves "Blind Summit".
I liked them so much that I stuck around and talked to them during their breaks...
And I got to know them as Chris and Anna...
Two really nice people that met and fell in love while working for Carnival...
And now they're engaged to get married.
And speaking of the entertainment on Carnival Horizon...
I was very pleased with it.
Not just the musical performers, which were very good, but...
Also the big production shows in the main theater, which I thought were really creative...
Especially the way that they don't just happen on a stage...
But also spill out in to the audience area of the theater.
And I like that after the shows in the main theater...
The cast would move out to the main atrium and do a little encore.
When it comes to stand up comedy...
Out of all the cruise lines, Carnival does it best.
No reservations required, the venue is perfect...
And the comedians are pros that are really funny.
Young people will get a kick out of Lip Sync Battle, featuring some of your fellow passengers.
And it's very cool that Carnival has a real full-sized IMAX movie screen...
Where they show current movies just like your hometown movie theater.
There are a lot of things to keep young people busy during the day...
Such as miniature golf...'
And a full sized basketball court.
A Dr Seuss themed waterpark up on the top deck is a lot of fun for kids on a warm day in the Caribbean.
There are some fun waterslides but to be honest...
Not as good as what you'd find on some Norwegian or Royal Caribbean ships.
And one thing you won't find on the other cruise lines is the Sky Ride.
Kellyn and I are both in our 60s, but we still always check out the arcade on a cruise ship...
Hoping to find our favorite arcade game, PacMan Smash...
Which they do have on Carnival Horizon.
Kellyn has an amazing winning streak going.
I don't know why this is, but for whatever reason...
I don't think she's ever lost a game of PacMan smash to me in all the times we've played.
If you like to pose for professional photos when you're on a cruise...
You'll like the way that Carnival makes it super easy to find and purchase the photos later.
It's way better than the way they used to do it, back in the day...
When they would print out a hard copy of every photo their photographers took...
And so many of them would get thrown away at the end of each cruise.
I love a good omelet for breakfast in the morning...
And the omelet chefs on Carnival Horizon did a great job.
I also noticed that Carnival now offers a larger croissant at breakfast than they used to.
And I love the colorful funnel vortex thingie that they have in the atrium of the Carnival Horizon.
The week we were cruising, there were some horrible tornados in the midwest and central plains.
I found it kind of ironic to see a tornado in the Carnival Horizon atrium.
So, now, let me point out a few negative things about the Carnival Horizon.
At the very top of the list would be the crowding on this ship.
I honestly think that there are just way too many passengers, around 5000, for a ship this size.
I've been on the big Royal Caribbean ships that actually carry more passengers than the Carnival Horizon.
They are much better designed to disperse the people, and thus feel less crowded.
The crowding on Carnival Horizon was really bad... the worst I've ever seen on a cruise ship.
And they don't have enough elevators to handle the number of people on this ship.
I like the modern elevator control system...
Where you tell it outside of the elevator what floor you want to go to...
And the system puts people who are going to the same floor together in the same elevator.
You don't end up stopping at every floor that way.
That's great, they just don't have enough elevators for 5000 passengers.
Carnival Horizon alternates between six day cruises and eight day cruises...
And the six-day version draws a different crowd than I've seen on longer, more expensive cruises on other cruise lines.
It especially stood out to me because lately we've done some expensive cruises that attract an affluent crowd...
Like The Haven on Norwegian Cruise Line...
Or the very upscale 10-day cruise we did with Viking Ocean Cruises.
Let's just say that the crowd on this six-day Carnival Horizon cruise was not quite as well behaved.
And it drives me crazy that Carnival instructs passengers to put their dirty dishes out in the hallways...
Because it can be hours before they ever get picked up.
It looks so sloppy with all the dishes in the hallway!
Other cruise lines prefer that you leave dirty dishes inside your cabin.
I was a little shocked by the hard-sell I got from employees in the spa...
When I went for a tour of the thermal suite.
And it's a tiny little thermal suite, too.
If you're looking for a good thermal suite on a cruise ship...
You'd do way better on Norwegian or Viking.
I also don't like the way Carnival puts their Serenity Retreat up at the very front of the ship, on the top deck...
And leaves it totally exposed to the weather.
Even on a sunny day, the wind up there is horrible...
And on a rainy day like this, you can see that the Serenity Retreat is basically unusable.
Carnival should take a look at what Royal Caribbean did with their adults-only retreat on Anthem Of The Seas.
It's fully glassed in, and climate controlled...
Usable even on the most windy, rainy, cold, or hot days.
And while I did really love the Havana area at the back end of the ship...
I do have one complaint.
The loungers are kind of uncomfortable.
What Carnival should have done is put cushions on them...
Like they did for the loungers in the Serenity area.
I'll nitpick a little bit here and point out the horrible color that Carnival used...
In some of their public restrooms on Carnival Horizon.
A far cry from some much nicer public restrooms I've seen on some of the other cruise lines.
I was excited when I heard that they had donuts for sale at the little coffee shop on Carnival Horizon...
But whey do they only offer weird donuts?
Would it kill them to just make a basic glazed donut?
And the food selection in the buffet at lunch and dinner was also kind of weird at times.
Thank goodness for Guy's Burger Joint, and the Pig & Anchor...
Where we had nice lunches and dinners, but...
I found the buffet to be a bit lacking.
I do apologize if that came off as a rant.
I just really want this to be an honest review of the Carnival Horizon, not a puff piece.
I want to let you know what I noticed, and how it compared to other cruises I've been on.
That is my review of the Carnival Horizon.
I had a really good cruise...
But I bet that the 8-day would be a better cruise than the 6-day version.
Check out one of my other videos...
Where I give you a more extensive tour of the cabin we had on the Carnival Horizon.
In some ways, it was a fantastic cabin...
But in a few other ways, Carnival really blew it with the cabin design!
If you're interested in booking a cruise, contact my travel agent...
Caitlin Gallagher, of Ambren Travel. And she'll take good care of you.