Carnival Valor

We chose to spend our first month at sea aboard Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas because it was the most innovative and exciting ship afloat. We sailed Emerald Princess more for its interesting ports of call. When we scheduled our last 2 weeks of cruising aboard Carnival Valor, we knew it would be a vastly different experience.

Carnival’s ships are designed like Las Vegas hotels, full of bright colors and strongly themed décor. This gives the ship a sense of energy we could feel as soon as we boarded. Valor’s theme is “heroes and heroism”, with lots of patriotic icons throughout the ship.

some are kinda creepy, though:

Our stateroom is the smallest we’ve had so far – and it’s on the inside, which means no window. It’s great for sleeping late, though – we can’t tell if it’s day or night without looking at a clock.

Although we don’t hear the pounding of the ocean at night, the walls are very thin, so we hear a lot of other things. At least the ceiling is higher – no more “minding our heads”.

Carnival tends to attract a much younger, more “party”crowd than Princess, which means more kids, more noise in the hallways, and a much harder time finding empty chairs on the pool deck.

It does have a pretty awesome waterslide, though!

We chose this ship mainly because it was cheap, but so far the food and service have exceeded our expectations. In our short 2 weeks aboard this ship, we’ll re-visit St Martin, Grand Cayman, Cozumel and St Thomas (for the 7th time!), along with 2 new ports: Roatan and Belize. More to come…

Tagged as: Carnival Cruise Line, cruising