It's that time of year. Alex and I are off on our father son trip that is becoming an annual event. This year the event is a flight to Florida, a rays baseball game and a week long voyage on Carnival Legend from Tampa. We sailed from Tampa with stops in Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Belize, and Roatan Island, Honduras before we re-crossed the Gulf of Mexico and returned to the west coast of Florida.
We flew into Tampa and got a rental car. Our first task was to check into the Marriot Waterside, which is located just across from Harbor Island and next to the Port of Tampa. We spent the evening enjoying a ball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Kansas City Royals. The game itself was boring, but even worse was the stadium. Tropicana field is a terrible place to watch a ball game. It can only be described as dumpy. We attend college football games in a stadium that was constructed in the 1920's and it is much nicer.
Saturday we joined some family members that live in the Tampa Bay area for a nice lunch, and later we went up to Tarpon Springs for dinner. We once again, dined at Mykonos, wonderful homemade Greek cuisine. The pastichio, dolmades, tiropita, and avegolemono were all home made, and the rice pudding was some of the best that I have had in years.
Sunday dawned as a typical Florida morning in the middle of the summer. Partly cloudy with storms coming off the gulf. We got up, gassed the rental car, grabbed a quick breakfast at Mickey D's and returned the car to Hertz, which is located in the hotel. By 10:30 we were bored so we grabbed a cab for the short ride to the pier. There was no wait to drop of either our bags or the car. We did not use Carnival's self print luggage tags, but the porter had plenty and after writing our name and cabin number we were ready to get moving. The checking process was painless, and we were in group 1. We boarded the ship by 11:30 We used a set of back elevators and dropped off carry on luggage early. We were delighted to discover that we have the same steward and helpers as we had last year. We went to our cabin at 1:30, and had our luggage before 2:00 p.m.
At the conclusion of the muster drill, which was held at 3:30, we went to the aft pool on the Lido deck(Adult's only). Security did a good job of keeping the children out of the pool all week.
We choose the flexible seating and really enjoyed it. There was no wait at all. We were seated on the dining room balcony on deck three, and had a wonderful wait staff, consisting of Liberato , Valencio, and Emelito. The hostesses all did a great job, especially Judth, who remembered our cabin number and seated us in Liberto's section each night without being asked.
The ship is full this week. There are 2611 passengers and 900 crew members on board.
Monday was a sea day. We spent the day at the pool, enjoying the weather and a few beverages. It is really hot this week, and as a result I decided that the best place to spend the afternoon was napping. Unfortunately there are no Balinese Sun beds, nor anyone to provide cold towels or spritzes with Evian, so it was off to the cabin.
The dress of the day was cruise elegant, which is Carnival's acronym for formal nights. Most of the gentlemen wore dress shirts and ties. There were quite a few suits, but very few tuxes. There were a few that will never get the message that dress pants and shirts do not mean shorts and tee shirts with something written on them at dinner.
Tuesday morning we pulled into Grand Cayman just as the sun rose. There is no cruise ship pier in Grand Cayman so we anchored and were tendered into town. We did not have anything planned so we grabbed breakfast and took our time getting ashore. There were three Carnival ships in port today. We ended up getting an island tour that took us to the turtle farm, the town of Hell, the rum cake factory, and up and down seven mile beach. We were back on board by 11:30 and spent the day at the pool.
We spent today at Cozumel. We had an independent shore excursion booked at the Wyndham all inclusive resort. We enjoyed access to all of their facilities, including the restaurants and bars. It was nice to be in a fresh water pool for a day. We went back to the ship about an hour before sail away and just had to stop at fat Tuesday to try the local margaritas and daiquiris.
We were in Belize City, Belize today. We did Carnival's excursion to a private island, Goff's Caye for snorkeling. This is a tiny island with a beach, and not much else. There are a couple of picnic tables, a shed, and a dock. The snorkeling is good, right from the shore.
We docked early this morning on Roatan Honduras. Our excursion was an adventure to Tabyana Beach. It is about a 30 minute ride over the spine of the island to the beach. The beach is very beautiful, but the reef is incredible. This is a private area that has a restaurant, two gift shops, snorkel rental, SNUBA, and plenty of bars. This beach is well worth visiting. Snorkeling is no more than 50 feet off shore and there are plenty of beach boys in the water to protect both you and the beach. Once we had our fill of the beach we went back to the ship and rested.
Today was a sea day as we crossed the Gulf of Mexico. The first few hours last night after leaving Roatan were a but rocky, probably because of the way the currents flow in that area. We spent Saturday at the pool on the rear of the Lido deck. We put our bags out for pick up tonight and spent the evening at the roulette table. Between the two of us we had more than enough in winning to pay our sign and sail bill.
This afternoon we went on the galley tour. It was a very eye opening experience, not so much in seeing the kitchen, but in hearing the Maître’d explain the Food and Beverage side of the ship.
The crew is from 50 countries this week. The kitchens and mess rooms, there are four of them on deck A, server over 10,000 meals a day.
We did not rush to get off the ship but did not tarry either. We had breakfast and then got a cab to the airport. We had a 12:45 flight on Southwest.
The dining room staff, the largest department on the ship, is responsible for all of the bars on the ship, in addition to all of the food establishments including, the main dining room, the lido deck, and the steak house. They also take care of the grill, sushi station and the pizza station.
When a member of the wait team is hired they undergo a period of training. They spend the first 3 months of their first contract working the dining rooms on deck A, serving the staff and crew. (The four dining room on deck A are for the crew, the staff, the officers, and the captain.) They then spend 3 months working as room service waiters. The last 3 months of their first contract are spent working dinner on the lido deck, not the main dining room. In order to move up from level to level they must pass a written test, and a test of English.
They then become assistant team waiters, then team waiters and final team head waiters. This progress depends to a large degree on their performance and especially on comment cards from passengers.
On the Legend the wait staff are split into 64 teams. Each team waits on no more than 24 guests. All food orders are placed by computer in the dining room and prepared to order in the kitchen which is on deck 1 (the dining room is on decks 2 and 3). There are 100 cooks, working in a state of the art kitchen, that is similar to that found in a large land restaurant.
Food is brought up from the kitchen by the team waiters, carrying a maximum of 12 plates at a time, and never mixing hot and cold food on the same tray. (There has been speculation on Cruise Critic that staffs have been cut. This is not true, the perceived delay in service is caused by a newly implemented rule limiting staff to 12 plates at a time from the old limit of 20, thus more trips up and down to the kitchen.) Guests with special food needs have their dinner prepared by a single chef, who does nothing but the special requests. Their food is delivered to the dining room by a hostess, assistant maitre'd or the maitre'd, never by the waiters.
All food that remains uneaten after a service is ground to pulp and fed to the fish, it is never reused once it has been put out for passengers.
| Food | Quantity |
| Pizza | 4820 |
| Beef | 10,000 lbs |
| Poultry | 8,000 lbs |
| Fish | 4,000 lbs |
| Pork | 3,000 lbs |
| Fruit and Vegetables | 12,000 lbs |
| Flour | 4,500 lbs |
| Sugar | 1,400 lbs |
| Juice | 800 gallons |
| Milk | 1,700 gallons |
| Eggs | 50,000 |
Our room stewards did a wonderful job taking care of us. The cabin was cleaned twice daily and we had a towel animal every night, including a monkey which Al loved.
These guys were great. They knew us by name, were not afraid to offer suggestions made sure that everything that we needed was was handled in an appropriate manner.
The hostesses did an exceptional job. On Monday night we had to wait about 30 minutes for a table (it was formal night and people were lingering). We were not able to be seated with Liberato on Monday, and I did not get a very good meal. My lobster was raw, not cold mind you, raw. When we got back room service delivers a plate of chocolates to us from the hostesses, because of our problems. We did not expect anything when we talked with them about the issues, but wanted them to be aware. They went above and beyond. Special thanks to Judth who took great care of us!
Igor, the senior assistant, was the first mass market Maitre'd who has ever taken the time to visit our table and act interested in what we thought. On Tuesday he apologized for the problem Monday night. He made a point of taking care of all of our needs and even spoke when we saw him outside the dining room.
Until Carnival gets rid of "Showtime" the dining room is nothing more than a cafeteria with table cloths.
Our server was Inyoman Sudyra he took exceptional care of us, both in the dining room and at the pool.
This is the worst cruise director that I have experienced in nine cruises. I saw her once, and that was when she was raffling off carnival events in the casino one night. However, we heard her. She spent more time making announcement than I have heard in the eight previous cruises put together. I never saw any of the assistants.
This gets a D instead of an F because of the Marcus Anthony show. The ship was dead. There were few activities, and most of those involved spending money. There is little activity at night other than the casino. Most of the lounges were often closed, but there were plenty of photographers out an about the ship. It is almost impossible to get to dinner without being trapped by them, and getting off the ship requires being rude to get by without them snapping at you.
The food in the dining room is nothing more than is available in any chain restaurant in the US. That doesn't mean that it is bad, but there is nothing special about it. The food on the Lido deck, except for the deli station is even worse. IF you are cruising because of the food, find another line.
The Legend is in good repair and is a fine ship. There is nothing spectacular about it, but there is nothing bad about it either. The passenger mix on Carnival is becoming problematic. I have never been around so many rude people. When did people forget that manners are never out of style? Is it the economy, or is it the low prices?