Cruise Ship: Carnival Fantasy
Cruise Destination: Freeport and Nassau in the Bahamas
Cruise Date: March 3 - 7, 2002
Guest Contributor: KellyCCZ
Fly to the Carnival Fantasy - Saturday, March 2nd
8:05 a.m. – ATA Flight finally takes off from Chicago-Midway Airport one hour late. Luckily we booked the earliest flight of the day. We were one of the last planes to get out for awhile that morning, since a total of 16 inches of snow fell by the time the storm was over. We arrived in Orlando around 11:30 a.m. I had made reservations online with Able Shuttle Service for round-trip transportation. They gave us a great rate of $125 total for the round-trip for 4 people. And, it was not a ride-share shuttle, it was just us in the van (both ways). The driver met us at luggage holding a sign with my name on it (which I kept as a souvenir of course!). He drove us to the Radisson Resort at the Port at Cape Canaveral. This was a wonderful hotel – very beautiful pool, hot tub, and other common areas. We paid $99 ($110 with tax) for the room. They provided us free shuttle to the port. When we checked in, we just signed up for whatever time we wanted to head to the port (starting around 9 a.m. and going up until like Noon). We signed up for 10 a.m. There is a great restaurant in the hotel with an excellent dinner buffet. There are also 2 restaurants neighboring the Radisson – one is a little Italian restaurant with a pizza, calzone type of menu – the other is a Greek/American restaurant. There is also a McDonalds across the street (great for a quick breakfast sandwich the next morning).
Join the Carnival Fantasy - Sunday, March 3rd
We met the shuttle in the front of the hotel at 9:50 a.m. and headed to Port Canaveral along with 4 other hotel guests within 10 minutes. It took just a few minutes to get to the port and the driver dropped us right at the door, which was nice. The porters were there waiting and we had them check the clipboard for our room assignment so we could fill out and attach the right tags to our luggage. And, the "Kelly-Method" of cabin assignment was correct. We were assigned to E211. We each tipped the porter $5, so he got a total of $20 for 5 bags. We entered the building and were directed to an escalator to go up. There was a desk with all the extra forms we needed to fill out (customs forms for the Bahamas and extra Sail & Sign Applications for everyone since we had separate credit cards. After filling out the forms, we went got in line for check-in and since there were only about 4 people in line, we were checked in within 15 minutes. The room keys and Sail & Sign cards arrived just as we were checking in, so they gave those to us right there. Then we went outside to enjoy the weather for awhile since it was only 10:30 and boarding wasn’t beginning until Noon. We got in the actual embarkation line around 11:00. Boarding began right on schedule at noon and right at the front of the line, they insert your Sail & Sign card and take your picture going across the walkway to get on the ship.
We got on board and went to our room first to get rid of our carry-ons. We were near the aft of the Empress Deck. We put our bags down quickly and headed up to the Lido deck to sit and have a few drinks. We ended up eating from the lunch buffet on the Lido deck too. They had cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and a choice of like 2 entrees each day on the lunch buffet. On the Lido deck, we met the first of our incredible crew members - our bartender/server Edwin from the Philippines. He was great and whenever any other server came up to us, we told them sorry, we were waiting for Edwin. Edwin knew what we liked to drink and he would watch our drinks until they were almost empty and magically appear with a new one. He even memorized our S&S number so we didn’t have to keep pulling it out every time, which was really nice.
Our lifeboat drill was at 4:00 and was of course the least favorite part of the trip, but it went fairly quickly and we had our life vests put away and were at the front of the ship by 4:30 to watch as we pulled out of port. For dinner, we asked for late seating – and were scheduled for 8:00 in the Jubilee Dining Room. We were at a table for 8 along one side of the dining room. 2 people at our table never showed up, and the other 2 ladies that did show up really weren’t very social and didn’t say a whole lot. We gave phone cards to our servers the first night. Our head server was Anca (from Romania) and her assistant server was Anja (from South Africa). For appetizers I had the gazpacho, the pumpkin soup, and the roast duckling with raspberry mousse, all of which were wonderful. For my main course I had the beef wellington (I just went ahead and ordered 2 servings since I knew this was one of my favorites), which was also wonderful. For dessert I had the key lime pie, which was good, but nothing spectacular. NOTE: Dinner was a wonderful experience for us every single night. I can honestly say both Anca and Anja were the most terrific servers I have ever encountered in my entire life. They both made our dinners fun and exciting. They both had great senses of humor – always happy and smiling regardless of how hard they were working, constantly telling jokes, etc. I just can’t say enough about how great they were. They remembered all of our names immediately and always remembered exactly what we all liked to drink. They even played practical jokes on us occasionally. They had us laughing every single night. Besides our tips that were on our Sail & Sign cards, the 4 of us each tipped Anca an extra $20 the last night, and we each tipped Anja an extra $10 the last night.
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