.JPG)
Carnival Splendor off of Cabo San Lucas / photo by Jean Mencik
Last week I had the pleasure of cruising with my wife Jean on the Carnival Splendor from Long Beach, California to the Mexican Riviera ports of Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas. In this and the next several articles I will review the ship and the ports.
The Splendor is the second newest ship in Carnival's fleet. The Carnival Dream that was just launched is the newest. The Splendor is 113,000 tons and carries just over 3000 passengers. The ship was completely full for our sailing, but there were very few times when the ship felt crowded. In fact, about the only time there was any crowding was in the evenings when the Carnival photographers set up all over the place and the resulting lines tended to block hallways a bit.
We left on Saturday 11/07, the day before the cruise, taking my own advice not to gamble with trying to reach the ship the day of the cruise. We left BWI about 4:30 in the afternoon and arrived in Long Beach about 9:30PM PST. We stayed at the Quality Inn, which though very inexpensive, provides a decent room, free breakfast, and a free shuttle to the port. We took the 2PM shuttle and were on board the Splendor by 3PM. The embarkation procedures were very efficient to say the least. The crew at Long Beach that handles passenger check in should give lessons to the crew in Tampa, as my experience there was much worse.
We were scheduled for a 5PM departure. We did not set sail as scheduled though. We were told that one of the large watertight doors that is opened to re-supply the ship was not sealing properly and that the maintenance crew would take about an hour to fix it. One hour turned into two, three, and more. We finally sailed at around 11PM, six hours behind schedule. On Monday, just after lunch, the Captain announced that a passenger on board had a medical emergency and we had to turn around and sail toward San Diego and closer to shore in order to meet a Coast Guard helicopter which was coming to meet the ship and airlift the passenger off the ship for treatment. The chopper arrived a little after 4PM and successfully rescued the passenger and companion via a basket lowered to the deck while the chopper hovered above. Unfortunately, I was too far from my cabin to run and get my camera to take pictures. However, the Coast Guard did take video. Anyway, this obviously meant that we would arrive late into Puerto Vallarta. On Tuesday, the captain told us that we were sailing at near top speed, and would make it into Puerto Vallarta only 2 hours late. Since this was the longest port stop of the cruise, that wasn't too bad. I really have to hand it to the crew of the Splendor for the fine job they did. I certainly hope that the passenger read my advice and had purchased travel insurance.
In the next article, I'll provide pictures of many of the public areas of the ship and describe the onboard experience. Future articles will discuss the three ports of call.
Comments