Overdue review #1

Here is my first vacation review and today I will focus on the ship, the Carnival Valor. First of all, it is beautiful. It was built in 2004 and feels very new and clean. We had great team waiters, Christopher from Guyana and Diskul from Thailand. Very attentive and personable. I loved the buffets in Rosie's, too, although S. was disappointed in the lack of chocolate chip cookies. We had awesome Reubens from the deli and I had great fish and chips one day for lunch. I also always like the "Taste of Nations" and Caribbean day was my favorite again.
The ship is very smooth. I never really felt the motion of the waves at all even when it was really choppy overnight and in Costa Maya. The ship is really big, but I think they do a good job with the layout so it doesn't feel that way. There were 4 buffet lines and plenty of pool chairs. The pool slide was so much fun! One problem was that I felt like it was pretty smoky in the public areas, especially since the wine bar is in the middle of the hall and there were always people smoking there. The casino was also really smoky, but that's to be expected. We also felt like the social staff wasn't that good, but it could also be that we compared them to the best social team we had on the Elation in May.




Pictures are the main pool and slide (above), dining room, atrium, and the Ivanhoe theater.