Taking the mickey
Can a Carnival cruise live up to a Disney precedent?
We are standing in front of a colourful row of dune buggys and our host, Monty, is giving us some pointers.
When we take the dune buggys out into the road, Monty says, it is important that everyone stays in a line in the righthand lane. This seems like sound advice. The buggy looks like a mess of metal bars with a big lawn mower engine in the back and a plastic cover thrown over it, so not something to take darting in and out of traffic.
Stay in the highest gear when on the road, Monty advises. Just keep up with everyone else. “Some of the buggys have broken speedometers,” he says. “And some don’t have one.”
In Cozumel, they do not sweat the details.
My family — wife, son, daughter — and I are standing here, freshly disembarked from the Carnival Paradise, on which we are sailing on a short, fournight cruise around the Caribbean. A year earlier, we had done a similar trip on a much fancier, newer Disney ship, but this time we thought we would try something on Carnival, owing to reasons including cost and cost. Could you get a similar experience at a fraction of the price? They are both big floating ships, after all.
There are, not surprisingly, fewer bells and whistles (and princesses) on the Carnival ship, so we elect to take advantage of shore time at Grand Cayman and Cozumel and book excursions. Which is why we are standing here and Monty is telling me not to worry about the fact that I am about to pile my family into a vehicle that lacks any way to determine how fast it is going.
(Monty, should you be picturing a refined Eton man with patches on his sleeves, is in fact a local and I’m pretty sure he uses a nickname, as does his partner, Rojo, whose name is always pronounced by rolling the R sound aggressively because tourists think that is a riot.)
Anyway, off we go after I stall the dune buggy once, out of the parking lot next to the cruise terminal and rather alarmingly right onto a major road, where actual cars whip by on the left. I faithfully keep the gas pedal pinned, lest my giant green lawn mower lose sight of the pink dune buggy ahead, and after a while the white-knuckle fear subsides to a nice drive in the tropics. A drive that would violate several dozen statutes back home, I suspect, but a nice drive nonetheless. The whole day unfolds beautifully, in fact. We eventually make it to a secluded beach, where my son and I snorkel while my wife and daughter hang out on the sand, since the kid wants no part of anything to do with live fish. And we see lots of those: fish, stingrays, a lobster of some sort, even a shark that we are assured is harmless but looks like a mini killing machine.
By the return leg, I am pretty much James Bond driving this thing, and we park at the terminal without incident. On the way back onto the ship, we line up behind a group of thirtysomethings that has been severely refreshed in one of the Cozumel establishments, so much so that one of them is draped between two friends, who are trying to pretend he is upright as opposed to unconscious. A security fellow informs the group that the guy’s booze-buying privileges will be revoked for 24 hours and, when his ladyfriend begins to protest, he politely tells her to shut it or her privileges will be suspended, too. This is a pretty great scene for my 12-year-old son to witness, I figure. Teachable moment! The interesting thing, though, is that we were warned that Carnival, of all the cruise lines, was the “party” boat. There are limits, it seems.
The ship itself does a decent job of feeling somewhat like one of the more expensive ships. There are bars everywhere, and the staff is very friendly and welcoming and makes a point of telling you the kids are cute. It lacks some of the perks of a higher-end ship, such as a movie theatre, but the best strategy is to roll with it. We left the children at a kids’ club one evening and went to the show, which was a tour through rock ’n’ roll history. It was almost impossibly corny, and when
We ended up having to pry the kids away from the kids’ club
the closing number featured a red-white-and-blue theme and salutes to FREEDOM, I enjoyed it immensely right up until my wife yelled, “WOOOO, AMERICA!” and I worried that someone would realize she was poking fun and suspend our drinking privileges.
They didn’t, though, and we ended up having to pry the kids away from the kids’ club, despite the fact that it appeared decidedly less fancy than those on the Disney ship. The girl made crafts, the boy got some precious Xbox time: all was well.
In fact, “decidedly less fancy than the Disney ship” could have been the theme for the four days. The food was decent, but not great, the boat was clean, but dated, the on-board entertainment was enjoyable, but limited. A lot less is included on a ship like the Paradise, but a lot less was paid up front. On the highend ship, there is little reason to ever leave it. On ours, we jumped off, saw the world. Drove a buggy, braved a shark. Learned something about binge drinking. The kids were ready to go again next year. That counts for something.
Four-day Caribbean cruises on Carnival start at US$179 per person. For more information, visit carnival.com.