The Happiest Travels on Earth

Hi Everyone! This morning I disembarked the beautiful Carnival Venezia after 5 nights onboard departing from New York City.  The Carnival Venezia was a special ship with an even more special crew. I am so excited to share my experience and review onboard the Carnival Venezia. Have you sailed aboard the Venezia? 

Carnival Cruise Line is an international cruise line that has been around for over 50 years. Founded in 1972 by Ted Arison, Carnival started its fleet with just three ships back in the 70’s, the Carnivale, Mardi Gras and Festivale. Now in 2024, Carnival has 27 ships in its fleet and is ranked first on the list of largest cruise lines based on how many passengers they carry in one year.  

Carnival owns Costa Cruises as well and decided to make a change back in 2022. It was announced that the Costa Venezia and the Costa Firenze, Italian ships under the Costa umbrella, would sail under the Carnival brand. Deemed, Carnival Fun, Italian Style, the Carnival Venezia made her debut in Barcelona, Spain in May of 2023 and started sailings out of NYC. Last year, it sailed year-round from NYC and now in 2024, it is expected to move to Port Canaveral for the winter of 2024/2025. 

My sailing on the Carnival Venezia was a 5 night sailing that stopped in Bermuda for an overnight call, with 2 days at sea. This review is strictly regarding the ship. I will have more reviews about the ports of call and dining as well as photos of the daily planner and restaurants. 

Pre-Cruise Communication

Prior to sailing, Carnival offers the Carnival Hub App, which allows you access to your countdown and aspects of your trip. For full access to all of this info, you can log onto the carnival.com website, where you are able to make dining reservations, purchase upgrades and in-room extras and even purchase shore excursions. 

The app and the website work quite well and are quite intuitive. For the most part, you can get all of your trip planning done prior to your trip just from your account. I will say that I had an issue with booking a specialty dining reservation with two separate credit cards for two cabins but the customer service line did a great job of helping me resolve these issues. 

I do have a member of my party that brings a CPAP machine. Some lines require you to let them know ahead of time that you will be arriving with medical equipment such as a CPAP machine. With Carnival, we did not have to let them know ahead of time and they mention that you need to bring your own extension cord. I personally purchased this non-surge protector, since you can only bring non-surge protector extensions onboard. 

Pre-Cruise Check-In

Two weeks before your sail date, check-in opens at midnight on the Carnival website. If you are Diamond or Platinum, you can check in 16 days prior. The earlier you check-in, the more arrival times that will be available. The first check-in time is typically 10:00 am – 10:30 am. Tip: Make sure when you go to check-in that you click on Arrival Time first on your right hand column to select the arrival time you want and then go back and fill out the info. 

When I checked-in, I received the 10:00 am – 10:30 am arrival time and boarding group A02. Diamond, Platinum and Faster to the Fun will typically board first and then A01 and A02. You’ll need to print out this boarding pass as this will be how you get onboard.

Embarkation & Muster

One thing to note: if you are leaving on the Carnival Venezia, you are leaving from New York City (Manhattan). Carnival only leaves from the port of Manhattan in the area, not from Bayonne or Red Hook. 

I am a NYC native, which means the commute to NYC isn’t terrible and I arrived at the pier at 9:40 am. When being dropped off, ask them to bring you upstairs, not downstairs. Downstairs at the pier is where pick-up is for the end of the cruise and where most guests come out after the cruise with their luggage. We were dropped off right in front of the door and handed off our luggage. 

After dropping off your luggage and going through security, you’ll see signs for different arrival times. There was a sign “Early for Arrival Time” or “On-Time for Arrival Time.” It was around 9:45 am at this point but they allowed me to enter the on-time queue, where I literally just stepped right up to the desk. 

We arrived at 9:40 am to the pier and were checked-in and waiting by 9:50 am, so the whole process of security, luggage drop-off and check-in took only 10 minutes. When we sat and waited, there were only a handful of people there and it started filling up around 10:30 am. 

As we sat and waited, I noticed guests still coming off the ship at 11:00 am, so I think that caused a delay in boarding for the entire ship. At around 11:30 am, we went to the welcome aboard photo area and took one and then congregated to wait for them to start boarding. Again, they start with boarding Platinum, Diamond and Faster to the Fun. 

At around 12:00 pm, A02 was called and we headed to the first area to be checked by a sniffing dog. We were then headed onboard the Carnival Venezia. In the Port of New York, the area for boarding was a bit confusing. They had a group of people waiting in the area that was to be used for boarding. Therefore, there were a lot of people just standing around and in the way of other guests.

They did make an announcement at one point, I want to say at around 11:30 am that they were stopping check-in because the building was at capacity, so I will say that if you can, arrive early so that you are there. Some of my family arrived after us and it took them around 2 hours to get onboard between check-in and waiting for their boarding group. 

In terms of Muster Drill, Carnival coordinates this a bit differently. When you get onboard, at your leisure you need to report to your muster station. It’s a quick process but we heard from an announcement that around the time of sailaway about 1,000 people still had not done it. I recommend doing it as soon as you board so you don’t have to worry about it afterwards. 

Sail away from NYC is so pretty. If you aren’t from the area or if you just don’t get to appreciate it very often, head up to Deck 10/11 AFT and watch sail away from the back of the ship. You’ll find less people and a peaceful kick off to your trip.

Dining

As I mentioned, I will be doing a separate dining review with menus and food photos separately, but I wanted to mention the food onboard the Venezia. During our cruise we dined at the Canal Grande Main Dining Room, La Strada Grill, Guy’s Burger Joint, the Marketplace, Tomodoro, Fahrenheit 555 Steakhouse and Il Viaggio. I also tried specialty coffee over at the Java Blue Cafe near the pool. 

Everyday for breakfast we ate at the Marketplace. Breakfast included an omelet station as well as other items that did change daily. One thing to note: the Carnival Venezia doesn’t have bacon everyday and they don’t have hashbrowns everyday. It seems that they alternate between days. Other than that, the omelets were delicious as well as the pastries. While the Venezia holds over 4,000 guests, there was always room to sit at the buffet area.

On embarkation day, I would suggest heading to La Strada Grill for lunch instead of the buffet. This was a tip I heard and it was the best thing I did. There was no line and barely anyone was sitting around. Plus, the food was delicious. On other days for lunch we had Guy’s Burger Joint, which made a fantastic burger that I had it twice and Tomodoro, where the bowls were awesome. 

On the Carnival Venezia, we had My Time Dining, which means we were able to visit whenever we wanted. You do need to check-in for dinner on the app if you have My Time Dining. My Time Guests eat at the Canal Grande Restaurant. If you have a set time, you’ll be in the Marco Polo Restaurant (my debarkation location was here and I think the Canal Grande is the nicer of the two).  On our first night we were seated in Shailesh’s area, and ended up staying with him the whole cruise. He is absolutely fantastic and I highly suggest you look for him if you are eating at Canal Grande. He made sure we always had what we wanted, he was quick and he was just so sweet to talk to. I am really happy we had Shaliesh during our sailing and that we would see him during the day.  All of the food was fantastic, especially the pastas.

We also dined at Fahrenheit 555 Steakhouse for our Terrazza Brunch (more on that later) and Il Viaggio. Both of these options were fantastic and the food had an amazing taste. I can’t wait to share more about these locations. 

Packages Offered

Cheers! Beverage Package

I typically purchase a beverage package on cruises but the Cheers! Beverage program on Carnival, especially if you leave from NY or Galveston, does not start until the 2nd day of the cruise. Since this was only a 5 day sailing, I didn’t think it was worth it. Here are a few things to know about the package: 

• You are limited to 15 alcoholic beverages a day with the package. 
• Each adult in the cabin, over 21, must purchase the plan. Anyone under 21 needs to purchase the non-alcoholic package. 
• All alcoholic beverages are included, sodas, mocktails, specialty coffee, water and other non-alcoholic beverages. 

In the case of me and my party, instead of purchasing a beverage package, we purchased an 8 Pack of 50 oz. bottles of water for our room. It was about $27 but for us it was worth it. You can also have soda cans delivered or just bring your own reusable bottle of water and just fill that up. I recommend the Brita Filtered Bottle, which was what I brought onboard. 

WiFi Internet Package

The people over at Carnival were so awesome and offered me free wifi onboard for the duration of my cruise. There are 3 internet packages available: a Social Wi-Fi Plan for $15.30/day, a Value Wi-Fi Plan for $19.55/day and the Premium Wi-Fi Plan for $21.25/day. These plans offer you different access depending on what your needs are. The Wi-Fi worked extremely well and was fast. 

If you are not interested in purchasing Wi-Fi then you can still use your Hub App. You’ll just need to connect to Carnival Venezia Wi-Fi and you’ll be able to use the app. If you want to message others on the ship without purchasing Wi-Fi, then it’s only $5 for the duration of your trip per device. For us, we made sure one person in each cabin had the messaging system to keep in touch. 

Photo Packages

Carnival has no unlimited photo packages on their website. You’ll need to purchase 15 Photos for $299.99, 10 Photos for $199.99 or 5 Photos for $99.99. You do get days onboard where there are special promotions. For example, one day I purchased the digital prints and received 4 wallets for free. I don’t think you necessarily need the photo package since you can get deals onboard. 

Entertainment and Shows

Cruise Director: MarQ

If I am going to talk about entertainment, then there’s someone I need to talk about first and that’s MarQ, the current cruise director of the Carnival Venezia. I’ve been on over 20 cruises and I must say, he is probably one of the best cruise directors I’ve had on a cruise. The amount of energy and excitement that he brought to every event was truly amazing. And they were fun! Love and Marriage was hysterical, the 80’s Glow Party was a BLAST as well as all of the other events in the lobby.

Before heading out to Bermuda, we saw him near the Gangway and started talking to him. I even got a picture with him that day and mentioned I had a blog. While I did see him around the cruise, the morning of disembarkation, he was in the lounge and we said goodbye to him. He turned around and said, I hope you got so much content for your blog. This man sees over 4,000 guests a week and he remembered that I told him I had a blog. That impressed me so much and truly showed how amazing he was as a cruise director. So, MarQ, if you are reading this, nice work! You are really good at what you do and should be proud! 

Stage Shows

On my 5 night sailing, the Carnival Venezia featured 2 main stage show products, Broadway Beats and EPIC Rock. To me, both were more like concerts, rather than Broadway style shows. But, the talent was awesome. The singers and dancers were fantastic and did a great job during the show. 

The only issue I had with the theater was that if you sat on the upper deck, the brown railing was in the way. They need to try to maybe replace that with a lucite railing so you can still see. 

Parties/Themed Nights

If there’s one thing Carnival knows how to do, that’s party. From the Motown Party in the lobby to the 80’s Glow Rock Party on the Lido Deck, there were so many good parties and activities happening around the ship. 

Bars and Lounges

The Carnival Venezia had a variety of bars and lounges around the ship. Frizzante and Amari are cute bars on Deck 5 as is the Gondola Lounge and the Heroes Bar. I found it super easy to get a drink at any of the bars during my time onboard. There were also a ton of people walking around asking if you wanted to drink at the shows and by the pool. 

Onboard Activities

The Carnival Venezia was home to a variety of activities onboard. Whether you wanted to play trivia, which happened daily at the Gondola Lounge, listen to music in the main piazza or go to the casino, there were a ton of onboard activities available. 

On my last day onboard, I took a walk up to the Water Works area on Deck 15/Deck 14. In addition in those areas there was a rope course, an arcade and basketball courts. On Deck 10 and Deck 11, near the main pool area, there was an activity space with lots of games and things to do as well as a variety of different types of seating. 

Shopping

I love to shop! And the Carnival Venezia had some nice shops around the ship. There was a sunglasses store, a jewelry store with Swarovski and Kendra Scott options, a watch store, a makeup and perfume shop, a clothing store, a Carnival Shop, a candy store and a variety of pop-up shops with jewelry and other items. 

There was also an Effy store and a designer handbag store onboard the Carnival Venezia. For the amount of people onboard, I think that the amount of gift shops were perfect and you never felt too overwhelmed. 

Pools

The Carnival Venezia was home to two pools: one in the main area with the screen and one in the Burano Pool Deck. There was never an issue finding deck chairs to sit out, especially near the Burano Pool Deck, where we spent most of our time. 

In addition to the main pool area and the Burano Pool Deck, there was also the Serenity Adults Only Area on Deck 15. I took a walk up there and it was great. But, there is no pool, just hot tubs. 

With that said, I think that adults need an adult-only pool. There were a lot of kids taking over the pools and throwing water all over. It was bothering a lot of people on the deck. I think an adult-only pool would be a welcome addition to the ship. 

Spa

During this sailing, I did not have a chance to visit the spa, but I did have a few minutes to see it on deck. The spa usually offers some great deals, especially while in port. I did see some deals so if you are interested in a massage, check it out. 

Cabin

Originally, we booked a Balcony Stateroom on Deck 7. About a month prior to sailing, we were offered an upgrade to the Terrazza Cabana Area on Deck 5. This upgrade offer was only available to guests with 3 people in the stateroom. 

Our room was #5203 on Deck 5, Aft. It was in the Terrazza Cabana area, which features its own deck area, a continental breakfast and a huge terrace balcony connected to the main deck by walkway. Some perks of the Terrazza Cabana include the access to the deck, Continental Breakfast and Brunch at Steakhouse 555. 

I thought our cabin was a great size for 3 adults with 3 luggages. The sofa was turned into a twin size bed and there was even a side table next to that. The bathroom was relatively small, featuring a toilet, shower and sink. While the bathroom is small, the shower wasn’t as small as others we’ve had in the past. 

There was an ample amount of closet space and drawers available. There were also only plugs near the vanity. So if you need a plug next to your bed, make sure to bring some type of extension cord since there are no outlets next to the bed. 

Our balcony was tremendous, featuring two lounger chairs and the option to open a hammock. It was extremely spacious and it was nice the few times we used it. 

The room steward for #5203 was Made. He was great, introducing himself immediately and he would always stop to say hello. He kept the room spotless and provided everything we needed in our room. If you have Made as your room steward, you are in luck. 

If you are interested in info for the Terrazza area including benefits, use the QR codes above.

Crew

The crew onboard the Carnival Venezia was fantastic. Every person I spoke to was always so nice and helpful. They would talk to you and engage which was nice. I don’t think I came across one crew member that was nasty or less than nice. I was very impressed with the crew onboard the ship. As I mentioned above, crew members like MarQ, Shaliesh, Made and more made our trip fantastic. 

Final Thoughts and Other Info

I had a fantastic time onboard the Carnival Venezia. I think that Carnival knows how to have a great time and it was evidenced by the people onboard. I highly recommend this ship if you are looking for some great food and a great time with an amazing crew. 

Pro-Tips for the Carnival Venezia

• Check-in at the 14 day mark for check-in. Getting an earlier arrival time and boarding time will make it less likely that you’ll be delayed onboard. 
• If you can, try to get that Terrazza Cabin on Deck 5. It was convenient to everything onboard and was secluded. 
• If you are in the Terrazza Cabanas, make sure you go to the Steakhouse immediately to make a reservation for the Sea Day Brunch. 
• You are able to bring your own hair dryer, straightener and non-surge protector onboard. 
• The muster drill is a bit different on Carnival. You are able to do it at your convenience, which I recommend to do as soon as you get onboard. It’s only about 1 minute and then they’ll sound the alarms just as you go about your day. 
• If you find a waiter at My Time Dining that you like, you can request to keep getting them each night, just speak to the Maitre’d. 
• At the buffet, we always found more seats towards the back, or Aft of the ship, near the back pool deck. 
• If you are a Gold, Platinum or Diamond VIFP member, make sure you go to the Photo Gallery on 5+ Day Cruises to receive your VIFP pin. They don’t make too much of a big deal out of it but it’s available.
• If you want to try Il Viaggio, try to make a reservation for the first night since you get a free bottle of wine. 
• Make sure you get a straw when drinking onboard… and eat it! That’s right, eat your straw and you’ll thank me later.
• The elevators onboard are smart elevators. You need to select your deck from the screen and you’ll be directed to an elevator. Keep in mind that you will wait a little while for elevators with this system.

My Opinion of the Carnival Venezia

I haven’t been on Carnival in about 10 years so I wasn’t 100% sure if it was the same way I remembered it. But, onboard the Carnival Venezia, it was the same Carnival I knew and have always loved. They know how to party and get people hyped up, especially MarQ and for what you pay it’s a good value. I recommend the beautiful Carnival Venezia!

Here are a few more photos of the ship!

Head over to @thehappiesttravelsonearth on Instagram and follow me to see more. Stay tuned to the blog for more on the Carnival Venezia.