Carnival Sensation - First Views

We entered the ship right at the base of the four story atrium. Another group entered as we did and said, “You can’t even tell that you are one a ship!”. It was true. It was like being inside of a Vegas Hotel. Lots of neon, bold colors, crazy decorations, and a bar full of people right in front of us. We stepped into the glass, neon elevators and headed up so that we could get out of the flood of boarding people.

Boarding officially starts around 1230 but if the ship is ready they start taking them as early as 1130. We were on board by 1200.

We went up to the Lido deck. I figured that wherever everything was, up would mean the open decks. The Lido deck is where the pools and the buffet are. There is also the Mongolian grill and a burger and hot dog buffet as well. These are all free ship food places. We had our backpacks and bags of soda so we wanted to find some place to settle down until we could go to our room.

We picked a table at random and settled in. My husband went off looking for something to eat. I guarded the bags and people watched. The food lines where already very long and it was only about 1230. However, most people were carrying their bags and waiting to go to their rooms

The Pool on the Sensation is very small. It is around 15 by 30. It looks to be very shallow. It is not a swimming pool. It is a body of water to play in. If you just want to splash around head to the aft (rear) of the ship and try the water park. There are several slides and lots of water works to splash around in.
At each end of the pool is a circular hot tub. There are two of these. Lounge chairs abound. They are full of sun burnt people. These sun burnt people seem to be enjoying themselves. I left them to it. I was interested in swimming in only one body of water and it was not on the ship.

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There are another two, small hot tubs on the Serenity Deck which is the adult only area. This did not open until the second day we were out. The lounge chairs here are also more comfortable. They are padded and for the most part set up side by side.

My husband wandered back with a plate from the Mongolian Grill. It wasn’t bad. I would have liked a bit more sauce. He got it schezuan style and it was quite spicy. I did find the deserts and they are the first things that I took photographs of.

Chocolate Cake – Very Rich

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Candied Fruit Cupcake – It’s like a fruit cake with regular cake. I didn’t try it
but Tim said it was tasty.

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We also had some salad and fresh fruit. There was watermelon, cantaloupe and money do melon. I nabbed a few pieces of french bread and Tim found the rotisserie and had some meat carved. The lines were getting long and we didn’t know how to navigate them. The lines for the Grill the Mongolian and the Rotisserie all pool in the same general area but there are three stations. In the main buffet area there are two sides that mirror each other. This all helps the traffic to funnel through and move quickly because there are three different stations for a total of six places to fill your plate.

It was a lot of food and plenty of places to sit. Sadly, some of those places were outside. Not adjusted to the heat yet, we found a hallway and settled down there.
I also learned not to use unisex bathrooms. The seat did not lift and men had been using it and missing. I do not blame this on the ship. The bathroom was clean. It did not smell bad. It was just obvious that people had been using it and using it poorly.

There are plenty of gender specific bathrooms scattered around the ship. I avoided the unisex ones after that. They are right off of the pool area and lots of people trotted around barefooted. Yuck. My eyes cross just thinking about it.