Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise - Part 1 - Booking and Room

In April 2018, the Carnival Horizon had its maiden voyage and the ship is in need of some TLC to restore it to its former glory.

This cruise occurred in April 2025.

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Booking the Carnival Horizon

As mentioned in our introductory post, we originally applied for a free cruise from the Carnival casino fun match offer, but didn’t expect it to come. After a long wait, the offer did finally show up for a “free” room up to a balcony. Score!

When searching around on the Carnival website, hardly any balconies were available. But at least ocean view rooms seemed plentiful, so we went with that. Sure, it would have been nice to go for a balcony, but it didn’t seem as necessary to have one as it did for our Celebrity Solstice Alaska cruise. We ultimately decided on the Carnival Horizon’s Western Caribbean cruise with the following itinerary:

Day 1: Miami
Day 2: At Sea
Day 3: Ocho Rios, Jamaica
Day 4: Grand Cayman
Day 5: Cozumel, Mexico
Day 6: At Sea
Day 7: Miami

We brought along the kids for this cruise (no grandparents for this one). While the room was listed as “free”, we were still responsible for port fees, which were substantial. We also needed to pay for the kids to stay in the room as well. So the total bill for this “free” cruise ended up being $1,164.60 ($538 in fares, $626.60 in port fees). On the plus side, it also came with $200 in cruise credits and $50 in casino free play.

Luckily, you can occasionally buy Carnival gift cards at 10% off (I purchased mine at Newegg). You might also find credit card offers (like from Amex or Chase) providing a rebate for purchases made directly with Carnival. If you do find extra discounts on gift cards, don’t feel afraid to purchase more than you need. If you’re like me, you can redeem them at the Carnival casino and earn a profit (more on this in a later post).

Directions to the Cruise Terminal

Our cruise departed from the Miami cruise terminal. You might feel tempted to take a taxi to get there, but the city provides free public transportation that takes you right to the cruise terminal. There is plenty of space onboard for your luggage. It makes several stops at different terminals and is a breeze to take. For some reason, it seems woefully underused, but it’s actually quite convenient.

Expect to find a trolley roughly every 15 minutes. You’ll want the Coral Way trolley, which has quite a few stops all throughout Miami.

*The stop for the free trolley with our ship right behind it*

Boarding the Carnival Horizon

Once at our terminal, we got our first glimpse at exactly how crowded it was going to be on our ship. We purchased Carnival’s “Faster to the Fun” add-on ($149.95), which I’ll talk about later in a dedicated post. But the one thing the feature offers is a quicker check-in and security process. It did give what we promised, and we were on our way without much delay at all.

I feel I should note that we showed up at the terminal about 20 minutes before our tickets said for us to show up. While the official rules stated we would be turned away until it’s our time to board, every employee I asked said it’s perfectly fine and we are “on time”.

One bit of stressful points was the luggage. We were instructed to leave it on the side of the road per instructions from someone purporting to be an employee. He immediately requested a tip for “good service” without having done anything. That seemed strange–to ask for a tip before doing anything–and yet that seems to be the norm these days. I would have preferred to bring my luggage myself into the terminal to drop it off but it didn’t seem possible.

We didn’t end up getting luggage delivered to our room until the ship departed, and no one could tell us where it was. It did help to have Apple AirTags in our luggage to get a rough sense of where it was, but it kept telling us they were not yet loaded onto the ship. This was ultimately a frustrating process to ensure our bags made it onboard. (And yes, “Faster to the Fun” is supposed to promise expedited luggage.)

The Room

Our room for this trip was #1277, which is on the first floor. Perhaps it was partly my fault, but I didn’t assign a room when purchasing the room in the first place. We were hopeful that we would ultimately get an upgrade–and we sort of did–but it placed us at the bottom. Oh well.

Our stateroom was a deluxe ocean view as it had two bathrooms. That’s pretty useful for making sure everyone gets showered quickly.

The main bed is a king-size bed that you could instead choose to have separated into two twins. It was comfortable enough for the journey, though I’ll admit I didn’t sleep much on this bed. That’s because the kids kicked me to the bottom bunk.

Next to the bed is the couch. It didn’t stay long in this format as we had the room attendant transform this into bunk beds.

The bunk beds were fine and the top bunk felt sturdy enough. The kids greatly enjoyed the top bunk, especially as a place to play during the random downtime we had on the ship.

Across from the couch / bunk beds was the table and a half-length mirror. I would have preferred a bit more surface area to work, but it did the job. At least the desk worked with optical mice? Note that room service and the water in the room incur a charge.

And right by the desk is the mini-fridge.

Across from the king bed is the in-room TV. Gosh, why can’t companies allow more than 9 or 10 letters when displaying names? It’s not like “Christopher” (11 letters) is an uncommon name. Just a minor pet peeve of mine.

The room has a porthole with a rather elongated space before the window. The kids loved hanging out here.

In-room storage

One nice thing about this stateroom was the ample storage space. Beyond space under the beds to store luggage, there were several tall cabinets with plenty of shelving. It also had deep enough areas and adjustable shelving that allowed us to put our luggage easily inside it.

They also had plenty of hangers in the room, which was great for hanging up our formal clothes. (Those formal clothes are totally unnecessary on Carnival, but that’s a story for another day.)

Bathrooms

Yes, this room has two bathrooms. Technically, it’s considered 1.5 baths, but not because it’s a full bath plus a water closet. Instead, it’s a full bath plus a room that has a sink and tub.

The main bathroom is pretty much what you might expect on a ship. It has a shower, a sink, and a toilet all within a rather cramped space. I should call it out here, since I somehow don’t have a closer picture of it, but the only toiletries provided are low-quality shampoo and body wash. No conditioner is available in either bathroom. Bring your own from home.

At least there is ample storage in the bathroom too.

The second bathroom has an actual tub, which is a bit of a luxury on cruises. It’s a rather compact tub, so don’t expect to stretch out much in it. But it’s nice having the option to fill a tub if the kids wanted one.

There wasn’t as much storage in this bathroom as there was in the other, but that’s not a problem for us.

Literature in the stateroom

I figured I would just toss this here. Awaiting us in the room was some pretty standard notes welcoming us onboard the ship.

At the end of each day, we received a printed copy of the activities awaiting us the following day. Maybe I’m getting old, but I prefer the printed copy over their app for figuring out what I want to do.

Towel animals onboard the Carnival Horizon

One fun thing Carnival (and some others) like to do is to have the room attendant create towel animals after cleaning the stateroom. The kids loved coming back to the room to discover who was waiting for us. Sometimes the shapes were easily recognizable and sometimes it was up to interpretation.

Wear and tear seemed excessive for a ship from 2018

I feel it’s also important to call this out. We noticed a lot of damage around the ship. It particularly stands out from the Celebrity Solstice, which is a full 10 years older, as that ship was remarkably well-maintained. Meanwhile, this one had all sorts of issues.

In our stateroom, one of the bathroom sinks broke after the room attendant serviced it halfway through the cruise. At least we had two bathrooms?

All throughout the ship and our stateroom, you could see rust, peeling paint, stained and heavily worn-out carpets, and major scuffing of walls.

*Peeling paint exposing rust underneath*

*So much rust that you would think this indoors space was underwater at some point*

The lack of attention also seemed to extend to the soft product on the ship. Take this towel we received from the towel attendant that was heavily stained. I flagged it to the towel attendant, but was treated with apathy and I’m not sure the towel will be properly cleaned.

Have you cruised on the Carnival Horizon before?

Stay tuned for the next post where we will take a dive into the main dining room.

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Chris Wada

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experiencing the world via gastronomy with our children

Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 1 – Booking and Room