The Lido Marketplace buffet onboard the Carnival Horizon left a bit to be desired, with unappealing food, inconsistent staffing, and many interruptions.

View other posts in this series:

• Trip Introduction: The New Pirates of the Caribbean
• Review: Hyatt Regency Miami
• Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 1 – Booking and Room
• Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 2 – Main Dining
• Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 3 – Lido Marketplace (this post)
• Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 4 – Quick Service Restaurants
• Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 5 – Specialty Restaurants
• Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 6 – Ship Programming
• The Ship Features on the Carnival Horizon
• Camp Ocean on Carnival Horizon: A Good Kids Club (Mostly)
• Excellent Internet with Carnival Wi-Fi
• A Lackluster Experience with AT&T Cruise Package
• Spin to Win: The Carnival Cruises Casino
• Carnival Drink Packages Are Not Worth The Money
• Is Carnival’s Faster to the Fun Worth Your Money?
• Ocho Rios: Entryway to the Heart of Jamaica
• Cozumel: A Potentially Fun and Festive Mexican Port
• Calm and Relaxing: A Review of the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables
• First Friday Feast: Excellent Cuban Dining at Versailles

The Lido deck (10) is where you’re going to find most quick-service dining options, including the Lido Marketplace buffet. There are times in between meals where it is not available, so keep that in mind if you decide to visit.

The buffet is composed of eight smaller sections (a front area and a back area, each with four stations around the rectangle). Each station ends up serving the same food, so don’t get your hopes up with the variety.

The nicest feature of the buffet is the stand where employees can assist with identifying what foods you can eat if you have food allergies.

Hand washing stations are available but…

In the post-COVID world, you might appreciate the ability to quickly wash your hands before entering. In fact, it’s still mandatory to wash your hands before entering the area. At least according to one interaction with an employee who would not leave until we did it. Of course, the employee was only patrolling one entry point on one day, and quite literally no one else was required to use it. Mind you, we did wash our hands in our room immediately prior to entering the area but that wasn’t sufficient.

Some of the hand-washing stations were out of order. And the ones that were in operation sprayed an awful combination of hand sanitizer and water that left an unpleasant odor and feel on our hands. Alas, I wish it were just soapy water as that would have left us feeling much cleaner.

The food is the same as main dining

Consider this both a blessing and a curse. The food at the Lido Marketplace is the same as what you’ll find in main dining.

Some might view this positively, especially if you like the food available in main dining. This is also true for those wanting to avoid the extra surcharge for that third entree in the main dining room. You can just walk up to the Marketplace and try what you didn’t order.

Others might not be so thrilled, especially if you’re looking for more variety. If the selection doesn’t appeal to you in main dining, you can’t avoid it up at the Marketplace. You’ll have to consider one of the paid restaurants, the deli, or the pizzeria instead. Plus, you can’t order your meals the way you prefer it. Want a steak cooked the way you want it? You won’t find that here (though to be fair, it also wasn’t cooked as we requested in main dining either).

We fall more into the latter category. Variety is awesome and one of the things that made us enjoy the Celebrity Solstice buffet so much. Sadly, that wasn’t the case here.

Breakfast at the Lido Marketplace

The breakfast menu changed slightly daily. Some days they had pancakes and other days french toast. The eggs didn’t taste fresh and there was quite a processed taste to everything. Take the sticky buns, which were a hot seller based on how many people lined up for it. You’d expect it to be warm and gooey, but not these. What I ended up getting was more akin to a brick.

Another example would be the pannetone, which is supposed to be an Italian sweet bread with fruit inside. What was served had an extremely sour taste–so much so that I thought it went rancid.

Is it bad that I ended up skipping breakfast more often than not?

Another popular option for breakfast were the two omelet stations. Sadly, it seemed like the employees working here didn’t know how to make omelets? Other guests in front of me complained about undercooked eggs or an unreasonably large amount of cheese in their omelets. Thankfully, there were no issues for our omelet.

Lido Marketplace lunch

I’ll be honest and say we didn’t spend much time at all eating lunch at the buffet. Either we were off the ship when it was docked or we were eating in the sit-down restaurants (free for lunch).

We did pass by the buffet once at lunch and weren’t all that interested in the selections. Maybe it was just the day we were there, but the presentation could be better. Given how breakfast went here at the buffet, I don’t have regrets about eating elsewhere.

Dinner at the Lido Marketplace looks familiar

Since the selections at dinner is the same as main dining, the quality of the food seemed higher than at other times. And another nice thing is that you’ll find shorter lines to get food. If you don’t make it down to the main dining room (say, you were out all day at port and missed your dining window), this isn’t a bad consolation.

There are extended dining hours at the deli window at the back of the buffet. While it serves as an omelet station during breakfast hours, during the late hours, you’ll find sandwiches, fries, and hot dogs, among other things. Since it is the last restaurant open on the ship, waits can get lengthy, but at least the option exists.

A self-serve beer station?

Yes, the buffet technically has a self-serve beer station inside of it. In theory, you just need to scan your room key to then purchase your beer and fill ‘er up. The taps suggest that Miller Lite and two Carnival beers (Parched Pig and Thirstyfrog) are available.

But there’s a big problem–the machine doesn’t work. All cruise long, the machine said “offline” and, unfortunately, it was never fixed. That’s a shame. Though, with reports of the lines needing cleaning, maybe it’s for the best that I never got a chance to try it.

Desserts

There are plenty of desserts available at the Lido Marketplace. Some of them certainly looked appealing but I have to admit that I didn’t try anything I wanted seconds of. The cakes, for example, were dry and overly sweet.

The fan favorite has to be the frozen yogurt and soft serve machines. The frozen yogurt was a bit icy while the soft serve was creamier. But that’s the main difference we could tell between the two machines.

If you are here at lunch, you’ll find a gelato machine that serves two different flavors. Personally, I thought this was better than the soft serve, but the “catch” is that it’s only available during lunch hours. Come here before or after and you will be out of luck.

And this brings us to the last full day of the cruise. Carnival announced there would be a “Chocolate Extravaganza” complete with plenty of chocolate cakes and a chocolate fountain. The cakes weren’t all that different from prior cakes on display other than the emphasis on chocolate.

But the fountain? For an event that was supposed to last several hours, they ran out of fruit for dipping within about half an hour. And they closed up the fountain shortly thereafter. Not much of an extravaganza if you ask me. It almost seemed like this was the first time they put one of these together given how off they were with securing dippable fruit for the event.

So many interruptions!

Overall, the biggest frustration experienced wasn’t the food itself or the inconsistencies throughout our cruise. Instead it was the persistent nagging from the hawkers who attempted to sell their wares to guests dining in the buffet. I’ve been on other cruises before and don’t mind employees coming by to ask if we’re interested in specialty dining. Generally that happens on the first day to generate interest.

But on Carnival, the hard sells continued through to the end of the cruise. The most aggressive weren’t advertising the restaurants but sipper cups intended for children. I kid you not that one morning at breakfast, I was approached four(!) times as I sat with my kids. In one sitting as we ate breakfast.

And I wouldn’t be so critical of the interactions if it was a simple “are you interested?” question. No, I was actually talking to my kids, engaged in conversation with them, with an employee whistling and snapping his fingers at me to get our attention to buy it. That’s incredibly rude and not something I would want my kids to pick up.

Bottom line

The Lido Marketplace ended up being the weakest part of the dining experience onboard the Carnival Horizon. While the food was unappealing, the service stood out as the weaker link (which is a little odd for me to say about a buffet). We primarily used the buffet as a quick place to grab drinks or ice cream and that’s about it.

The buffet can be crowded at certain times of the day, but we were always able to find a table. That’s at least more than I can say about the Celebrity Solstice, which didn’t have enough seating to fit our party.

Stay tuned for the next installment where we’ll take a look at the quick service restaurants onboard the Carnival Horizon.