Wanting to book a cruise on Carnival Jubilee and curious if it is the right fit for you? Read this honest review of the ship, activities, staff and more.
Carnival Jubilee is a stunning ship that sails from Galveston, Texas.
It started sailing at the end of 2023, is 182,015 GT and can hold over 6,000 passengers at max capacity!
Jubilee has 6 zones to hang out in: Grand Central, Currents, The Shores, Summer Landing, Lido and The Ultimate Playground.
I sailed for 7 nights on this ship and learned everything you need to know about cruising on Jubilee. Read this guide for an honest review of every part of this ship so you’ll already be a pro before even sailing!
This post is all about Carnival Jubilee.
ACTIVITIES ON THE SHIP
Carnival Jubilee has so many different activities they offer while on your cruise!
Things to do on Jubilee:
- Theater shows: Comedy (also in other lounges), Family Feud, What’s Age Got To Do With It, Love And Marriage, Dear Future Husband, etc.
- Grand Central: Acrobatics, live music (also in other lounges), illusions, bingo ($$), Build A Bear event ($$), Deal or No Deal ($$), etc.
- Bolt rollercoaster ($$)
- Mini golf
- Water slides and splash pad
- Ropes course
- Trivia
- Contests
- Night parties
- Casino
- Pools and hot tubs
- Sun deck
- Bars
- Sports court
- Spa and termal suite
- Gym
- Kids club: different sections for kids depending on their age (6 months-17 years)
Review:
This ship has no shortage of activities. I was very immpressed with everything they offered on a day to day basis to take part in, shows to see at night and the venues onboard such as the water activities and more.
STAFF
I had mixed thoughts about the staff on the Jubilee.
I do want to say before I get into my personal experience on this ship that I think cruise staff are amazing, insanely hardworking, work too long of hours and probably don’t make enough money for what they do.
When it comes to the staff, I have tons of respect for them.
Restaurant Staff:
My experience with the wait staff on this ship was actually the worst I’ve ever experienced while on a cruise. I’m not sure of there were too little staff, lack of training, they’re overwhelmed or what exactly the circumstances were.
Usually on a cruise in the US the staff will have conversations with you, are very quick with their service, stay on top of drinks, etc.
On this ship across the entire week we did not receive much attention from our wait staff and my family couldn’t get refills on their drinks for a long time. One night in the main dining room we even waited 15 minutes after being seated to get our order taken.
Which in a normal restaurant in America, that might not be a long time but on a cruise they usually do things as quickly as they can and make sure you have everything you need.
I don’t feel like this level of service will be the same for everyone. Maybe it was an off week but I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt that this wasn’t normal.
Stateroom Staff:
My stateroom attendant however was the opposite experience I had with the restaurant staff. He was absolutely fantastic!
I met him on the first day, he was very friendly and made sure we had everything we needed. Our room was always clean with no issues for the entire week.
Shoutout to Made (the name on his business card he gave me) you were awesome!
Other Ship Staff:
The staff at the cafes, entertainment venues and other areas were nice and did their jobs. Nothing to report that was outstanding or terrible.
Cruise Director:
The cruise director when I went on Jubilee was Kyndall Fire. She was SO amazing! Normally a crusie director doesn’t have any influence on whether or not I have a great cruise but Kyndall was fantastic.
She was hilarious on every show she hosted and really made a difference. If you can go on a cruise with her as the director I would 100% do it!
Review:
Overall, I was content with the staff. I’m not someone who expects perfect. I just wanted to share my experiences, the good and the bad because for some people, the level of service might really impact their vacation.
For me, even with not the best service in some areas, I still had a great cruise and it did not impact my attitude while on the ship.
I do think there is room for improvement though and they need to work on it.
On another note, I do want to mention that the staff was not OVERLY friendly like I was used to seeing on US cruises. No big deal to me but I know some people really like that.
FOOD
I thought the food was pretty good as far as cruise food goes.
If you’ve been on a cruise before you know that it isn’t the BEST food you’ve ever eaten in your life on the mainstream, more budget friendly lines.
However, even on these types of cruise lines, you can still find some standouts that are extremely good.
Carnival did a fantastic job on Jubilee when it comes to the amount of food options you have. There are 21 total venues to dine at on this ship, 13 of those being included in your cruise fare!
If you’d like to read the entire list of food options, included & paid and some details about them read this article:
CARNIVAL JUBILEE INCLUDED FOOD OPTIONS: A COMPLETE GUIDE
Main Dining:
When you go on a ship this size with so many dining options, you might not dine much at the general dining room. While I do recommend trying every single venue during your cruise, I wouldn’t completely skip the main dining room.
I had a great experience when it comes to the food (not so much with the service but that is covered in the staff section).
If you’d like to dine in this venue you can have as many appetizers and desserts as you want. However if you want more than two entrees you’ll have to pay $5 for a third.
Standout:
One thing you absolutely have to try on your Carnival Jubilee cruise is the 12 hour french toast. This is offered at seaday brunch. It is DELICIOUS and a MUST for any cruiser.
Buffet:
The buffet on Jubilee is hugely underwhelming. I really expected more for a ship of this size. There is endless seating for the buffet but not a lot of food stations.
I do think they ended up making the buffet like this because of the amount of other dining venues across the ship. Some other ships might only have two or three included dining venues so they put a lot more into th buffet.
This is not the case with Jubilee. There would only be a couple of food stations open and most of them had the same few items on both sides, making your choices very limited.
Standout:
Something I really enjoyed on this ship is the gelato station in the buffet. They had different flavors every single day. If you enjoy ice cream you need to try these flavors out instead of only sticking to the soft serve machines.
Restaurants & Cafes:
Other than the main dining room and the buffet, this ship has countless other restaurants and cafes you can dine at. It really does take all week to attempt to try every option available to you.
If you want to know more detail about each of these venues I would read the article I linked above about the included food options, as there are too many to go into detail here.
I do want to say that I think Carnival did a fantastic job with not only the amount of venues, the variety of cuisine but also how good most of them were.
Standouts:
My favorites from the included restaurants were:
Guy’s Burger: The Ringer
Guy’s BBQ: The brisket and pork butt
Blue Iguana Cafe: The pork tacos
Shaq’s Big Chicken: The chili honey chicken biscuit
Java Blue Cafe: The beef empanada
Review:
I was very impressed and happy with the food on the Jubilee. Be sure to try as many venues and items as you can so you don’t miss out on something amazing.
CLEANLINESS
The ship isn’t very old so I wouldn’t expect to see anything out of place.
It was very clean. Staff were constantly picking up empty tables full of plates almost immediately.
There were always staff around cleaning, vacuuming and refilling stations.
Review:
Jubilee was very clean and well maintained! No negatives even on an extremely busy cruise full of children.
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SHIP APPEARANCE
Carnival really outdid themselves with the decor of this ship.
It has the best of both worlds. Traditional Carnival aspects such as the whale tale and zones for children but it also has so many elevated spaces indoors for adults to enjoy.
They furnished the ship with different colors of glass around the bars and main areas. It really upped the look of the ship that some would be surprised to see on Carnival Cruise Line.
It’s a newer ship so of course everything still looks newer. There aren’t tons of stains on the carpets or marks of age anywhere.
They also kept it simple by having about 6 decks for all of the guest spaces outside of the staterooms. Decks 6-8 were the mostly indoor venues with decks 16-18 being the outdoor decks.
Watch a ship tour to see more details and be wowed by the Jubilee.
Review:
For a conventional cruise line such as Carnival, I was impressed with the appearance of this ship. It was gorgeous and well thought out with something for everyone.
CABIN
The cabins on Jubilee were designed efficiently and the decor was perfect for a vacation at sea.
I personally stayed in an ocean view room.
Storage:
There was lots of closet space for everyone in your party. My room had 2 closets and a safe. It came with plenty of hangers but if you need more you can always ask for them from your stateroom attendant.
There were also several sections around the room, mostly by the desk that had additional storage space for all of your belongings.
You would definitely have enough room to put away all of your belongings on this ship which is a huge plus.
Bathroom:
The bathroom was beautifully crafted. There were a couple shelves for all of your items. The downside to the bathroom was there wasn’t much standing space at all.
You could step into the bathroom but really only had that once tiny space in front of the sink.
They take the extra space that you normally can take a step or two in either direction and put it towards the shower. The shower was bigger than your old school circle shower design you see on a lot of ships.
I really enjoyed the extra space there and the glass door instead of the plastic ones or a shower curtain.
Standout:
Having a USB outlet right by my bed to be able to charge my phone at night and not have it plugged in across the room by the desk was a great bonus.
I love that on newer cruise ships they have started to incorporate such things.
Downside:
The outlet on the desk was too small for my straightener.
I have a basic US straightener from Target that I’ve never had an issue plugging into the outlets by the desk in any cruise stateroom.
It’s not oversized but for some reason it would not fit into the outlet so I was completely unable to use my straightener the entire week.
If styling tools are important to you on a cruise I would try to figure out if your device is compatible with their outlets as I did not expect that on a newer cruise ship.
Review:
Overall, besides the one outlet issue, I was very pleased with the room. It was pretty and spacious. I also loved that the window had a space I could sit up in to watch the water.
CARNIVAL APP
The Carnival app I’m 50/50 with my opinion. There are some things I like whereas some areas I think they need to improve.
I don’t like that before the cruise it isn’t very useful and just redirects you to an online page to be able to view everything. I like when cruise line apps are usable before your cruise to see shore excursions, drink packages, menus and more.
It has all of your typical things: deck maps, schedule of events, whether, itinerary, account, safety and more.
Standout:
I did like that you could make dining reservations on the app when on the ship. For this cruise I had my time dining.
I love that my entire group even in seperate groups were linked together so that we could choose a restaurant on the app, select everyone we wanted to dine with and get on the waiting list.
It was great to be able to do that from anywhere on the ship and not have to go to that specific restaurant to put our name down.
Downside:
On Carnival you have to pay $5 to be able to use their chat feature on the app. I think this is a little extreme considering other budget cruise lines will give you this feature for free.
I also didn’t like when it didn’t work. We had to go to guest services a couple times because our group chat wasn’t working. They had to reset a couple things and told us it would work by morning.
For a paid service I would not expect to have so many issues being able to communicate and the ability to find my family on the ship. If it were free it would still be annoying but more understandable if it had issues.
Review:
I think the app still has a lot of bugs that need to be worked out and it could be more efficient if you could use it before the cruise without it redirectly you online.
It’s still a helpful resource that is great to look at when you’re first learning the ship to be able to look at the deck maps, find what is available and open to eat, what events are going on and more.
If you’re going on a cruise, you 100% need to download the app.
ENTERTAINMENT
The entertainment on Carnival Jubilee was top notch!
Not only did they have several different comedians throughout the week but they also had remarkable singers, events, game shows, and more.
Every single night I went to a show or a few that had very talented individuals as the star!
Throughout the course of the week I was wowed several times with the quality of entertainment they brought onboard this ship. If you’re thinking of cruising on Jubilee you will not be disappointed by the show quality.
Review:
Sometimes the entertainment on cruises can be lacking and not the best but that was not the case at all on Carnival Jubilee! 10/10 recommend.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
My overall thoughts of Carnival Jubilee are positive!
I totally and whole heartedly loved my week on this ship. I was not sponsored or asked to say anything about this ship, these opinions are entirely my own.
If you’re looking for the next adventure, maybe you’ve never cruised on Carnival, maybe you only cruise their older ships, I would look into booking Jubilee!
It was a beautiful ship, great food options, great entertainment. Just an overall awesome experience!
This post was all about Carnival Jubilee.
