Viva FiestaMarina, the Carnival Line’s ‘Dancing-est’ Ship

It’s 1 a.m. The deck of the new FiestaMarina cruise ship is bathed in moonlight. Off starboard side is San Juan’s El Morro Castle, flood-lit and floating like a golden dream against the black velvet darkness.

But this is no solitary fantasy for late-night strollers. All around us are some 500 passengers dancing the merengue, the samba and the bossa nova in the balmy evening breezes. This deck fiesta also features a lavish post-midnight buffet of deep-fried shrimp, fried chicken, meatballs, sausages, pasta and fresh fruit--fuel for the nonstop action. Whole families, from grandparents in their 80s down to drowsy 6-year-olds, are stoking down the calories.

From here, many of them will descend to the indoor Salsa Plaza for a few turns, then hit the disco about 3 a.m., where they’ll gyrate to recorded Latin music until 5. And it goes on six nights out of the seven they spend on board.

Miraculously, none of the late-night frivolity keeps most passengers from taking the all-day bus excursion into Caracas or hitting the shops in St. Thomas or Aruba.

This is the dancing-est cruise we’ve ever been aboard, and we’re having a wonderful time, despite the fact that we feel like interlopers. The shipboard language is Spanish. All the announcements, the daily programs, the comedians--even the bingo and horse racing--are called only in Spanish, although most of the crew and many of the passengers can communicate in English, and do help us out whenever they see we’re having trouble understanding.

But the FiestaMarina cruise line was not designed for us and the other 5 million or so English-speaking North American cruisers. Instead, it was designed to appeal to Latin American cruise passengers, particularly first-time cruisers who feel more comfortable in a Latin American atmosphere where menus are printed only in Spanish and Portuguese, and meal times are scheduled for later Latin hours: first sitting at 7, second at 9:30.

And it’s unlike any other cruise in the world. Among other things, it’s the first cruise ship we’ve ever been aboard for three days without once hearing “In the Mood.”

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The parent company for FiestaMarina is Carnival Cruise Line, who almost overnight converted their 37-year-old, 950-passenger Carnivale to the FiestaMarina. But this is not a Carnival “fun ship” translated into Spanish; this is another product entirely.

The passengers aboard this fourth FiestaMarina sailing are primarily families, many representing three generations. Others are honeymooners. Still others are middle-aged couples from South America--Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia. And there is a very visible group of Brazilians who have more fun than anyone singing soccer songs and samba melodies.

There are Puerto Ricans from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut who raise their hands and cheer loudly when cruise director Franco Bianco asks who hails from Puerto Rico.

There are no practiced Caribbean waiters twirling trays of Technicolor tropical drinks; the FiestaMarina passengers seem more apt to drink beer, sodas or Campari, if they order anything at all. Most are content to sit around big tables on deck talking or playing dominoes. And while the casino gets a little action, most of the passengers seem to prefer gathering where there’s music for dancing.

If anyone gets tired of dancing or chatting, the cinema runs Spanish-language movies 16 hours a day, from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m., with titles such as “The Player,” “My Cousin Vinny” and “Home Alone 2.”

While the vintage vessel shows a few scars in the cabin furnishings from years of “fun” cruises--in our cabin both the bed’s headboard and the solo chair seem to have been battered about, and there was a conspicuous stain on the light gray carpet--the public rooms are handsome. Black-and-white terrazzo, striped with slim red lines, decorates the floor of the enclosed promenade deck as well as table tops throughout the lounge areas. It is not a glitzy vessel; there is no in-cabin TV, no VCRs, no library.

Also, the ship received a sanitation score of 75 when it was inspected by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Nov. 5, two weeks before our sailing. That is below the 86 points that the CDC deems an acceptable score (see “Cruise Ship Scores” on Page L3). Typically, ships are reinspected within weeks after a sub-par rating, giving cruise lines a chance to correct any sanitation problems.

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Nevertheless, we found the food delectable and had no problems. In fact, it was the food and the almost nonstop music that made this cruise special.

The menus and recipes are created by Rodriguez Douglas and Alex Garcia, partners in the trendy Miami restaurant Yuca. We enjoyed a luscious pumpkin soup, tart and spicy; a creamy white gazpacho, crunchy with almonds and garlic; a steamed fresh corn tamale; braised lamb atop a bed of white beans and carrots with a delicate touch of fresh mint; Cuban sandwiches with fried plantain chips, and an undeniably delicious Napoleon with flaky pastry, layered with a creamy custard filling and drizzled with guava reduced to a caramel-like sauce.

Entertainment aboard includes a sexy, lively Brazilian show (the gorgeous dancers double as cruise staff), a Mexican stand-up comic and a ventriloquist whose dummy is a hollow-eyed skull.

Passengers can embark and disembark cruises in several ports of call--Aruba, La Guaira (the port for Caracas, Venezuela) or Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic--although most passengers get on and off in San Juan. The ship also calls at St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, but no passengers can embark or disembark there.

Cruise-only rates for seven-day sailings range $899-$2,229 per person, double occupancy; pre-paid gratuities of $53 per person are added to the cruise fare, along with port charges of $79.

Three- and four-day cruises from San Juan or Caracas cost $399-$1,289 per person, double occupancy, including air fare back to the port of embarkation. Third and fourth passengers sharing a cabin with two full-fare adults pay $645- $995 per person, including air.

Air supplements for San Juan departures from U.S. mainland airports cost $95-$195 per person.

For more information and reservations on the FiestaMarina, call (800) 972-4386.

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Slater and Basch travel as guests of the cruise lines. Cruise Views appears the first and third week of every month.