Guy's Burger Joint

The Logbook — Real Guest Soundings

Depth Sounding: This is a composite account from multiple guest experiences, edited to our venue standards for clarity. Individual sailings vary by ship, itinerary, and crew.

Guy's Burger Joint Review: A Thousand Burgers a Day and They're Free

We smelled it before we saw it — grilling beef and toasted buns drifting across Deck 17 toward the Red Frog Tiki Bar. The line had maybe six people at 11:40 on a sea day. By noon it would snake past the pool. That ten-minute head start bought us the best seats on the Lido and a burger that was still dripping when we sat down.

Food & Drinks

The menu has five named burgers and they all start with the same 80/20 hand-smashed patty. The Straight Up is the baseline — LTOP (lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle) with SMC (Super Melty Cheese) and Guy's Donkey Sauce, a garlicky aioli with mustard and Worcestershire that pulls the whole thing together. The Ringer adds a crispy Rojo Ring onion ring and Bourbon Brown Sugar BBQ sauce — the first bite is messy and hot and it's the one people argue about in Carnival Facebook groups. The Pig Patty stacks a second patty made entirely of bacon on top of a Straight Up, which is exactly as excessive as it sounds. The Chilius Maximus buries everything under chili and extra cheese.

The toppings bar runs six or more sauces — cajun ranch is the sleeper pick for the fries. Fries are fresh-cut and seasoned. Honest take: on a busy sea day when the grill is slammed, the patties can come off a little dry and the buttered buns get soggy under the weight of juice and toppings. Plan for napkins. The veggie burger exists but isn't the reason anyone's in line. For free, though — Carnival reports serving nearly a thousand of these a day per ship — the quality-to-price math doesn't exist anywhere else at sea.

Service

Counter service. You order at the window, pick up at the next window, hit the toppings bar. The line moves fast once the grill is running — the bottleneck is volume, not speed. On sea days between noon and 1:30 PM, waits stretch to 20-30 minutes in the sun. On port days or after 3 PM, there's often no line at all. Gluten-free buns and a separate fryer for GF fries are available if you ask at the counter.

Atmosphere

Surfboards bolted to the walls. License plates. Chrome bumpers. TVs running Guy Fieri clips. The staff wear mechanic-style uniforms. The whole thing looks like a roadside burger shack was airlifted onto a cruise ship, which is the point. You eat poolside — grab a lounge chair, balance the basket on your knees, and accept that this is not a cloth-napkin situation.

Conclusion

Rating: 4.1/5 — The best free lunch on any cruise ship, if you time it right. Honestly, for zero dollars, hand-smashed patties cooked to order with a loaded toppings bar? Nothing else at sea competes on value. It doesn't score higher because those sea-day lines are brutal and the patty quality dips when the grill is overwhelmed. Some long-time guests have noted the beef quality isn't quite what it was pre-2020, though our experience on Celebration was solid.

Pro Tips:

• Get there at 11:30 AM when the grill fires up — by noon the line wraps the pool deck
• Port days are your secret weapon: most guests are ashore, so there's often no wait at all
• On Excel-class ships (Mardi Gras, Celebration, Jubilee), Guy's is on Deck 17 near Red Frog Tiki Bar — grab a drink first and eat at the bar
• Dip the fries in the cajun ranch from the toppings bar, not the ketchup

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