Not as good as others...

My family was a little disappointed with this cruise. We loved our previous cruise in 2015 on the Carnival Fascination (Best experience ever!) , however he Carnival Ecstasy was no where near good. The service was sub par and that is being nice. We had 2 cabins, we wound up with one great steward and one we never saw the whole trip. The service in the dining room was beyond slow which wouldn't be as big of a deal if the food was as good as previous cruises. The food in the dining room was very bland and often served cold. We didn't have any dining room entertainment except on the last night they sang the goodbye song. This was very disappointing since it was the first cruise for our two 13 year old kids. We finally talked them into trying a cruise with us and told them all of the cool things they would see entertainment wise and this ship didn't measure up. Our first two days didn't have any shows only auctions, and gambling. They did have minimal entertainment (scateggories and a paper airplane contest) the days we were in port, but most people are on the island those days. There was some trivia and shows on the Last day at sea. I am not bashing Carnival because I will definitely cruise with them again, but not on this ship until they improve the experience. On other ships there are deck parties on the Lido at night and music at minimum during the night, this cruise had one at night for an hour, and one for an hour for St. Jude, other than that no one hardly on the decks and nothing going on elsewhere, left no options but to sit alone somewhere or stay in the room. This ship just came out of dry dock so it has a Guy's burgers and a Mexican place that  took over the Mongolian Wok. Hardly anyone used the new Mexican place, and I personally like the Wok better and hope they live it on some of the other ships. My kids are 13 so they used Circle C to meet other teens on the ship. The girl running it was friendly and the kids liked her. The only issue was that she would kick all of the kids out and close shop if she felt like it, even of it was posted that it was supposed to be open. The kids did have a good time there when it was open so no real complaints there. Nassau was the normal, but we also ported in Half Moon Cay this time, and it was our first time there. The island is pretty but there is not much there at all. They will do a buffet at some point in the day but they ran out of food before everyone got food. This island is owned by Carnival much like CoCo Cay is owned by Royal Caribbean.  Here's the difference, on CoCo Cay, Royal Carribean honors their drink packages from the boat but Carnival does not honor their drink packages on Half Moon Cay. People, including myself were not happy. We spent a lot of money on drink packages and then we get on their private island and they charge almost 3.00 a piece for a soda and they want 12.95 for a drink in a plastic bottle or 9.00 for one of those little clear 8 oz plastic cups. The island was pretty though and worth seeing. We did an excursion in Nassau where we went snorkeling at 2 different reefs which was fantastic. We have a lot of underwater photos of the coral and sea life (we bought an underwater camera on the Ecstacy for 15.00). This boat did have the 24 hour pizza and ice cream but rarely had any food out except during lunch and dinner time. Other cruises have food on the buffet during much of the day and evening. All in all, this ship lacks in service and friendliness of staff. We chose this one because it ports out of Charleston, a mere 2 1/2 drive, but I will drive the 6 hours to Port Canaveral next time to get better service.