Thoughts on our cruise experience

I have to begin by saying that I LOVE cruises.  I've done three with Carnival now and two of them were fantastic.  This particular cruise was great in many ways - one particular thing I loved was that you now include the tipping so we don't have to deal with that on the last day.  The down side was that I noticed the service from some of our waiters was not as good as my past cruises.  And the friends we traveled with had a disappointing experience with one of the women in the dining room who normally checks you into the restaurant - she was from Croatia though I don't remember her name, but she would not help my friend to see if we had arrived and said it wasn't her problem. Whaaat??  I was so completely shocked - and had to tell my friends who had never cruised before - that kind of service from Carnaval was NOT typical.  We loved Jan, our steward - he was warm and kind and helpful and found I almost wanted to tip him even more for his excellent service and care.

What i was most disappointed with our cruise was the entertainment quality, and lack of variety.  The vocal ability of the performers was very poor - where they were flat or sharp much of the time.  Though, I did hear from my friends that all of the vocalists were amazing on the Rock performance...but we all thought that the Latin Nights and the Motown performances were not good.  I remember the entertainment of my previous two cruises to be outstanding and thoroughly loved it.  I wish we could have had MORE entertainment options.  The magician was fun, but was more for children.  Spoke with several other people we met on the cruise who felt similar to the way we did, too, and mentioned that it felt like there was more focus on entertaining children rather than adults.   I had to agree.

I also was disappointed in the food variety and quality.  I promise I am NOT a picky person - especially when it comes to food. I actually feel bad complaining because I'm not one to do this but wanted you to know areas I felt could be improved.  In my past cruises, there was 24 hour food and a good variety of that food.  On this cruise, all we had for 24 hour food was the pizza bar (which was yummy, but wanted more options) or ice cream cones. Fresh fruit or a salad would be nice to have available 24 hours so if you felt hungry, you could eat without eating something that might spoil your dinner in an hour. There weren't any fun ice sculptures, and there wasn't a fun chocolate night.  The desserts in the Red Sails Restaurant were not very good....and I LOVE sweets. I'm honestly easy to please!

Noticed in the formal dining area, that there was repetition for meals on certain nights.  I didn't remember that in my past cruises - though maybe I just didn't notice before?  Maybe?  There were several nights were the menu didn't sound appealing and I was disappointed in that because like I said, I'm pretty easy to please.  But, I will say, those dinners that I did have in the formal dining were wonderful.

My party felt that there was lack of directions for each time we were in port - as far as tender numbers and such. The insert you put into the nightly updates for the next day - if they have important details of the port, maybe could be on red paper?  Or at the top, it could say "IMPORTANT" in red ink?  We didn't get an insert one of the days and so were clueless as to what to do with a tender number, that we even needed one. 

The first day at sea, the pool slide was closed and we were very disappointed.  Also the fact that the pools were so small and one of them was shut down that day - was another disappointment.  The pool by the pizza bar had filthy looking water in it and we were surprised people actually got in it. 

The breakfast was the same every day - though a variety, it was still the same thing to choose from.  Would have liked something different - but the food was good.

Will this experience cause us to not cruise with Carnival again? No. I know you guys do a great job. I just hope that the next time will be the 5 stars I remember the two previous being.

Oh...one last thing....someone HAS to do something about cell service and internet access.  I love my phone and love having access to the internet at a moments notice.  I got to swim with the dolphins in Cozumel and more than anything afterward, I wanted to read up on Dolphins on Google, but couldn't.  Certainly there are packages to buy to email and such, but I seriously felt like that was a big disappointment to taking a cruise.  I found it annoying to pay $0.50 for each text I sent and had to cut back my texting the entire trip. I HATED THAT.  Though that's not just a Carnival problem - it would be awesome if Carnival fixed it.  

Looking forward to the next time!