1st & Worst

I don't even know where to start other than this was our very first cruise and it was absolutely horrible.  The food was disgusting, the specialty food services were only open the hours that we were in port it seemed like, the staff with the entertainment squad, shore excursions, and guest services were completely rude.  I could go on and on about this horrible experience but I will solely talk about the most important mishap of the cruise, our shore excursion.  I went to guest services on the evening of Dec 11th to book our "Swim with Dolphins" excursion for the next day in Amber Cove, Dominican Republic.  I spoke with a gentlemen by the name of Arnolds, I asked him three separate times to confirm that my 5 year old daughter would be able to participate in the excursion.  Arnolds reassured me that YES my daughter would be allowed to do so as long as she had a parent with her as well.  I book the excursion for myself and my daughter, my son and my husband.  Two parents, two children.  We were extremely excited as this was the only excursion we could afford the entire cruise.  Our whole cruise was based on this one amazing excursion.  We docked in Amber Cove and exited the ship full of excitement and my daughter and myself were just so very excited to begin our day with the excursion we had waited so long for.  Once we approached the gentleman who was to take us to our excursion we were informed that my daughter would not be allowed to do the excursion because she was to young.  Needless to say she was heart broken as was I.  I immediately filled with anger as the gentlemen went to grab someone that worked on the ship itself, to my surprise he came back with no one other than the gentleman, Arnolds that has sold us the tickets promising me my daughter would be allowed.  Arnolds admitted to being the one who had sold me the tickets the previous night and tried his best to get us on the excursion we paid for.  After sitting on the bench for a good 30-45 minutes humiliated in front of everyone and myself and my daughter crying we were talked into just downgrading to the dolphin encounter.  The dolphin encounter was not worth the downgrade.  We should have cut our losses, went back to the ship and spent the day in bed honestly.  We were given the run around when we asked to speak to manager at the shore excursions desk and after 3rd attempted he was just as rude as the rest of the staff which was very disappointing.  I have to say I will NEVER EVER cruise with carnival again.  This was most certainly our first and worst cruise and will be our first and last with carnival.  Kudos to Schwartz the ship director for his amazing personality and Christine our cleaning lady because they were the ONLY good things about the cruise.