First Carnival Cruise in a long time

Carnival Sunshine Cruise Review to Caribbean - Eastern

Cruises: 7+ cruises
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 50

Overall rating:

2.9 out of 5
Verified Review
Carnival Sunshine

8 Night Eastern Caribbean (Port Canaveral Roundtrip)

Sail date: December 09, 2017

Ship: Carnival Sunshine

Cabin type: Inside

Cabin number: 6225

Traveled as: Family (older children)

Reviewed: 6 years ago

Review summary

After not cruising with Carnival for many years, we came back for this vacation to give them another chance. At this point, we don't feel we would come back again. Simple things around customer services should have been better handled. The lack of interest by the customer service staff around what we had to deal with was very disappointing.

Embarkation

3 out of 5
It was ok, but during the checkin process they took my son's passport card and never returned it. Nor did they ever find it.

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

1 out of 5
Ok, I am going to put this in the general area. But we had major issues with the dining hall. The first day, our table was in a major walkway and the next day we decided to request a new table. So we went to customer service, and it had a sign that stated to go to the dinning hall between 3pm and 5pm to talk with management there. When we went there, they looked at us like we had 3 heads and stated that no management was available. So we had to go back to customer service who sent an e-mail to the maitre d. We got the new table in the other dining hall, but after that night EVERY single night we had to constantly get strange looks and they would look at a PAPER list of exceptions. Multiple times they had to just setup a different table for us, it was very disappointing. If it wasn't for our main waiter, Florain the experience would be been even worse. I will say he made it enjoyable to be eating in the dining hall.

Onboard Activities

3 out of 5

Entertainment

4 out of 5
Over all everything was great. We had an issues with the so called 18+ programs. Having a son who is 17 and 1/2 years old, I should have been able to allow him in with me at his side. I understand the need to keep little ones out of shows like that, but I felt there should be some flexability for parents and older kids.

Service and Staff

2 out of 5
We sadly had multiple issues with our Room steward. We requested extra pillows and never received them. We requested ice in our room for everyday, but it required us 3 times to finally get it from someone OTHER than our room steward. I shouldn't have had to do that. Also we tried to call room service multiple times thru the 8 days and NEVER had a single answer to our phone calls. Either they did their job poorly, or they were greatly understaffed.

Ship Quality

3 out of 5

Cabin / Stateroom

3 out of 5

Ports of call

Grand Turk Island

2 out of 5

Basseterre, St. Kitts

5 out of 5

San Juan, Puerto Rico

3 out of 5

Amber Cove (Puerto Plata), Dominican Republic

5 out of 5

Disembarkation

3 out of 5
This is never a fun experience from any cruise line. The customers truly don't listen to the rules and just force their way everywhere. I believe the ship staff did the best they could without being rude to the very rude customers.
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5 Comments

sunshinel9ver    6 years ago

You boarded the Sunshine with a bad attitude knowing you were not going to have a good time. Please go to another cruise line!!

levine    6 years ago

At least you gave carnival one more chance. Sorry carnival couldn't please you so LOL on a different cruise.

IkeDeb    6 years ago

Will be on the Sunshine in 5days, will write a review.

bnmyers    6 years ago

Oh no 😢 I'm also sorry you had that experience...I had issues with customer service before but never like this...going on the sunshine in the near future and hope that all will be well

LWLillie    6 years ago

So sorry to hear that

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