Carnival Sunshine Cruise Reviews - Reviews

Overall cruise was great. Ended on sour note. My main exciting excursion was my visit to the Cruzan Rum Distillery in St. Croix. Picking up rum or any beverage on the last morning was complete chaos. Carnival lost a lot of folks liquor and had to reimburse or replace it. I bought specialty flavors not available in US.  Debarkation process is stress enough without this added frustration. After four trips to pick up my rum and two to guest services they replaced it with a Pineapple and a Lemon run. Needless to say I was upset.  This process MUST be improved. The total was not just the rum but add in the cost of the excursion. Buying the special rum and bringing it home for Christmas gifts was a huge part of the experience. In addition we had to drive nine hours home we were an hour later leaving. Could have been avoided. Many folks were going thru same process. Staff was great trying to help. 

Very happy with this cruise food and service in dining room were very good we found that the cruise director Jamie was the most enthusiastic person we have ever met went to the steakhouse and found it to be excellent the only negative things I would say are the pools are too small for this ship. Also they should eliminate the po rt of Dominica it is horrible 

Ship is showing its age.

No "in cabin" refrigerators/Mini bar which made purchasing the bottled water package a waste of time. Water was warm on first day. And pointless reordering more. Guest Services advised they could not supply chilled water.

Very disappointed No smoking near any of the outdoor bars. Smoking area was one tiny area. Non smokers constantly complained whilst passing through the area.

Elegant and formal nights were a joke. Have seen better dressed homeless people. Shorts/Flip Flops/T shirts/  even at the Captains cocktail party, and nothing was said. If the cruise line make "Dress rules" for these evenings. They should enforce them. I was totally disgusted at this lack of responsibility of the crew in ignoring these incidents.

The entertainment staff were more interested in socializing between themselves than with the pax.

Have a very poor opinion of this cruise 

Old boat. Dripped nasty stank water on me in one of the lounges.. Had to shower.

this boat allure is that it goes to several islands over 11 days.

i really can't believe some of these islands are a call to port.

really dirty, rude locals, pushy, and carnivals excursions are expensive.

buy off the boat better excursions and cheaper. 

You out will have to deal with locals. Sometimes bearable.

i will not be on another carnival. It's cheap for family's and that might be the only allure.

deja vu is the live band which was a great time.

the rest is b budget.

the food is horrible around the buffet.. I mean yuk.

the taco stand, noodle bar, hamburger, and pizza was what we ate.

the dinners are good.

the steak house for $35 per was fanominal and a great deal!,,

the he back aft on lido 9 will cook eggs to order or an omelette.

theres no stabilizers on this ship so you will feel even little waves.

buy the oil rub for behind ears, take motion sickness pill from herb store and Dramamine if you even think you might get sick. 2 days before ship. A lot of people were sick first couple days.

Having been on this beautiful ship since its inaugural transatlantic, I've seen many changes over my total of 60 days on board at different times.  

The staff is as caring as ever, and the cleanliness is still fantastic. Jamie and rest of staff is still top notch. 

However cutbacks in food continues. Desserts have gone down in variety and quality. 

Maintenance in some items such as a forever broken hand washing unit in aft Lido, exercise bike in gym never fixed, scale in gym broken, etc. 

nobody in Florida or on ship can take care of these annoyances?

15 minutes to get cold bread at table

rock hard muffin for room disservice

cold main courses at dinner on your time dining

15 people in line waiting for pizza because one poor man can't keep up. 

This ship is still beautiful, and I'm sure management will be constantly working to keep it this way. 

What an amazing voyage from start to finish!  I felt like Christopher Columbus landing in various areas he discovered. Each island unique in itself. Every island had its own flair. In many the steel band sounds filtered through the air.

All the beaches were awesome.

Our swim with the dolphins in Tortola was a top prize on our to do list

 Havana, our dolphin let us hold her and she pushed us across the water along with her friend. We were on a board and they pushed our feet as we gained some speed.

The weather was wonderful at each stop.

Great people and great service. We loved this trip.

The journey was entirely well. All crew, with whom I was in contact, was friendly and professional. One of the few shortcomings is the procedure of disembarkation in San Juan.

it had a good itenerary, many interesting stops, even I did not take advantage of it.  The food and service was excellent.

The ship shows her age in spite of the cosmetic upgrades from Destiny to Sunshine.  The public washrooms are so small that it took a gymnastics to get in or out of them and alsothere were rather few publc washrooms for disabled persons.

The smoke in the cassino was unbearable, even when not in use, just passing trough.  I started to gamble the first night for a short time and left never to return.

 (I saved a lots of money)

We had a suite and an inside cabin, I paid a lot of money for the week and the suite was the smallest I've ever seen.....other than the bed not much else could be fit in the room and our kids room that's all that could be fit was their beds, they had to store their luggage in our room. 

The GOOD for the week was we really enjoyed Jamie the Cruise Director and Darnell her right hand something....lol, they made the cruise enjoyable, The 4 shows were good but the "70's" show whould be renamed "Disco" because that's the only music they had representing the 70's but the entertainers did an amazing job and we certainly was entertained. The last show on the ship, was amazing and I could of watched it over and over again.  I had 4 girls with me on this trip, my wife and a 14, 16 and 17 who turned 18 on Thanksgiving with me and they nicknamed one of the entertainers, "Beach Boy".  He's the one from England and they all fell in love with him.....I will say this, he has a great voice and did a fantastic job on his solo's......he has a lot of talent and I think will do very well in the entertainment field.  The Blond Girl (wish I could remember all of their names) did Donna Summer's songs justice.....she was pretty spectacular too.  All of the entertainers were very good but for my family those 2 certainly stood out.   Food  was adequate but we really enjoyed the specialty restaurant JiJi's....I would recommend that to everyone and worth the $15 compared to the food we had in the main dining room.  We also ate in the Italian restaurant.  It was very good but not as good as JiJi's.  We had our exchange student with us from Italy and was disappointed that no one in that restaurant could speak Italian.  The last part of the good was the ship seemed to be ok with the internet.  They have a new app that certainly helped with everything but the service had to be reconnected several times throughout the ship but it made switching between devices very easy.....I would give it a grade of A-.

The Bad:  Out of their control was the weather.  The sea was very choppy and not much could be done about that....17 to 20 foot swales made this ship very uncomfortable on the last day and we spent the entire day until dinner in our room.  That was ok because on the last sea day there wasn't much to do. The flexible dining time really sucked.  We were not happy with the main dining room at all.  We had to stand in line on deck 5 to get a ticket to go to deck 3 to eat....what a pain and it took anywhere from 15 min to 45 minutes to secure a table.  We never had the same people serving us so no relationship was ever developed and in the past that's always been something we've enjoyed, getting to know our servers and the countries they are from.....that part of the cruise was disappointing.  Shopping on board really was not good, don't waste you time. 

The Ugly:  8x10 photo's for 21.95.....really...wow.......we ended up getting 14 photo's along with a canvas print and still had to pay extra money for a jump drive of these photo's.  Probably the biggest rip off on board but they have you and squeeze every dollar they can out of you here......you love to have some memories from your trip, we probably had 30 to 40 pictures taken as a family and it would of been nice since all they do is throw the pictures away to have a buy them all package available.  Certainly paying over $300 should of given us the pictures they just throw away.  I understand an extra charge to have the rights to the pictures but what a waste.

We waited 45 minutes to take a picture with the Captain who never showed up and no one ever made a statement that he wasn't coming but me keeping the girls away from seeing Beach Boy just wasn't happening any longer.  The Captain was Italian so it would of been nice if he was available to have a conversation with our exchange student but that didn't happen. With the weather he was probably busy keeping us all safe so I guess we can cut him some slack here.

Overall, we've been on several Carnival cruises and have enjoyed them but the weather was the overall factor that made this one only ear 3 stars.  It was disappointing from the fact mostly.  The ports and time in the port was ok but Everything on Grand Turk was cancelled and my girls were looking forward to swimming with the Rays.....well, I guess it's time to plan the next cruise.  Would I recommend this cruise to family and friends......not as much as other one's I've been on but how can you beat cruising. 

I made a mistake of booking this Carnival cruise thru because they offered on-board credit.  Carnival did not offer it.  After many calls, was less than truthful in the notes in the system and I had to fight for the on-board credit from .  Finally got a CSR Stephanie Hibbert who made sure every detail was taken care of in one phone call and all issues resolved while I was on the phone.  She gave outstanding customer service.    uses a third party vendor travel agency for it's cruise bookings.  I will stick with booking directly with Carnival (or whatever cruisline you choose to cruise with).  As far as Carnival and the cruise went....it was a great cruise except we didn't care for the anytime dining.  Carnival's food service director worked directly with me to improve our experience, and he did.  So I would give a 2 and Carnival a 4 star rating.

The Sunshine is very fortunate to have the best cruise director ever!  That would be Jaime.  She is such a delight to be around!  She is one crazy lady and such a caring person all rolled up in her little body.  She definitely made our cruise one to remember. 

From embarkation to debarkation we were treated to the finest of treatment and care.  The staff were friendly and called us by name after the first we encountered them.  The entertainment , in our opinion was equal to the finest shows on TV or stage.  To say the least we were very pleased with everything we did and enjoyed our time on the Sunshine.

Boarding the Carnival Sunshine was pure joy as a platinum member.  We were on board in minutes.  Since we were bumped up to the spa deck, we were very excited.  Our party consisted of two rooms.  We had four sisters on the cruise, two to a room.  My cabin was fine...the second cabin had problems with cleanliness.  I will not go into that since my two sisters will send their own review. The spa jacuzzi's were always full and the various hammocks and chairs on the spa level were full of people sleeping or leaving their towels to hold a spot!  There was no bubble pool that we saw online...it turned out that the Sunshine didn't have that feature after all. We chose to buy the trolley package for Key West and we made the mistake with the time of the departure matching our two other sisters departure time, so I went down to the shore excursions desk and had it fixed.  What they had to do was take the amount off of our bill that we bought online through Carnival and re-bought for the right time.  Interesting that we were charged MORE on the online trolley tour from Carnival because when we were charged on the ship, it was less!  I pointed that out to the steward helping us and she said that it was always cheaper online with them. (not this time!)  I dragged my sister down from the cabin next to us and she swapped tickets, also,(bought through Carnival before the cruise) to get the cheaper price.  We would have not known that if we didn't need to change the time for the tour.  The first night at dinner did not have exciting menu choices, but we picked the fried shrimp.  I can't explain what they looked like, except maybe a "comma" shape with a pointy end. (?)  Not shaped like shrimp.  It looked like the shrimp was chopped up and formed somehow. The next night was Formal Night.  We were excited to go for the lobster...NO LOBSTER!  We questioned that and found that 5 night cruises did not receive lobster.  Bummer!  This changed about a month ago.  The dining room had a low ceiling so the room tended to get noisy with all the talking.  I know that nothing can be done with that, except for us to not use the dining room, so we ate on the 9th floor the rest of the cruise.  The crab cakes were mostly filler...very little crab, if any.  Turkey was tasty, but who goes on a cruise and says that they went on the cruise for the turkey???  We noticed that the menu items weighed heavily on leftovers from the previous night.  I know that in doing so, it saved on the amount of food wastage, but again, one of the main reasons that we go on cruises is for the exceptional dining experience, but it did not happen on this cruise. We never saw the captain, not even at the Captain's Party!  The "levels" of red, blue, gold, platinum, and diamond have changed...only platinum and diamond can go to the party.  This surprised two of my sisters!  Gold was excluded! Red did not receive a free drink as in the past. The ship is beautiful, friendly staff, great entertainment, but the big question is "what happened to the food"????????  

First time with Jaime as cruise director-she is the best in the fleet. First time not being able to see my folio and dinning room menu on the TV in cabin-not good. First time using alternate dinning-JJ's was amazing. First time not being able to walk right up to the "your time" dinning room-Very annoying. First time with wifi that didn't cost an arm and a leg. First time seeing shows with performers singing and dancing-Awesome. Best shows in the fleet-up to date and relative. First time without mailboxes outside each cabin-not good. First time on expanded serenity deck-Awesome. First time in non traditional seating arrangements in lounge-got you up close and personal with cast 

carnival promises and delivers:good food,good service, clean ship, and fun, fun, fun , all at affordable prices!one of the main reasons I now only travel carnival cruises is that each trip has always proven to be better than the previous one. . Improvements in all areas of service and operation seems to be carnivals mode of operation. for this reason, over a period of nearly 20 years, I have introduced four generations of family members to  carnival cruising.This past cruise ,10/31/15, was so successful, it left us all wanting to schedule another cruise almost immediately. This not being possible, it was decided that over the coming holidays we will plan our next carnival cruise. i can't wait to see what we come up with. in my humble opinion,for fun filled family vacations, at affordable prices, you can't beat a carnival cruise. thanks carnival.

Relaxing 8 day cruise - beautiful ports - each one was different, but in a good way.  We went on Halloween and loved the costume parade.  Our cruise director Jaime was phoenominal - so engaged with all the guests and kept us informed of what was going on

Carnival has really stepped up their game.  The Carnival employees are helpful, also willing to help you, pleasant, and made the cruise really enjoyable.  Unlike in the past, all crew members spoke English and were working with a smile and a kind word.  I was really impressed. 

As for the room though, I was very disappointed in the size of the bathroom.  I had a balcony room (6150) and would have expected a good size bathroom however it was so small that the door hit the toilet.  The width of the room was also very narrow . 

Besides the width of the room and the tightness of the bathroom, the cruise boat itself was very nice. I would recommend this boat and cruise to anyone.  Loved all the ports with the exception of San Juan. (a complete waste of time)  Could have spent more time in either Saint Maarten or Grand Turk..

All and all, I have VERY impressed with the changes Carnival has made with its updated cruise ship and personal.  Keep up the good work!! 

We were not seated the first night together in the dining room, as a matter of fact one of the couples was put on the late seating. When we were put together, we weren't even in the main dining room, we were seated off to the side of the kitchen. Janet Bender said we would get $150 onboard credit, we received $50. We paid our cruise in full. We were not told that we should leave a balance of at least $50 on our cruise bill and in doing that we would be eligible for rate reductions if the cruise went down. Therefore, we ending up paying $600 more for our cruise than the other couples in our group. That's a lot of money.

Spent 8 days on Carnival Sunshine and had a fantastic time.  Cannot fault anything, the food was 5 Star, entertainment, first class and the whole ship was extremely clean.

Cannot praise the staff highly enough, from our cabin steward to Jamie the Cruise Director, everyone was brilliant.

We had a ball! 

my husband and I just returned from visiting St. Maartens, St. Kitts, San Juan and Grand Turk. We have done 4 other cruises.  We loved the diversity of each island and having cruised before we decided to book our excursions not through Carnival.  We used Viatar on St. Maartens,and my husband scheduled with Nick Dupre for a kite surfing lesson which he raved about. We took a bus tour of the old city in San Juan that was very informative - that we did upon getting off the ship.  In Grand Turk we used the public beach where the ship docked and it was wonderful.  We were especially impressed with our room stewards and the evening dining staff.  All of them went our of their way to greet us and called us by our first names whenever they saw us.  The PG comedy shows were great each night with 4 different performers.  We were disappointed in the big shows each evening and didn't attend after the first night.We thought they weren't very family friendly.  I enjoyed the variety of restaurants and quick food options ; Mexican, Italian, Chinese, a steakhouse, and the usual hamburger station.  We opted for anytime dining and liked meeting different people each night for dinner.  The only difference was we had to go to another part of the ship each night to get a ticket and table assignment before going to the dining room.  I would prefer to just go to the dining room and be seated.  The ship had many activities: water slides, pool tables, foosball, basketball, miniature golf, chess besides 2 pools and 2 hot tubs.  I used the fitness center several times and it was quite nice.  We each checked out a book at the library and enjoyed reading.  A person can stay as busy as they want to.Shopping was good onboard the ship.  The adult areas were quite nice on the upper decks and very quiet which we enjoyed.  Since we don't gamble I can't give an opinion on the casino.  All in all we had a great time and felt pampered.  We are looking forward to another cruise with Carnival.