Jim Mitchell

Age: 29
Occupation: Teacher
Number of Cruises: 1
Cruise Line: Carnival
Ship: Destiny
Sailing Date: August 3rd, 2003
Itinerary: Southern Caribbean

Carnival is no carnival. We left from San Juan and wish we stayed there all week. Embarkation wasn't too bad, and at first we were pleasantly surprised with the size of the room, interior stateroom on deck 2. All else was downhill from there. Our first night we were turned away for "open seating" in the main dining room even though we were assigned a seating time that night. Crew didn't seem to care how hungry we were. 90% of the crew is non English-speaking as their primary language...and 0 Americans, so the service wasn't what we expected. Our room was under the Palladium lounge, which came to us every night, makes it difficult to rise and shine for an 8:00 AM tour. The noise literally shook our room until after midnight...every night! We couldn't get a room change for 3 nights, got lucky someone got sick and disembarked. Everywhere you went someone was hassling you to purchase a picture or an alcoholic drink...even while eating dinner, you call that elegant dining? The food was all pre-prepared frozen food, which is what most people eat anyway so they don't mind. Absolutely nothing was fresh or local. I asked for my pasta one night without the included anchovies, but was told no because it's preprepared.

Couldn't believe I had to PAY $1 for a decent cup of coffee because the crap that slugged out of the machine was nast-eee. The breakfast is exactly the same every day whether you eat at the buffet or in the dining room. We tried to use the bathroom once when a cleaning person was just approaching to clean, and they turned us away BEFORE they even started to clean. I had to hold it half way across the ship...let's not even talk about the smell of the bathrooms once we found them. I still cannot believe that they show two movies during the cruise. You would think they'd show them on the "fun" days at sea. Of course not, it's Carnival. They showed the two movies in the afternoon while we were in port and left nothing to do at sea except go to an art auction to spend more money. We felt like prisoners of the sea. The entertainment was insufficient and not very good. I think I could have bounced off the film of grease on top of the pool water. Oh, and stay away from disgusting Martinique. Dirty and nasty people.

Now if you're not convinced yet of the "quality" of Carnival, here's what takes the cake. My mother-in-law developed a rash all over her body the last day of the cruise. She saw her doctor when we got home, and his instant reply was "Oh you've been travelling? You have a fungus infection caused from DIRTY SHEETS." No thanks for the 20% discount on a future Carnival cruise, Carnival is no carnival.

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