Brian Dering  

Age: 41
Occupation: Web Designer
Number of Cruises: 2
Cruise Line: Carnival Cruise Lines
Ship: Carnival Destiny
Sailing Date: May 19th, 2002
Itinerary: St. Thomas, Martinique, Barbados, Aruba

Issues:

1.)Delayed Luggage.
2.)Room # 1195 noise the ENTIRE trip!
3.)Ship in state of disrepair.
4.)Uncaring Pursers.
5.)Without power at sea. (2 hours)
6.)Drifting at sea. (8 hours)
7.)Never made it to Aruba!!!
8.)Poor food quality.
9.)First dining seating instead of second as requested.
10.)Ship rocked and swayed the ENTIRE trip except when docked.
11.)Poor attitudes of bar staff in the main lobby bar, shops and overall on the ship.
12.)Cruise Director telling people to swim to Aruba!
13.)Ship smelled bad! Egg smell in the bathrooms coming up the drains in the floor.
14.)Table next to the kitchen even after booking the cruise a YEAR in advance.
15.)Wedding "chapel" nothing like the picture that was sent.
16.)Bride's bouquet was not the correct one.
17.)Wait staff not overly accommodating or friendly.

To Whom It May Concern:

Summary:

We would like to begin by saying that in our collective opinion, Carnival Cruise Lines and the "Destiny" ship provided us with the worst cruise experiences that we have ever encountered. Many key reasons for choosing a cruise ship above an alternative "vacation / itinerary" were not realized on this voyage. Everything from the food to the condition of the ship and the treatment of guests was appalling at best. Of course we used the Royal Caribbean Nordic Empress as a standard on which to evaluate our experience (cost of cruise being equal).

The Players and Itinerary:

Our Cruise party consisted of Theresa & Brian Dering, Candice Weed and William Scott. Our Cruise was aboard the Carnival Cruise Ship "Destiny", was to leave from Puerto Rico and make stops in St. Thomas, Martinique, Barbados, and Aruba. During the cruise, Candice and William were scheduled to be married on board the ship while in the St. Thomas port.

When we say that the two best things on this cruise were getting bumped up to "first class" accommodations on the flight down and getting OFF the ship when we returned to Puerto Rico, we are not being flippant.

Sunday May 19th, 2002:

We started our "adventure" at 4:00 am Sunday May 19, 2002 with a limo ride to the Newark Airport. Although very early in the morning, this part of our trip was pleasant and uneventful.

We arrived at the airport and proceeded to our gate for departure. We inquired about being able to hang Candice Weed's wedding dress that we had with us to help it from getting wrinkled. The person at the ticket counter said that was usually reserved for "first class" passengers, however we could ask the flight attendants if we would be able to hang it in the "first class" closet. We agreed and sat down to wait for our boarding time.

While we were waiting for our plane to arrive, the ticket person brought us "First Class" upgrade tickets for the plane. This was a very pleasant surprise and began our journey on a very positive note… however, our journey would turn sour by the end of the day and continue on a down hill spiral for the duration of this very unpleasant journey.

After arriving at the airport in Puerto Rico, we eventually found our "Carnival" contacts in the baggage claim area. From there we waited for a bus to take us to the Carnival Destiny ship. Once we arrived at the ship, we were lined up outside a holding area for embarkation. We gave our luggage to the people from the cruise line who were collecting luggage to be placed on the ship. What we did not know at the time was that it would be quite awhile before we saw our luggage again and even longer before ALL of our luggage actually made it to our cabins.

We finally found our cabins explored our rooms, which were stained, dirty and in disrepair including DENTS in the wall, and dropped off our carry-on luggage in the room. We "freshened up" and went to explore some of the ship while we waited for our luggage to make it to our rooms. We saw ALL of our luggage on one of the carts that was making it's way down the hall, so we figured that it would not be too long before our luggage made it to our rooms and we would be able to shower and change into clean clothes. We returned to our rooms after an hour to find out that only a few pieces actually were outside our door.

We called the information desk and were told that it could be until 11:00 pm before we saw our luggage. We explained that we had SEEN ALL OF OUR LUGGAGE on a cart in the hallway. We were told again that it could be until 11:00 pm before we saw our luggage. The Pursers at the Information Desk were less than helpful at best and downright RUDE most of the time. They appeared to be more concerned with getting on to the next person and shortening the line, rather than address an issue or resolve a situation or concern.

My Niece and her fiancé's room was decorated as we had ordered. We did not want to spoil our niece's wedding trip so we really did not pick the ship apart, though in our minds we were noticing that everything seemed to be somewhat "shabby" compared to cruises that we had been on in the past.

Brass was not polished, floors, carpets and furniture were stained, the elevator doors were scratched extensively. The elevator sides looked as though they had been used as freight elevators and were marred to the point of removing a great deal of paint with very deep scratches. Light bulbs were out everywhere especially noticeable in the Palladium lounge (the main show / information room) and on the Lido deck.

"Public Area" restrooms were almost as bad as some gas station restrooms that I have been unfortunate enough to have to use out of desperation. They were dirty with tiles missing and even a large crack down almost the entire length of one of the sink tops. I do not even want to mention the smell.

We wandered around on the ship and finally found the Onyx room (AKA Onyx cigar bar). It looked nothing like the pictures my niece had received from Carnival to show the "Chapel" where the wedding ceremony would be held. We were appalled to say the least that anyone would believe that this cigar smelling, dark, bar room would be an acceptable wedding chapel.

We had a meeting that evening with a couple people from Carnival that coordinated the weddings on the ship. All of the couples that were getting married during the cruise were in the meeting that was held in the library on board the ship. All of the couples that were getting married aboard ship were also concerned with the selection of the Onyx Bar as the wedding chapel. We explained our concerns to the people from Carnival and they heard us, but were really not listening or resolving the situation. The two people from the Carnival Destiny assured us that they would be decorating the Onyx "room" appropriately for the occasion.

The only person that showed real concern was Arta Rozefelde who turned out to be the person that we would like to commend for her attention, positive attitude, and understanding during our entire trip. Unfortunately, she was the exception rather than the rule.

After the meeting, we moved on believing that during the night, cleaning crews would get to all these things and maybe the last cruise was just rushed for some reason or another. However, this was not the case and the condition of the ship did not improve. The condition and smell in the Onyx bar also did not improve.

Our remaining luggage finally showed up around 10:50pm. Finally, I was able to change and know that I would have clothes to wear in the morning. We left port in Puerto Rico and noticed severe rocking in the ship and just wrote it off to our getting under way. We would later discover that the rocking and pitching of the ship would continue on the ship any time we were not at port or we were moving in the water.

Our cabin was prepared for our night with the sheets pulled down and chocolates on the pillows. We had not noticed it initially however, the mattresses were very worn and bowing in the center in a "U" shape. We started to feel like we paid for the Hyatt and we got a cheap roadside motel! We were so exhausted from being up and traveling a large part of the day that we all decided to turn in early and get some sleep.

Monday May 20th 2002: (wedding day)

Upon getting up in the morning, we received a call from our niece and her fiancé. They were not able to sleep almost all night. It seems that there was a severe noise problem in their room from BELOW the room. Since we were on the first deck of cabins, the only thing that we could figure out was that it must have been crew quarters. Although, we would find out later that our niece was directly above the galley kitchen and it seemed that the crew was banging pots and pans and running some automated dishwashing equipment most of the night.

My niece called the information desk and explained the problem and they told her that they had no idea what the noise could be coming from however, the next time they heard it, they were to call and the Information Desk would "send security to check it out".

We found a few of the crew who told us what was below the room. It was the galley kitchen and the banging that my niece and her fiancé heard was from the pots and pans and the vibration they kept feeling was a dish-cleaning machine. This was substantiated from a few of the crew who I shall keep name-less. Still, the pursers in the Information Desk had "no idea" what was making the racket all night.

Night after night, phone call after phone call did not resolve the problem. We mentioned it to Arta Rozefelde when she stopped by our table during dinner on Thursday. Friday, the Information Desk issued a 10% discount to my niece for their next Carnival cruise for the "inconvenience". This was not acceptable since my niece and her new husband were "inconvenienced" throughout the entire cruise by this noise problem. They even asked to get their room changed however, Carnival was unreceptive to the request.

We went into town at St. Thomas to get the paperwork done for the wedding ceremony that was to take place aboard ship. Everything went well with this part of our journey (Carnival had nothing to do with most of this other than getting us to the court house in St. Thomas). We went into town to do some shopping and found a few good deals. We then went back to the ship to have lunch and prepare ourselves for my niece's wedding ceremony.

We went to the Onyx bar again to see if anything had been set up for the wedding ceremony. They had placed two pillars on a "dance floor" with small flower arrangements on them. This was unacceptable. We also met up with the minister for the wedding who had the flowers that my niece had ordered. They were supposed to be a "bride" bouquet with a cascade on them. They were actually a "brides-maid" arrangement that my niece had seen. Obviously, at this late of a time, we were pretty much stuck with what was offered at the time just to get this done.

We went back to our rooms to get dressed after partaking in the lunch buffet. The food that was supposed to be hot, was actually just barely room temperature. The variety left something to be desired. I have had better meals in cheap "greasy spoons" or chain store restaurant buffets. Not at all what we expected for the price we were paying for the cruise and compared to what we have received on other cruises. The afternoon buffets were pretty much the same thing day after day with little variation. The quality, though we held out hope and tried this a few times, never reached beyond mediocre, at best.

We picked up our tuxedos the night before and when the groom tried his on, we found that the jacket was actually small on him. It fit me and I am a little smaller than the groom. Mine fit fine but, I needed to go back to the tuxedo shop onboard with the ill-fitting tuxedo and the groom to get this straightened out. We were met with some resistance trying to get the tuxedo exchanged for one with the proper size jacket. We were told that it was impossible for it to be wrong. I explained that the jacket was the same size as mine even though we had provided Carnival with our measurements from a local tuxedo shop. The point to this part of the story is the resistance that we received in trying to get this straightened out. The person in charge of the tuxedo shop acted as if she could not be bothered in the beginning and became annoyed with us for not accepting the ill-fitting jacket. This seemed to be a common attitude aboard this ship from the employees towards the guests. This is not at all what we expected from a cruise ship.

Fifteen minutes before my niece was to be married in the Onyx bar, we received a call from Andreea Costecu. She was one of the other people involved in setting up the wedding plans aboard ship. She told us that we could use the library on the ship to have the wedding in if we wanted to. This was a better choice than the Onyx bar so we accepted the offer to move the wedding to the library. While this relieved one problem, it did present the problem of getting to the bride without the groom seeing her to tell her of the changes and make sure that she knew that the wedding location was indeed changed.

This meant my getting from the Onyx bar in the mid-aft part of the ship on deck (4) four, to her cabin toward the mid-lower section of the ship on deck (1) one. All this in a few minutes. I made it but she was just about ready to walk out the door when I got there. I then rushed back to the library to help the groom set up the video cameras we had brought for the wedding ceremony.

The ceremony went well and was quite nice in spite of everything that had happened so far.

We proceeded to walk around the ship with the ship's photographer to get wedding pictures taken which lasted about 2+ hours! I have news for you…walking around in the Caribbean, in a tuxedo, in the sun, on a ship is not the most comfortable way to spend a couple hours. It was plain hot and we returned to our cabins drenched from sweating like crazy. While the outside shots were nice…an hour of them seemed a little excessive.

We went back to our rooms to get freshened up for dinner and proceeded to dinner in the Universe dining room. We were supposed to have a late dinner seating however we ended up with an early seating and when we asked to have it changed, you would have thought we asked someone to set the ship on fire. Needless to say; this was yet another time on this cruise we were treated like we were not actually welcomed paying guests.

This was the first time we were in the dining room (still dressed in our wedding attire…tuxes, wedding dress, maid of honor gown) so we had to look for our table. Keeping in mind that we booked this cruise over a year in advance (April 2001), we found our table in one of the most undesirable places of a table in any restaurant, hidden off to one corner, right next to the KITCHEN DOOR! I guess we were lucky that there were no restroom doors in the dining area!

So, here we are with the wedding couple, basically on their honeymoon now. We ordered dinner and let's just say that the food was less than expected in both quality, quantity and the service was also not up to par with the average busy diner. The lobster was overcooked to the point of being rubber, the chicken was so dry that if you sneezed your chicken would be dust in the wind and the prime rib was tasteless, like a low grade piece of meat that I would expect to get in a second rate diner…not a supposed first class dining experience.

Our waiters seemed to be somewhat standoffish in the beginning and we never really were impressed with their skills or attention span. We also felt very rushed during dinner. We felt like they really wanted to get us out of there so they could get ready for the next seating as soon as possible. Again, not the type of treatment that we expected from the ship staff, but as time went on, we started to see a pattern emerging. We were treated like second-class citizens at just about every turn.

After dinner we made our way to the Flagship bar and since I do not drink I had purchased a fountain card for the cruise. The two bartenders there were both snobbish and bordering on rude. They were not friendly towards our group or anyone else that we saw come to the bar while we were there.

By this time, we were under way once again and the ship was pitching and tossing just like the first night. We looked out the window and it did not seem as though the sea was overly rough. We had been on rougher seas with a much smoother ride on other, even older, cruise ships so this much pitching and rolling was very unexpected.

The midnight buffet was less than impressive. Basically it was the same type and quality of food that we had at lunch time. We sampled some of the offerings that we could identify and found them to be very close to the taste of a cheap "T.V. Dinner". This was disappointing at best but again, we were staring to see a pattern emerging. We went to several of the midnight buffets hoping that it would get better. And again, we were disappointed every time.

Tuesday May 21st, 2002:

Tuesday morning and our first call was to our niece to see if they were up yet and what we had planned for the day. Our niece immediately mentioned how tired she and her new husband were since the clanging and banging below the room, had again, gone on all night. She mentioned that she had called the Information desk again and was met with the same resistance and lack of concern as the first night. The only thing that they would offer was for her to call when they heard the noise and the Information Desk would "send security to see what it was". This seemed to be the standard response to a noise problem, even when the only thing below the room was crew facilities and OFF LIMITS to the guests.

We decided to go upstairs and get breakfast before heading out to Martinique. Breakfast was mediocre and we were starting to understand that it was standard fare for the cruise. The food was not going to get better. We started to accept the fact, though not happy with it, that we really had very limited choices on this cruise. Scrambled eggs were cold and runny, bacon was half cooked, cold and greasy, sausage links were cold and greasy. The pancakes were also cold as well as the French toast. And the fare was the same EVERY day. We finally settled on boxed cereal which we would at least be assured of it's quality. The boxed cereal was what it was…boxed cereal, at least we were not disappointed with it. Especially since, it was not billed as being anything more than cereal.

Since we were informed at the island briefing that Martinique had little to offer for shopping opportunities, we decided to go into town anyway since there was really nothing else to do aboard ship. When we got into town, we found the people to be very rude and the "trinkets" expensive. We were planning on taking the ferry to an island for awhile, but the boat was not going to leave for a long time, so we opted to go back to the ship and try lunch once again.

Lunch was disappointing again and it was basically the same tasteless fare as the day before. Dinner was very disappointing, again. Gee, what a surprise… The way the crew treated us was still either rudely or as if we did not exist. I think we were starting to accept being treated "as if we were not there" as the lesser of the two evils. This was starting to turn into a bad dream but, the worst was still to come.

Wednesday May 22nd 2002:

Wednesday started in a different port…Barbados. We checked with our niece again to make sure we were all on the same page for the day's events. Again, the banging and clanging kept them up most of the night. And once again, the Information Desk was alerted to the problem and was unresponsive.

We scheduled a snorkeling trip in Barbados and that was a bright spot on this journey. Again, Carnival had nothing to do with it so… it went well. We went shopping in the "mall" near the docks and picked up a few things for the folks back home. It was a good thing that we did some shopping in Barbados. We did not know it at the time but, we would not have another opportunity for shopping that was worth anything. We boarded a catamaran in the early afternoon to go on our snorkeling trip. We stopped at an island for some beach time after snorkeling and that was nice.

Back to the ship for what they referred to as dinner. Even in the dining room this was another disappointing meal. We still kept hoping that the food would get better, yes we were optimistic…but, we were beginning to get discouraged.

Thursday May 23rd 2002:

Thursday is when things started interesting if not down right scary. I happened to be up at about 7:05 am. I went to the bathroom and all of a sudden, the lights went out. I thought my wife was playing a trick on me, but at the same time I realized that the engines had stopped "humming". (since we were on the 1st deck, we had gotten used to hearing the engines.) It was so quiet that all I heard was the water outside. Absolutely NOTHING else. This seemed to be quite odd. I tried turning on the lights but found that they were not working. I went to our porthole and opened the

curtain. It seemed we were still moving though we appeared to be slowing.

I got dressed and opened the door to the hallway. The hallway was pitch black. No strip lights, no emergency lights, no safety lights…NOTHING! The fire door had closed and my niece's cabin was on the other side of the door. One of the stewards must have seen the light that was coming from my open door to my room and started making his way to my cabin. When he got there, we opened the door and he propped it open and people started coming out of their cabins to see what was going on. People started leaving their doors open so that there would be some light in the hallway.

I looked out my porthole again and we had completely stopped. Dead in the water. I looked down and I could see a stabilizer that was still deployed looking something like a fish fin in the water. We did not know why we had stopped in the water, but since the power was out, this was obviously not a good sign. After about an hour of "hanging out" in the hallway, I figured it was time to put on my shoes to be prepared for whatever might happen.

I thought I had heard what sounded like the engines trying to start, but they never did while we were in our cabin. After about 2 hours, the lights in the hallway came on. Someone announced over the intercom that there was no emergency and that there were technical difficulties that the ship's engineers were "working on". We were told that the Coast Guard had been notified but, there was no emergency.

The lights had come on in the hallway and since the air in the cabin and hallway was getting "stuffy" (read no air conditioning or air exchange in the ship). We decided to see if we could make our way to the upper decks into the open air. By about the 6th floor my wife was in a full panic and could not get to deck 10 fast enough. I was afraid she was going to have a heart attack trying to get to the upper deck.

For the next few hours we listened to the announcements that were made over the public address system on the ship. We listened while the status really did not change except to tell us that it seemed to be a computer problem. I would really like to know why it seems that a computer is blamed quite often for things that have nothing to do with the computer…except for the fact that either the crew could not really find the problem or they were incompetent when it came to computer systems. This seemed odd since the announcements went on to tell us how integrated the computers are in running the ship. You would think that there would be a computer systems expert on the ship that was well versed on the computer system that are specific to the ship.

Eventually, at about 3:00 pm we started moving. This was 8 hours from the time that we stopped moving. We were out of power for 2 hours, and not moving and had no Air conditioning for 8 hours. This was billed as "a fun day at sea"…I am STILL waiting for the "FUN" part to begin.

An announcement was made that we would be reaching St. Lucia at 10:oo pm. My group all looked at each other wondering if we heard something wrong or if maybe the cruise director (who had made most of the announcements) made a mistake and was thinking about a different cruise. But, when he said it again, you would have thought the place was going to be torn apart and there would be a mutiny aboard ship. Everyone within earshot was shouting about not going to Aruba.

At one point when a passenger was talking to the cruise director about our change of destinations, the cruise director (Jorge) said "If you do not like it, you can jump off and swim to Aruba". This was a VERY irresponsible comment for him to give a passenger. Later (Jorge) tried to play the comment off, saying that he was a comedian and that was how he responded and that he was sorry. I personally do not accept that apology, and neither did anyone else around me.

Jorge went on to tell us that we would never make it in time to Aruba and that St. Lucia was the only port that was "open". My question to this is; why didn't he mention this earlier on in the day with all the other announcements. Like: Attention ladies and gentlemen, due to our delay in getting the engines running, and due to the amount of time it takes to get to Aruba, we may be forced to change our itinerary from Aruba to St. Lucia if the engines can not be brought on-line and to full capacity.

At least this way, we would have been able to have a little time to accept the change rather than just drop a bomb on us. Especially since we are sure that this situation and change was evident to the crew a couple hours into being stranded without engines and not moving. It would have been nice if the crew had made all of us aware of this as it was being realized…not after 8 hours of anxiety and then metaphorically slapping us in the face once we started moving again.

Many people on this cruise chose this cruise because it was going to Aruba. That was supposed to be the "high point" of the cruise package. My niece was so upset that my wife and I offered to bring her and her husband with us to our time-share in Aruba in a year and a half. We felt especially bad for them since this was their honeymoon that they had saved for, for over a year.

It is too bad that the only "gesture" that Carnival seemed to show was compensating us $50.00 on our "Sail & Sign" cards. That was nowhere near the compensation they should have offered for this cruise. And the fact that we were now not going to Aruba was just "the icing on the cake". When the purser at the information desk was asked about this, she said that (and I quote) "it is just a gesture, it is not a courtesy, we do not have to be courteous". SAY WHAT?!?!?! This was a prime example of the type of treatment and the attitude that we received during this entire trip.

We were so upset and distraught that we did not know what to do next. We went back to our rooms and grumbled about the change for awhile before dinner.

We went to dinner again in the dining room and this time we actually could excuse the quality of the food. This time we gave them the benefit of the doubt. It was still nothing different than the same quality that we had gotten during the week to this point.

We decided that we would do our best to make the best of the situation of not going to Aruba and planed a 4 wheel drive trip to a sugar mill and water fall when we got to St. Lucia. We booked our tour for the four of us in the party.

Friday May 24th 2002:

We made it to St Lucia Thursday night but were told that we could not get off the ship until we were "cleared" on Friday morning. We got on the tour that Carnival had recommended. This was an adventure in itself. The "jeep" stalled 7 times in the middle of the jungle during this tour. We did make it to our designated stops but, this too provided us with a hint of stress that we were not looking for. The jungle was actually quite nice and the tour guide was very friendly and informative. We did have some fun looking at all the different varieties of native plants and trees.

We did not schedule anything else for the day since we were supposed to be leaving port at 7:00 pm. When we got back to the ship, there was a sign that said that the time had been changed to 9:00 pm. Well, it was too late to do anything else and we were already back on the ship so we decided to just go to our rooms and get ready for dinner.

An announcement was made that we would be staying in St. Lucia until 10:00 pm. It would have been nice to know this ahead of time. We could have planned something in the afternoon and not felt like we would be rushed to get back to the ship on time. I am still not sure why they kept pushing the time back.

Saturday May 25th 2002:

Saturday was a scheduled "Fun day at sea", though our spirits were still dampened by not going to Aruba. We spent the day hanging around the deck and getting a little sun. Overall an uneventful day. Started packing things since we needed to have our luggage ready by 12:00 midnight. We decided to go to dinner and finish packing when we returned. When we returned we placed our luggage outside our cabins at 11:35 pm.

We went to see the show that evening and returned after 12:00 midnight to our rooms (actually it was about 1:30 am). We noticed that my niece's luggage was still in the hallway and had not been picked up. When my niece called the information desk, she was told that her luggage must not have been out by 12:00 midnight. This was obviously not true, but it was right in line with most responses we received from the information desk (which I believe on board this ship is an oxymoron).

Sunday May 26th 2002:

My niece and nephew woke in the morning to see their luggage STILL had not been picked up. They called the information desk again and we went to breakfast to wait until we were called to go through immigration. By 7:00 am., my niece's luggage and finally been picked up.

The lines for immigration were long but they were nothing compared to our wait for debarkation notice and the lines to get off the ship. The line at the airport was over 1 and 1/2 hours! We were afraid that we were going to miss our flight, even though we had reached the airport 2 and ½ hours in advance. It was close, but we made it to our gate just in time to be boarded.

The limo ride home was uneventful and we all felt like we needed to get home.

Closing:

In closing I would like to say that this journey was a very poor example of what a cruise should be. Perhaps the crew's lack of helpfulness and poor attitude towards the guests it is the fact that Carnival has included tips in your beverage purchases and have an additional $68.00 charge per passenger added to your bill no matter what the service was like. I guess that could cause some of the poor attitudes aboard the ship. They are going to get a tip no matter how we are treated. Or perhaps we just happened to hit the end of everyone's rotation on the ship and they were all due to go home and a new crew was to be assigned to the ship. I am not sure why all theses situations were not addressed on the ship, but I can tell you that I was not a happy traveler after this cruise.

This does not however, explain the obvious disrepair of the ship. I do say OBVIOUS since we broke down in the ocean. One would think that they would have a redundant control system or some type of back up system if it were a computer problem.

On a scale of 1 -10, I would rate this cruise a 4 and only because we did not sink and the ship was not on fire. Otherwise a "2" is in order. This cruise left a great deal to be desired!

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