Arrival

We booked our cruise through a travel agent. When checking the prices online through the Carnival planner your Travel agent can usually beat those prices by a few hundred bucks. Make sure that you Travel agent understands your requests for travel. We had a one connection trip from Indy to Atlanta / Atlanta to San Juan with Delta. Beware of Atlanta International, make sure that you have at least 45 minutes between your flights. Ours was an hour and worked out very well. Arrival in San Juan, we were greeted with reps from Carnival which made it easy to find where we needed to be. Upon gathering our luggage we waited in line to find out that we were supposed to fill out the information in our Carnival cruise booklet. DO THIS BEFORE YOU ARRIVE. 10 minutes lost no big deal, but a pen was hard to come by. We took the Carnival arranged shuttle, not too bad. Upon arrival we waited in a line outside the terminal to board the ship. Pay attention to the signs. You will be presented with your Sail and Sign card, this will be your best friend or enemy. Watch your spending it will easily add up using this card. We opted to pay by credit card, so the sail and sign was automatically linked and charged to our account. Upon boarding we found our room was easily accessible. We requested room 8269 (Veranda Deck) because of its proximity to the elevators, stern and aft. Room was accommodating, yet the photos on the website were a little misleading. Our stateroom had a balcony, which should be a must for every cruise. We were greeted by our very friendly Room Steward, Santiago, highly recommended! Dinner in the Galaxy ballroom was nice. Fair selection, however all selections were palatable. In the evening we enjoyed a walk around the ship with ice cream provided by the endless soft serve machine.

Ports of Call: BOOK SHORE TOURS EARLY. Perform research on non-carnival excursions before cruise. Carnival excursions are nice but can be limited.

St. Thomas:

Absolutely beautiful, make sure you are awake to witness the arrival at the port. Shopping in town, which is a $4 per person ride, is highly recommended. Reminds me of the French Quarter, but with jewelry stores instead of gentlemen’s clubs. We opted for an afternoon excursion to Trunk Bay at St. John (Carnival Sponsored), also highly recommended. St. John is beautiful, ask for Wesley as your St John Island driver! Snorkeling at Trunk bay is a must, you can rent equipment at the boat or at the beach both were basically the same price. Ours was included in the excursion @ $59.00.

Returned to shop at the port stores before we departed. The shops at port were very convenient. The St. Thomas port is very nice and clean, enjoy it!

Martinique:

We opted to not do any of the limited Carnival sponsored excursions and make our way into town, with the notion that a Caribbean Island would be beautiful no matter where you are. WE WERE COMPLETELY WRONG. The Port was dirty and lacked the shopping areas that most ports have. Information desk was limited but we were greeted with live music. Shopping in Martinique was dreadful, prices are very high and US dollar conversion is difficult for many shop owners. The native language is French, so be prepared although we were able to communicate with most shop owners. We walked to downtown, even though a cab ride was $4 a person. You can ride in a Mercedes cab, which the only highlight. Shore excursions were limited, book early and get out of town to see the Island. You can take a cab downtown, and then take a ferry to the beach for an inexpensive excursion. The whole Martinique experience was not a good one for us, Carnival could have opted for St. Lucia or Curacao.

Barbados:

Wonderful experience. Take the Carnival sponsored Coast to Coast excursion in the morning. In the Afternoon, change and rent a scooter or buggy car and drive up the west coast road. Be aware that you will drive on the opposite side of the road than in the US, this is however an obstacle easily dealt with. Drive up to Mullins bay, for the afternoon in the early evening ride up to Cherry hill for a breath taking view. If you arrive around 5pm you may get to witness the Green monkeys playing. Stop by Tom Selleck’s multi million dollar home on the way back for photos. We highly recommend renting a scooter or other form of transportation to experience this Island. Us Dollars are widely accepted, and the exchange rate from US currency to Barbados currency is easily calculated. The Port is clean, and the shopping in the ports is average, much better than Martinique. The information desk is very informative, use these good folks for assistance and recommendations. Scooters are rented right outside of the terminal. Barbados was so much fun, it is an experience to enjoy. Try the local Ale, "Banks".

Aruba:

Did not make it to Aruba, see problems at the bottom of the review.

Redirected to St. Lucia:

Port at St. Lucia is very clean and we were lucky to dock in front of the shops. Some days they attempt to cram four ships in this port. Last boat in gets the bad docking location which may have changed my review. We opted for another inland informative tour, visited the Batik shops and Merigot bay. Merigot bay is a must, the original Dr. Doolittle was partially filmed in this bay. Enjoy the bay and the local lager, "Piton". I would recommend that you take this tour early, so that you can return to make snorkeling arrangements. We returned to change and hail a water taxi at $60 to take us snorkeling at our leisure. Well worth seeing this island from the water, very scenic. There main source of revenue, bananas is failing them. Tourism is now the #1 source of revenue. US dollars are widely accepted, ask for US currency in change when needed. Many of the St. Lucian’s have uniquely creative hobbies, spend a little money gathering some of these items... Banana Ketchup, bracelets! /anklets made from Turtle shells, bird houses made from coconuts. Beautiful port at night.

San Juan: Disembarking

We were VIP disembarkees, along with 1000 others. The immigration line was long, extremely long at 6am but moved quickly. Meeting in the palladium lounge at 8:30 to precede to customs is a long wait be prepared and wear comfortable shoes. We were lucky and customs choose not to inspect our luggage. Boarding the bus and traveling time from port to the airport was acceptable. Be ready for another line at the airlines! This was expected from us, so be advised of the waiting that you will encounter.

Cruise in general:

Dinner served well, tough to understand many of the waiters, we did not know our waiters name for most of the cruise. Menu selections change so try to make it to the dining room for dinner. We also found that the Sun and Sea restaurant on the lido deck to offer a good meat selection each evening. Breakfast should be received in the dining rooms, anywhere else your selections may not be as fresh. Visit the Sandwich shop and the Oriental shop, the food is excellent. Bars are ample, but watch your drinks. At the aft bar on the Lido deck, (I forget the name) we had to repeatedly ask for the bartender to add more alcohol to the drinks. Watch the daily specials and be reminded that the drinks are cheaper in the house glasses or cups. The Carnival take home plastic wear costs an additional $4 per drink AND IS NOT WORTH THE PRICE. This was not advertised until later in the cruise. Do not expect to swim, the salt water pools are busy with hurried kids from corner to corner. The whirl pools are of filthy bathwater. Go to the spa for a good whirlpool! Entertainment was OK, The cruise director, George, was very funny. Renaldo, the British girl, and the other guy were OK and did attempt to keep the activities interesting. The lead lady in the show was the worst, the dancers however made up for her terrible performance.

Bad encounters / Complaints:

Information desk: Forget it, avoid it at all costs. Call repeatedly from your stateroom phone if you need to speak with them. Do not expect them to be overly courteous, you will be disappointed.

Photos: Rude, pushy people await you at the photo gallery. I believe that it is do to the many different cultures on the ship and the lack of being courteous. Although it was an American lady who attempted to push my wife and I out of the way, she received a bruised toe after I accidentally stepped on it when she pushed me! Photo prices are not cheap be expected to pay, double check your photos to make sure that they do not have any imperfections. Ours did!.

Gift shops:

Only two registers, visit on off hours if necessary.

MY COMPLAINT ABOUT CARNIVAL:

The reason we did not make it to Aruba is that we experienced problems with the ship’s computers. What does this mean, this means as much as the top officers want you to know. Announcements were few and far between. On our way to Aruba from 7am till 3pm we were without power, no lights, no air conditioning, with limited amounts of food available. Basically some of the most important luxuries that you pay for! All fire exit doors were closed which increased the panic level. When you would turn on the TV, Fun Vision (the resident Carnival channel) would present you with a Microsoft Domain controller error, which basically meant the three computer systems could not communicate with each other. Anyway, I digress. When power did return around 3pm, George (Cruise director) made an announcement that we would be arriving in St. Lucia during the evening. St. Lucia...?? we were at the Sun and Sea restaurant when this announcement was made the place erupted in discontent with the sudden change in destinations without an explanation. To this point George was doing a good job in keeping order, after this message I turned to my wife and said that we are about to witness a commercial ship mutiny. Folks immediately rushed the information desk demanding an explanation and then ultimately a refund. George made another announcement about 4pm stating that they were aware of the change and would make the Captains hour for drinks complimentary. Free drinks was not compensation, they then made another announcement shortly after that a $50 refund would be posted to each persons account. Is this considered compensation, I think not. It was a gesture of good faith but not due compensation for what we paid for. Nevertheless, we took advantage of the free drinks and made good use of St. Lucia (see above ). My complaint is how they handled the announcements concerning our change of destinations. People were very bitter. so much that George was boo’ed on stage at the talent show! I felt sorry for him.

While in St. Lucia our shore times were limited to 7pm. This did not make any sense as we were scheduled to be in Aruba until late 10pm. Aruba is considerably further than St. Lucia from San Juan so why the early departure? This did not leave enough time to schedule afternoon excursions. So now we were without power for 8 hours, our trip to Aruba was cancelled, and we were being limited to just a few hours in St. Lucia. It did not make sense!! It will, I will explain further at the end. We arrived back to the boat after our shore excursion in St. Lucia hurrying as we thought we needed to because of the early departure. We changed into our swim wear to catch a water taxi, on our exiting the boat a small sign displayed the extension of our shore time in St. Lucia from 7pm to 10 or 11pm??. We were disappointed that this announcement was quite late!!

Why the initial shortened St Lucia visit? I believe that not all of the systems were in working order and a temporary fix was all that was in place. After all of the complaints of the shortened visit were received they had no choice but to extend the visit against their better judgment. I believe that they flew a Networking specialist into St. Lucia on that evening and this helped to extend our visit. We were passengers on a vessel not far from another breakdown.

The next day we basically idled to San Juan at 11knots, barely fast enough to experience a cool breeze on the deck. This could have been due to either the ship was still in a undetermined state or the captain decided to not to push the ship any harder than he had to.

We will be requesting just compensation.

Folks be aware that this has happened before to the Destiny, be aware that it could happen again.

Will we cruise with Carnival again? Only if Royal Caribbean is completely booked.