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Carnival Cruise Line
Imagination Cruise Review
Western Caribbean

Maria Myrback
Age: 40
Occupation: Company Owner
Number of Cruises: 2
Sailing Date: January 24th, 2007

While I realize that I am relatively new to cruising, I will say up front that I will NEVER cruise on Carnival AGAIN! I'd rather be nailed into a wooden box and pushed off into the open seas than cruise that line again. If we won a cruise with that line, we'd give it so someone we didn't like, that's how bad it was.

I'll start with the good stuff, because there were a few positive things about the experience. First, the cabin was larger than on our previous cruise with Royal Caribbean. Our cabin steward was just one of the most precious men and tended to our every desire and whim. We got chocolates on the pillows every night with our turn-down service and the towel animals were absolutely adorable! The dinners in the main dinning room were wonderful! As someone who knows fine dinning, the food was definitely there. The dining room itself was another matter. I'll get to that later.

The buffets were mediocre at best and on par with Denny's. There was one line to have an omelets made and that was the SAME line as the breakfast buffet.

The big killer for this cruise was what we discovered was called the Noro virus, a highly contagious stomach flu-type virus that causes vomiting and diarrhea. My husband was struck down by that as were a good number of other people on the ship. We had the pleasure of carrying it home with us to our sons. After two plus weeks there are still the occasional sign of it cropping up in the family even though we have taken ALL the recommended precautions.

Aside from the disease (some poor woman caught a fungal infection from the hot tub), the decor looked to have been done by a blind man from Las Vegas. There was neon and mirrors everywhere. It was extremely tacky.

Finding our dinning room was a real challenge too. We had to go all the way to the back of the ship and then down some stairs. There was no other way to get there, which was a challenge for the disabled member of our party.

It also didn't help that English seemed to be a second language for a large portion of the ship's staff. We got misdirected three times while trying to find the bloody dining room. The aforementioned blind guy from Vegas had also hit up the dining room with red neon that FLASHED! My poor husband got a headache from the lights.

The layout of the dining room was also awful. We shared a booth with four other people and in order to get to it, we had to walk through the beverage service area to get to and from the booth each night.

The musical extravaganza shows looked like they were put on by high school drama students. The comedian was good though and we got a few laughs from his show.

The best things about the cruise was Key West and Playa del Carmen, both worth while destinations and great shopping! I advise you to take a plane to both.

AVOID CARNIVAL CRUISE LINES!! Unless of course you want to be sick.