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Ship was fine, liked the décor on this one in the main areas, food was blah. Ports were nice.

Melbourne

We took the nude cruise, and it was the first cruise of any kind we had ever taken. I’m very active in the nudist community, and meeting so many of the people I had previously spoken to only online was amazing.  Bare Necessities Tour and Travel chartered the cruise and did an amazing job. We were going to do just this one cruise, but we wound up signing up for next year’s Big Nude Boat.  As far as the ship and crew, I have no complaints.  We only ate at the buffets since we would have had to wear clothes at the formal restaurants.  We can’t wait for next year’s cruise (which will be on a different cruise line, so maybe then we’ll have something to compare this year’s experience to).  We made three stops, Costa Maya, Roatan, and Cozumel, and we did nude beach excursions at the last two stops (I visited Mayan ruins at the first one).

Fantastic Experience 

Me and my wife took this cruise to celebrate our anniversary and the dates worked out great for our schedules.  This is our third trip on a Carnival ship and enjoyed our prior trips.  We were actually a little disappointed on this one.

Staff:  The staff was kind and friendly with the both of us.  Grace in the Red Frog Pub was friendly and met you with a smile.  No issues with any of the staff on the ship.  They were very friendly with the both of us.

Restaurants:  The main restaurant food was not as good as it used to be.  We were rather disappointed in the food.  The choices were not as good on this trip.  Guys burgers were OK and the buffet was a hit or miss.  The 555 steakhouse was amazing.  The staff were excellent and the food we had was outstanding.  Decided to do the Chef’s table and it was very good.  The Chef and staff did an awesome job and they were very friendly.

Entertainment:  We attended two musical shows and they were great.  Went to the comedy club twice.  The first comedian we saw was OK and I was not impressed.  Attended a second one and he was at least decent and did have some good laughs.  Other than that we just attended a few trivia and karaoke sessions in the Red Frog Pub.  The staff members who hosted those events were awesome.  80’s party on the Lido dog was good.  A few of the other things we attended were good.

Pools/hot tubs/sports works:  Didn’t spend too much time in the pools but did soak my feet.  They were cold and the wind coming across the deck made it too cold to swim for my liking.  Did go into the hot tub for a little and let’s just say it was just a little warmer than the pool.  Sports works was closed a majority of the time for passenger safety.

Excursions:  We decided to do three excursions.  The first excursion was cancelled and we didn’t know it until we got off the boat.  We had to pick something else it was a great disappointment.  Only one that we enjoyed was the 4X4 excursion to Mayan ruins.

Over all it was a nice trip to get away.  We decided to get a room with a balcony it was nice to be able to go out and enjoy the sounds of the ocean without hearing the crowed around us.  Compared to our last cruise this was a little bit of a disappointment.  Our last cruise director did an awesome job and made our trip interesting.  This trip it was not as entertaining.  It seemed like the only thing to do on the ship was drink, eat, shop, and gamble your money away.  We are going to start trying other cruise lines.

Was an OK trip

It is always good to be a sea.  Here are a few things I wish I knew on this cruise.  

PARKING.  Its been a few years (and maybe 40 cruises ago) we sailed out of Tampa.  Thankfully we were close enough to drive.  Frankly it is a bit confusing because the lots near the ship are not ship parking, they are for the aquarium.   Do not attempt to park near the ship.  The ship parking is a 4 story structure a block or so from the ship.  There is a cheaper out door lot but you leave your keys your whole cruise with the people running it, and I did not feel comfortable with that.

This year we were on MSC, NCL, and Virgin.  WiFi calling and texting on Verizon worked perfectly on Verizon.  Not on this ship.  WiFi Calling and texting were blocked.  This was frustrating because to afford all these cruises I do have to be reachable.  I tried setting up a VPN and still nothing.  So thankfully for outgoing calls I have a VoIP app (GoTo) from one of my businesses and had to download another messaging app to text.  We made it work, but it took time to figure out and was frustrating.  I know most people go on vacation to get away from the phone, but I am not able to.  I would say the internet seemed good (as far as speed, jitter, and packet loss) for most things people would do.  I tried to get help from both the customer service and Pixel staff (their IT dept) and all they could do help confirm I was online.  We even hotspotted to my wife's iPhone (I have an Android) and her texting worked but not wifi calling.  If their staff would just say yes, you have the internet, it is working, but unlike other cruise lines, our routers or service does block some services or apps.  

Food is subjective but I found it good.  My bathroom scales say I thought the food was really good.  No need to spend extra on a nice restaurant when good food is included and you can spend that $50 or $100 on a nice place when you get home.  I do like how on the free app you can see what the menus are (most ships do that now, in the old days we would go and look at the menu on the wall during the day which helped us determine how big of lunch we wanted).  

The shows were good, but again subjective.  We had some rough weather and they could not fully perform, but a few great voices.

The band Boardwalk had a great variety of music for their demographic.  We really enjoyed them.  They knew what alot of their passengers wanted to hear in my opinion.  Be aware that like many so-called bands of today, they just have a drummer and sing to a sound track and fake playing the instruments.  Sorry to reveal that, even so, the songs kept the crowd happy including me.

Even though the ship was recently refurbished, the standard balcony bathroom still had the old green sink.  Oh well, I would take a balcony at sea over a regular hotel room any day.

And the green slide was a must.  Did that while the ship was in the Panama Canal.  Unlike anything I have seen at sea.

Internet Issues- OKAY Cruise

Saint-Tropez

The menu was terrible.  Repeat dishes on multiple nights.  Service was terrible.  Had to ask cabin steward to clean mirrors not cleaned between cruises.  Found bed last night with comforter pulled up and straightened but bed had not actually been made up.  Had a tremendously rude head server in the dining room.  Quote when she first came to the table we asked how are you she said "extremely busy" and 15 minutes later said " oh, she has not taken your order, are you in hurry?"  Food preparation in dining room and menu selections were the worst of any carnival cruise I have been on.  Their choice of cookies for the kids were sugar and chocolate with no variation for the entire 10 day cruise.  Staff was always hurried.  I was cut in front of so many times by staff up on the Lido deck it was ridiculous.  Cleaning cabins 1 time per day as a cut back.  For what?  They were in a hurry all the time and never saw steward working anywhere else.  Many of the excursions people were complaining about.  One particular excursion had at least 25 people in line at the excursion desk complaining.  I will say for us even the easy excursions were a lot of walking for elderly people.

Worst of the Carnival Ships

We chose this cruise due to itinerary. 

Boarding the ship in Rome was seamless and we were on board really quickly. 

Stateroom:

Our first impression it was dated but functional however when we returned later that night to discover it was freezing cold and was told while there is a thermostat on the wall it doesn’t work and we had no control over the room temperature! I was freezing and seemed to spend first three days complaining and literally gave up as felt getting no where! I ended up sitting on balcony most of time as it was warmer!! 

Entertainment 

Our party found this to be very poor the production shows were underwhelming. We are all from Europe and so acknowledge most of the guests are from USA we felt cruise director made a point or interacting with guests from USA only even though we did try to talk to them on a few occasions! The only place we found the entertainment was good was red frog pub and band there were so nice and really good with us. 

Food

The food was not good in either the buffet or

Main dining room. The beef was so tough and you know it’s bad when the waiter advised us not to order it!! The food was tasteless and not much choice at the buffet. We had breakfast one morning in MDR and my eggs were overcooked & they had no breakfast tea bags!  We didn’t starve but none of us enjoyed our food. 

We have sailed carnival before numerous times and were happy with the overall experience but this time sadly we felt let down and while I do appreciate corners have been cut since covid but it was so evident in all areas. 

These cruises are not cheap and really feel carnival need to up their game and staff these shops properly and make sure they have enough stock I.e tea bags!!

Europe Cruise

Overall, this cruise had it's Pros and Cons

The pro's included an excellent specialty steakhouse restaurant called Farenheight 555. Of course Guy's Hamburgers are always good. Our room attendant was excellent, and most of the staff were very friendly. We also enjoyed some trivia games and "Deal or No Deal." The Fitness center was the finest I have ever sceen on a Cruise ship. Overall the ship was kept clean.

We loved most of the tours, but we were especially blessed to visit Kusadisi (Ephesus) Turkey, Ancient Corinth and the Corinth Canal from Athens'  These sites were all amazing in their History, Archaeological process and relgious enrichment. Messina (Taormina) Sicilly had fantastic views and unbelievable pizza. Viewing Naples (Pompei) Italy took one place off of my wife's bucket list. Finally, we enjoyed sitting on the balcony and enjoying beautifull scenery and beautifull weather.  

The Con's included average shows and average food at the ships Buffet's. We went to play table shuffleboard and fuseball in the Red Frog bar and there was no sand on the shuffleboard table and my friend cut his finger on the broken fuseball rod. The motif was a little dark for our tastes. Some of the tour guides English was very weak. As long as it is your job, you probably should polish up your pronunciation.     

At Santorini, I witnessed how carnival cruise lines, celebrity cruise lines, princess cruise lines and one other smaller cruise line, combined with tour companies and the island people to clearly endanger the health and safety of the passengers. In the morning thousands of guests were tendered from the moored ships to the dock on the island. From there, the overwelming majority boarded large tour busses for various tours which all ended at the top of the large hill. The elevation of the hill is 1854 feet. That figure is 146 feet short of what is generally called a mountain. The tour busses were not scheduled to meet the passengers later at the top of the hill to bring them back down to the port. This left thousands of guests with three options to get down. Firstly, they could wait in a 2 to 2 1/2 hour line to get on one of (6) six cable cars with a maximum capacity of (6) six people. Please keep in mind that it was 92 degrees, there was no shade, no signs, and I witnessed many people, especially the elderly, really struggling. I heard commotions of people arguing further ahead in the line where people were accusing others of butting. There was talk of a set of stairs but everyone in line did not no where it was. At the stair walkway people could either walk down or get a donkey ride. I witnesseda a donkey hit into an elderly man who barely kept his balance. I was told by others passengers that the walkway was full of donkey pee and dodo making it very slippery. I was told that there were several injured passengers from the walkway. There is plenty of blame to go arround on this one. Many people that I spoke to said that they believe it is planned to increase sales in the shops. I highly recommend that you do not buy an excursion at Santorini until you can have complete confidence that significant change has occurred. When I returned to my ship, the Carnival Pride, I strongly but politely voiced my compaint to our cruise director. He was immediately defensive, offered no appology, and said he was completley powerless to make any change. Later, that afternoon i spoke to the hotel director. He offered an appology, stated that the company was aware that there was a problem and said that the company was going to act. He was extremely professional.

*** Safety Alert***

Dublin

Unfortunately food has to be great, with most days, 3 meals a day on board they have to get it right.

Carnival Pride, Iceland Trip, August 20, 2023, have failed miserably.

This is our 9th Carnival cruise, another booked for December and our 18th cruise overall.

We have not encountered worse food, and guests everywhere complaining.

Doesn’t seem to matter what food it is, complaints abound.

Undercooked ham, unbelievably salty bacon, stale pastries, curdled milk, very small variety,  cold undercooked, and tough steak, undercooked potatoes,  tough lamb, strange flavoured rice, the list goes on.

In addition the wait for the restaurant has been up to 1 hour, even though there are dozens of empty tables. Possibly because of understaffing as confirmed by an employee. It took a day and a half to meet our cabin attendant, and that was after a phone call.

Other cruises normally within hours. Some bars not open, no drink service except in main restaurants, tables not cleaned very quickly in buffet, several times we have had previous guests dishes left and we had to move them, once again understaffed.

To hygiene, prior to Covid everyone had to sanitise hands going into restaurants, during Covid when cruising returned really strict measures, on this cruise nothing at all. We noticed similar in February  on the Panorama.

Ports of call , first port Dublin was by Tender, 2 hour plus wait to get off, not good enough when we had to be back on board by 4.45 pm, then a 15 minute plus walk and wait to get train tickets then a 25 minute train trip into the city centre, had about a 1 hour wait from lining up to getting back on board. Shorten the call time to about 4 hours.

No real reason why as the next port is only 100  or so miles away.

Very disappointing, when food and ports are important parts of the trip.

Very poor quality food, understaffed and no hygiene. Understaffed.

This was our first time on a Carnival cruise -and it was our last time. Never again. We have been on many other cruises. This one had no decent shows, overpriced excursions that were a complete waste of time and money, and everything was so unorganized! 

The photos taken by the professional photographers were very poor quality and extremely dark. 

When we got on the ship I went to book an appointment to get my hair done for the first elegant night but there were no appointments which ruined our plans being able to dress up  and have photos done as I couldn’t get my hair done. 

They don’t offer decent photo packages. I ended up paying $1200 for the photos we chose which were not that great anyway but there was no other choice and I do photo editing myself so I got the digital copies too to edit them myself and just binned the rubbish quality paper copies. Other ships offer much better photo packages. This is important for us as a family as having nice photos is an important part of our cruise vacation.

The most annoying thing was that we paid a lot of money to book this cruise from UK but then found out other people had paid a lot less from America. Even when we told one of the staff we were not happy with carnival he said “you get what you pay for” which infuriated us! No! because we paid full price like any other cruise but ended up with people who had paid less than half what we had paid. So we will never go on Carnival again.. And I never knew about this website otherwise I would have reviewed all the other cruises we have been on over the years at the time!! Never mind.

Never saw a soft drinks list - so for 2 weeks my kids and I ordered Shirley Temple as we didn’t know any other drinks - how hard is it to have a menu to show all the drinks offered on the wall or anywhere in the restaurant?

Rubbish ridiculous shows by performers who are not very good - poor quality performance 

1st Aug 2023 arrived in Dublin - the day turned into holiday from hell as we had to get onto little boats to get to shore (tenders)- the sea was rough - our boat halfway to shore broke down - no information was given - my two young kids were traumatized as we were stranded in sea on a little boat and it was rough and then turned around and went back to the ship instead of getting us to land for our excursion. Then got onto another one again. A 3 hour excursion turned into over 8 hours of hell. On the way back we had to queue for 1.5 hours as they did not have enough boats which led to us missing our 6pm dinner booked with cake for my husband’s birthday. 

Then the most shocking part of our holiday was when I went to guest services to complain about what had happened. The guy at Guest Services was unbelievably rude and just shrugged his shoulders and instead of apologizing said “so what these things happen” and completely dismissed anything I said about our experience and us missing my husband’s birthday dinner etc…. How can an employee at guest services be so rude? Because of this rude person we will never travel with Carnival again. Disgusting attitude. You wouldn’t even be this rude in an argument with someone let alone at Guest Services. There was no need for that attitude at all. Even if he was just having a bad day it’s still no excuse for such disgusting attitude. Then I told him I wanted to make a complaint and he said he had noted my complaint on the computer to management. Next day I went to Guest Services again and checked with someone else and there was no record of my complaint at all. So he had obviously covered up and never put my complaint through. We cannot travel with a cruise line that hires such dishonest people.

Friday 4th Aug 2023: we went on an excursion: Panoramic Reykjavik. A 2.5 hour excursion at extortionate price - the tour lasted 2 hours instead of 2.5 hours (10am-12pm) - 45 minutes of it we were dropped off at the central building where you have panoramic views of the city. It’s just unbelievable how much of a rip off this tour was for a family of 6!!! Money we will never get back again. After finishing the cruise you get logged out of your account so there is no way to leave reviews for these excursions that’s why you don’t see any reviews for these excursions. We couldn’t leave a review whilst on the ship as we had not paid for internet.

Another thing we were not happy about was how short the time was for lunch on the ship so during the 2 hours of lunch it was impossible to get a table and then lunch was finished and then the only other food option was the Deli and pizza (we hate pizza). Why couldn’t they extend buffet time so that those who couldn’t find a table didn’t go hungry or left with just the option of pizza and Deli?

However, apart from the rude guy at Guest Services, I would like to mention that all other staff were very nice and polite and helpful. A lady called Sweety at Guest Services was amazing. Our room attendant Elna was great who provided everything during our stay. The kids club was great and my kids had a brilliant time every day. Loved the swimming pool and even the lifeguards were amazing and very friendly. Delroy in the restaurant on level 9 was very helpful with my mum and took the time to talk to her and help her.

Our First and last Carnival Cruise - have done many other cruises before

We initially chose this cruise due to the price combined with the itinerary. I really didn’t want to add another cruise this year because we have traveled quite a bit and we have more on the books, but this seemed too good to pass up. We really enjoyed this ship. It is beautiful and just the right size to our thinking.

The itinerary was ideal, but there were three tinder ports, and Dublin, for instance, had such rough waters that day that we didn’t risk it since we have been there before, and we didn’t have an excursion planned. We found a band we loved in the Red frog pub. A Chilean band that called themselves “The Hits” and we enjoyed comedians a couple of nights. We only saw one production show, and it was pretty formulaic, and actually the voices of our singing waiters in the main dining room were better than the cast singers.

Unfortunately, our one booked shore excursion was canceled for lack of sign ups. That was in Reykjavík, where we wanted to see the tectonic plates and the geysers and Falls so we got on the hop on hop off bus instead-not something I would recommend. We also had a reservation in the evening for the Blue Lagoon and that was wonderful. Not to be missed—well done and worth the price.

We felt the ship was very clean. We loved the steakhouse and the steakhouse bar. We did the chef‘s table and it was very good and a fun evening. We enjoyed the food in the main dining room, with the exception of the beef, which was tough. We really like guys burgers, but the beef they had picked up had a different taste to it. Still good though. The pizza was good until the last couple of days where they started using a pepperoni product that I’m unfamiliar with, and it wasn’t the same. People complained a lot about the Buffet, but the few items we tried from there we were very happy with. The fruit was wonderful. Very fresh. We have been on a few carnival cruises to Mexico, and have always enjoyed the breakfast burritos from the blue iguana Bartley were awful on the ship. A different interpretation. We have been on a few carnival cruises to Mexico, and have always enjoyed the breakfast burritos from the blue iguana but they were awful on this ship. A different interpretation and just not the same.

Excellent Value

The ports of call were incredible. We especially loved Tallinn, Estonia. The ship was ok. We enjoyed the main restaurant. The entertainment was not really for us and we found it to be all too repetitive for a 12 day sailing. Only about six movies made it into the dive-in movies lineup. They were mostly superhero films which we were not interested in. The movies in the rooms were also pretty unwatchable. We often found ourselves counting down the seconds until we could get back off the boat. Again, the ports were incredible and we looked forward to every one, however we also got very sick of the onboard lifestyle. This was compounded when the ship experienced a “technical issue” and the Gothenburg stop was canceled. We were refunded our $40 port fee and given some onboard credit which was fine, however information was extremely scarce coming from Carnival and occasionally contradictory. Ultimately, we were docked back in Kiel, Germany and held on board for an extra day. We had planned to stay at a very nice hotel in Battle, UK and to tour the Hastings battlefield the day after the cruise. This has been a bucket list destination for me for over a decade and was a major reason for traveling through Dover. However, we were told that we would not be able to make it back to England in time to do so. We have so far not been given any concrete information as to when we will be able to make it back to the UK and it appears that all of our plans for hotels, tours, and to meet with our family living near London will possibly be canceled without any word on compensation or refunds. We were told today that we could attempt to book our own travel back to London but only told that we would “probably” be reimbursed by Carnival. This was my first cruise. It is most likely my last. Carnival has been a major disappointment unfortunately.

Ship broke down, very poorly handled, missing the next leg of our trip

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