This was my family's (husband, 11 year old son, and myself) first time to take a cruise, and we chose the Bahamas because my son wanted to do the water slides at Atlantis-which were fabulous. It is true what they say...a cruise is what you make of it. I use this phrase because what I had expected from our cruise, well, the reality did not line up with the expectations. Cruise commercials are truly all fluff and cotton candy. In all honestly, I found that I was forcing myself to have a good time. It was like I was trying hard to find positive things, from what was otherwise, a mediocre experience on board the ship. I enjoyed my time off the ship on our excursions a thousand times more than our actual experiences on the "fun" ship. Maybe if we had not run in to so many bumps along the ride, I might have a different opinion of our time spent on the Fascination. Let me back up and start with the bad:

Bump number 1: Carnival took it upon themselves to change our dining time to the early seating, when we booked our cruise for late seating. I even verbally spoke with a rep before the cruise about making sure that we got the late dinner time. This happened to another couple at our table as well. Needless to say, I was peeved, and when I went to inquire about the random bumping of our time, I was told by guest services that I would have to speak to the maitre d. Well, we did this, and he said that we would get a note if our time was changed. Yeah, right...what we got for several days was the runaround. Finally, we resigned ourselves with the knowledge that we would be eating at the early dining hour. It turned out okay in the end, although we felt a little rushed during our shore excursions to get back in enough time to get ready. But is this a common occurrence? Carnival randomly changing certain people's dinner time on a whim.

Bump number 2: Our steward. We never saw our steward the first day. We never saw ice in our ice bucket the first day until late at night when I was told, once again after chatting with guest services, that room service would send us up some. I can't tell you how many people told us before the cruise that Carnival stewards were the best about making sure that your ice bucket was filled up with ice all day. Our steward obviously didn't get that memo. If it was not for room service, we would not have had ice most of the cruise. Additionally, our steward waited until the last minute to give us our shore excursion passes. Of course, this was only after another little pow-wow with guest services. By this time, I'm sure that they dreaded to see me coming around the corner. One time I called for ice, and was told it would be 15 minutes. After those 15 minutes turned into an hour, my husband called again and finally we got our ice. Continuous frustrations like this with our steward led us to eventually ask for a refund on our prepaid gratuities. In fact, I, for one, didn't even know that our steward was a guy (I just assumed) until a few days into the ship. Read more