This is my first sailing on a Carnival ship. Booked the best cabin they had - U97 - Grand Suite with extended balcony. While the cabin was very large, it was hardly a "suite" as the sitting area/bed were in the same room. One big room is a ROOM, not a suite. NICE walk-in closet. They went through this renovation just 3.5 years ago but put the tiniest LCD TVs in the rooms. I could barely read text on the TV from the bed. You can get large LCD's for almost nothing!!!! The HVAC in the room was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Just 3 large vents in the ceiling with rotary nobs to turn open it or close it. Not a very "suite" experience.

The Bathroom was a HUGE disappointment. In any accommodation referred to as a "suite", one expects an upgraded bathroom. Not the case with Carnival. The tub/shower combination was small and pitted. The jets were absolutely gross. There was no way I was going to sit in water in that tub and let it run through the jet system with all of the fungus looking stuff on the jets. I did, however, run water in the tub (hot as I could get it) and run it through the jets. The water was GREEN. Not a pale green but GREEN and left a horrible water line on the tub. I did this twice throughout the trip and it was the same. I could barely shower after that but I just hoped the soap would kill anything in the water. Further, the panels above the shower were pitted with black mold growing. Gross.

The balcony, while very large, was not private at all. All that was available was a middle suite so I had people on each side and the privacy walls had huge openings in them between panels - one over 4 inches wide. Read more