Carnival's Inspiration operates in a very special market: 3 or 4 night cruises from LosAngeles that especially locals patronize for reunions and birthdays: it gives the cruise line a great opportunity to be introduced to cruising, for folks who have never cruised, like many of the 32 family members on our cruise. But the Inspiration staff on this this 3 night cruise did just a terrible, terrible job on two areas that one finds on every cruise: service at eating venue on deck for things such as pizza, deli sandwiches, and other specialties.

Service at the pizza stations, deli stations, and mongolian BBQ were so bad as to give the impression that Carnival just didn't care: for example, often having one person on duty handling pizza orders, creating lines that just turned people away in droves, I heard many people say, it looks like they don't really want to serve food here. I have been a frequent cruiser and this was as contemptuous a treatment of travelers as I have ever seen in 25 years of cruising.

The other aspect where the staff failed on this cruise was debarcation, and again staff showed utter contempt in their treatment of passenger. Those passenger who elected to have their luggage off loaded where told to report to certgaikn areas on the ship, where they waited for hours to leave the ship. One of our families waited in a room with a large group of travelers for over two hours, and among their complaints was that there was no one in the room from the cruise line to help them or answer questions. Finally this one family did find a staff member, and when they told them they had been waiting more than 2 hours, the person said, well, then , just get in line and get off the ship, which is what they did! Our group, which elected to carry our own bags, were told to be ready to leave the ship at 8:00 AM, and we did leave by 8:15 AM, via lines that were not long. We were sitting in the our airport gate by 8:45. Read more