This was my first Carnival cruise. It wasn't bad but I was not impressed really. The staff wasn't overly friendly except for one of the bartenders in the Red & Black lounge. I never met my cabin steward - room was taken care of and we left a note when we needed anything but I don't even know what the stewards name was. I had an aft balcony and one day someone left a room service tray in front of my door - we had not ordered room service. The tray was there until the next morning. I liked the idea of the different entertainment venues but unless you got there an hour early you could not see the comedy shows. The nightclub was packed very tightly, permitted smoking and had very poor ventilation so we couldn't stay in there - and we love to dance. One night we went up to the hot tubs. They should have been called the lukewarm tubs.

The food was good. The buffet was chaos unless you knew to go to the far back area which no one seemed to find. The anytime dining was great for us. We had different servers each night and the service was good but only one night was the server even remotely friendly. And the drink waiters with the shots were sometimes just rude. I had the warm chocolate melting cake the first night & it was very bitter. Decided to try it again and had much better results.

The casino was shady. Card games with one deck that were hand shuffled? Never saw this ever anywhere. The first two nights, nobody lost. At three card poker I saw three of a kinds dealt to three separate players in the same hand. Even roulette - as long as you tipped you won. After the first two nights, nobody won anything. On Roulette, the dealer(?) actually sped the wheel up and then slowed it down. How does that work? I thought the speed of the wheel was a constant regulated thing. Read more