My wife and I have been frequent Carnival cruisers for many years. We have reached Platinum status and nearly diamond. You have to do a lot of sailing to get there so we are obviously fans of Carnival. This was our first cruise on the Sunshine and we were disappointed beyond belief from the minute we entered our stateroom. I was shocked to discover there was no refrigerator, no chair to sit in, no bedside tables and no control over the temperature. For $1700 I expected more. My Time Dining was a joke. We had to wait an average of 1 hour most nights to get a table. We could clearly see dozens of empty tables that were unbussed. When seated, it took way too long to get our food. After a few days of this it became clear what the problem was. They simply did not have enough staff members. The employees they had were friendly and very efficient but they were working their fingers to the bone and still could not handle the workload.

I would rather pay more for my cruise and have a pleasant experience (although $1700 should be enough considering we had an interior cabin with practically no furniture other than a bed)! We have another cruise scheduled on the Freedom next month. We have sailed on the Freedom many times and it was always great. But it is in dry dock right now being refurbished. If the "new" Freedom turns out line the Sunshine, we will never cruise with Carnival again.