This was my 11th cruise and my husband and children's 2nd, both of those 2 cruises were with Carnival. I booked this cruise in a 12 category suite over a year ago. It was to celebrate my husband's 50th birthday. I chose it for the itinerary. Which was just fabulous! We arrived in San Juan on the Friday before and stayed at the Embassy Suites near the airport. A gorgeous hotel, I highly recommend it. Free happy hour drinks and the most wonderful made to order FREE breakfast! We had a problem with our room not being ready when we arrived at 3:30 pm, but they were very nice about it, on the Sunday after the cruise we stayed there also, our room was not ready, they bought us lunch, very nice treatment stay there if you have the chance! On March 4th we arrived at the port at 12:30, since we were VIP due to our suite, we were escorted to a lounge. With only enough space for 6 people to sit. Not what I would call a lounge. We were let on the ship a few minutes ahead of the other passengers, all went smoothly for everyone. We arrived in our Suite and it wasn't ready so we went up to the Lido deck, following a couple, awaiting us were waiters with trays full of yummy looking drinks, as we walked through the door, they handed the couple in front of us a drink.
They thanked them and kept walking, the waiter had to chase them down to pay, they were so confused thinking that since they handed them a drink saying Welcome aboard, that it was complimentary. We of course knew better, but truly, they should not do that! After an hour or so we returned to our cabin to find our luggage was already there. As we unpacked we started noticing problems with our suite, the plugs were all pushed in so that we couldn't plug anything in, there were not plugs by the bed and since my husband needs a CPAP machine to sleep, it was a bit of a problem. I asked our cabin steward and he told me to go to the Purser's office to borrow an extension cord. I did and they charged me a $25 deposit. Now, imagine this, to plug this machine in, the cord would have to cross the entire suite or cross the bathroom door. I could see a lawsuit flashing before my eyes as I kill myself trying to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. We turned the TV on to find that the cable in the back had exposed wires and of course we could not get a picture, within the first hour of our arrival we had and electrician, TV repair man and the department head in our room. Then to my even greater surprise, I took a shower to step our into ankle deep water. While I was in the shower, my husband left to check on the kid's room across the hall, to find the AC non-existent in their room.
He called for service on that, but the spent the entire cruise with no AC. As he tried to enter our room, his key did not work, again back to the purser’s office for a key repair. When I booked the cruise in April of 2006, I requested a table of 8, we like to meet people. When we arrived in the dining room the second night (1st night is open sitting), we had a table for 6 with no one in the other 2 chairs and it was just inside the dining room giving us a perfect view of the rest rooms! I went to the Maitre’D and of course was a huge bother to him, I told him we would stay where we were that night but if he could do something for the next night I would appreciate it. He snapped, “If I’m going to do something it will be now!” He pointed to a table for 10 right in the front of the dining room and said “take that”. The waiter started to move our drinks and then the MaitreD’ said “no forget it stay there and I will do something tomorrow”. We never got our drinks back! By this time my husband was so upset that he left before his meal came. What a nightmare!! Shortly after dinner an announcement was made that the ship had turned around to head back to St Thomas due to a medical emergency. We were due to arrive in Dominica at 10am, we had booked a private tour. I went to the purser’s office to ask if we were going to make it to Dominica because I had booked this tour. She asked me if it was through Carnival and I answered no, then she told me there was nothing she could do. I said, I am not asking you to do anything I am asking if you knew if we were going to make it there or not. She replied, “Did you expect the captain to let this person die?” Ok, now I lost it, I never said anything of the sort and of course I would expect the Captain to turn around, but enough now, we have had many problems. I then informed her of all of them. I was not happy, when I explained that I had booked this cruise for my husband’s 50th and so much had gone wrong, she turned around and then seemed to bend over backwards to help. She came to our cabin at 8am the next morning, even though she was not on duty. She saw all the problems and this cable crossing the room, she got things moving quickly to start repairs. That evening at dinner, she, her name is Janeth by the way, came to our table (the new table she arranged for us) to make sure it was to our liking along with that brought us a bottle of my favorite wine and 4 drink coupons for our kids. Janeth called us every morning to see if all was fine, which usually wasn’t but not due to her lacking of trying…we had yet a second flood in our bathroom and plugs pushing in to walls every time we plugged something in. Janeth also sent my husband a bottle of champagne to wish him a happy birthday. The ship is not in good shape at all, even though they do try. The suites were supposed to have been renovated on last dry dock, but the whirlpool bathtub was chipped and stained I would not use it, it was not even a thrill to use it as a shower (I wore flip flops), the soap dishes were rusted and ugly, very disappointed in the state of the suite. Our cabin steward Lauro was also great and so was Alexander our waiter. The staff and service people were exceptional and tried very hard to make things up to us. However, after paying for a suite and to find my kids inside cabin to be superior in condition (with the exception of no AC), we were very disappointed!