We just came back from a cruise on the Carnival Sunshine out of Port Canaveral and I wanted to write this while everything that we endured was still fresh on my mind. We had read some good and some bad about this ship but decided to give it a chance anyway. We shouldn't have bothered. The ports were all OK but the ship was not. Adding more cabins and more people on board was not a good idea. We were upgraded to a Grand Suite from an Ocean Suite for a nice discount. Since we had not stayed in the larger suite we thought it would be a nicer experience. Well we found out that except for more square footage and a tiny sink in the walk-in dressing room vanity there wasn't a heck of a lot of difference in the room. The balcony is larger (longer) but the same depth. Same cheap uncomfortable metal chairs ( Princess has nice padded wooden furniture on their large suite balconies)...and yes, I know they are owned by Carnival too). The room was not cleaned well...rug had stuff on it like lint and small pieces of other stuff, tub had dirt around the drain, mirrors and glass doors/windows full of smudges, greasy smudge marks on doors and cabinets, dust on mirrors and wooden frames, bed pillows smelled like dirty heads, stains and dirt on throw pillows, When I approached the cabin steward he was somewhat apologetic and on my request did replace two of the bed pillows and gave us an extra blanket I had wanted. He washed out the tub but that was the extent of the cleaning that got done. The sheets were not changed on the bed the whole 7 days...I put some inconspicuous marks on them to check that. The bed itself was so hard I barely slept at night...it felt like a concrete slab.

The ship itself had a terrible layout and what I had read about it in other reviews were not untrue at all. The worst things we experienced were centered around the buffet arrangements. They had the main food stations located in the middle of the dining area and they were shaped in a square, which was not the best idea for a really crowded area to start with. Put that together with people that are very aggressive and impatient to eat and it spells a recipe for disaster. There was pushing, breaking into the lines, slobby people dropping food from the tongs all over the place, hogs that just couldn't stop piling food on their plates oblivious to those in back of them waiting for food, people eating off their plates with their hands while in line, and kids totally unsupervised grabbing food with their hands, dropping food all over, and darting in and out of line for something they "forgot". Then we have the partying people coming in straight from the pool in bathing suits and bare feet getting their food too. It took forever to get a plate of food from the buffet line to a table some days and when you finally did get to the table the food was cold and not fit to eat...not that the food was delicious or anything. I think the best thing they cooked the whole cruise was some mashed potatoes! Actually if I am being honest, the desserts were pretty good consistently but not the meats or vegetables. The pastas were OK most of the time too.

One of the problems I saw was some lazy staff who seemed to spend more time talking to coworkers than cleaning off tables for people who were waiting for tables. We have been on quite a few Carnival cruises and never experienced this phenomenon. Read more