First off, let me say that overall I'm pretty happy with our family cruise, though I do think that the service you get on board is deteriorating a bit with the automatic gratuity charge up front before you cruise. Not very many at all, but there are those few that don't seem to make the effort that there used to be, which brings down the quality as a whole. At least for us with our dining room experiences lately. Though our head waiter did do a top notch job, and also our cabin steward and bar waiter went above and beyond, with their always couldn't be friendlier and happier attitudes.

Unfortunately the cruise ended on a sour note, which didn't have to be that way. Upon debarkation we had some luggage lost. No big deal, we've all been there at one point or another. It didn't become a problem until we had to deal with the Carnival representatives with an issue. Now that we were off the ship they couldn't be bothered with anything so trivial as lost luggage. Our payment had cleared so it was all of a sudden "not my department" move along and don't bother us. Even the Cruise Director wouldn't have anything to do with assisting us. He was to busy laughing with his friends at another cruisers suitcase that had broken in half and the fellow cruiser was angrily kicking it across the terminal when Carnival again would do nothing. Okay, the kicking part was funny, but come on guys, it would have taken very little effort to make things right.

Virtually all the help we got was from the Port of Miami representatives, which put the Carnival reps to shame. Read more