I don't generally write a lot of reviews, but felt the need to weigh in on the Sunshine. First, let me tell you that I can always have fun on a cruise. For the most part, the crew was very good and we had wonderful service from some of the staff. However, I do want to speak to a few of the running themes I have seen so far.

First, the Sunshine "remake" as a whole is OK. Its nice to have the 2.0 features, but the ship did feel overcrowded in some areas because of the addition of rooms and reduction of space to accommodate. The "chopped" up feel was evident and I think the chopped up feel left the Red Frog Pub and Havana bar as usually empty less frequented areas. I did think the Waterworks was done well, and the main pool deck had a pretty good use of space. The Serenity facing inward toward the big screen added additional space but probably wasn't particularly serene for anyone not grabbing a chair on the back side of the deck.

Food and Food Service: Mediocre. We've sailed many times and I don't expect gourmet food on a Carnival ship, but we had very poor service in the MDR at the 6PM sitting, enough that they changed wait staff on us when we finally had to say something 3 days in after nearly 2 hours waiting for our entrees one night--and then having the dining team rush us because they had to get ready for the 8:15 seating. Past that, the food was often the wrong temp even though we were "conveniently" located at the revolving doors. A good serving team makes everything feel effortless and easy--they work very hard to do that...but it just didn't click this time. We at at Fahrenheit 555 and thought it was OK. Cut of the steaks was fine, but for some reason the food lacked the usual flavor we come to expect. We also tried the sushi restaurant and it was not up to par with our experience on the Breeze (even then, if you are a big sushi fan, this isn't going to wow you). Read more