The advertising for this cruise showed a picture of Aruba with fireworks going off. The ad showed that the ship would be in port until 11:30pm meaning 12:30 am Aruba time, after all of the HUGE celebrations in the city. However, on the morning of December 31 they ship announces to all passengers one of those "we do apologize" messages that tried to tell us that the port suddenly made a decision to close the port in the evening and that we would have to leave by 8:30pm. They had to know this was decided long before the cruise when they were selling these tickets. And the cruise was VERY expensive being over the holidays. The best 2 ports of the cruise were essentially CLOSED and all we were left with was La Romana Dominican Republic (nothing worth seeing) and Grand Turk (boring). Love the NEW Guy's Burgers which was open anytime we needed during the afternoon. BUT I just saw that Carnival is now considering its closure at 2pm until the early evening. If they do this it would be after a very long 20 year slide in services we have noticed, as the cruise line corporate execs go cheap cheap cheap on all of its customers. Cuts every year we have noticed. So with this, there would be ONLY pizza and sandwiches available in the afternoon. No good.

These Nassau-based ships still allow smoking in casinos and in the disco where me and my friends often go. When will Carnival listen to the health warnings issued by the CDC and ban smoking except outside on the special Smoker's Serenity area? If that.

They must be failing to clear the ventilation systems because as careful as we were not eating in the buffet and being very careful, nearly every person in our 300+ group got sick with some sort of upper respiratory CRUD that lingered for WEEKS after we all got home. Something is wrong here. Read more