This was my 16 cruise on Carnival, second time on the Valor. I went Platinum three cruises ago. Each year my husband, brother and I take our families on a cruise, usually in February. This year I took 11 family members and we had 4 suites...and was so disappointed with what seems to be a continued lowering of Carnival's standards.

Specifically- my travel agent was very specific about connecting our 4 bookings, so that we could do things as a unit. So we were very surprised when we went down to dinner and discovered that 9 of us were at an upper level dinner table, and 3 were at a table on the lower level of the dining room. The waiter saw the look on my face, and I explained the situation. The assistant maitre d' came up, and said "Well, your travel agent must have made a mistake." I told her that I had made the reservations with the travel agent myself 9 months prior, and had kept all the documentation, and would be happy to show it to her, and that after 15 cruises, I was pretty confident in what I was doing. She shot me a look, left, came back and said that the following night we would all be seated together. Every night at dinner, we had to chase down the waiter to get water refilled and coffee, period. The dining room food just isn't as adventurous and delicious as it used to be. And the wonderful congo-line of waiters have decreased to 10 waitstaff half-heartedly moving their hips in place to some loud 1970's theme song.

Second- and more disgusting- for 4 days in a row, water backed up from the drain in the bathroom floor, not just in our suite, but in several suites down our corridor. In our case, we came in from an excursion to find an inch of water--when the floor was dry when we left the cabin. Our cabin steward called the engineering department and was told that , yes, water was backing up through the drain lines. Yuck!! That wasn't just water that we might have slopped out of the shower, but water or urine or other bodily fluids from any number of other staterooms!! Definitely unsanitary. Read more