I’ve been a huge Carnival fan for decades. I’ve been on more cruises than I can count beginning in the late 70’s as a teenager. I have Platinum status in the VIFP program and have sailed on just about every ship Carnival has offered out of Port Canaveral on the short Bahamas cruises. I have always found Carnival to be a bargain compared to the other lines sailing out of this port, and this cruise was no exception. This cruise on the Carnival Valor was the least positive experience I have ever had sailing. Giving my long-standing affection for Carnival, this is a difficult review to write.

Embarkation was an extremely lengthy process (despite being “Priority”) and was totally lacking in organization. This was explained as a computer glitch that required all disembarking passengers from the previous cruise to be manually cleared (i.e., sign and sale cards had to be checked against physical paper passenger manifests). Our cards could not be printed in the terminal and we had to be escorted aboard with a port supervisor. The cards were issued at the customer service desk aboard the ship, which took some additional time. Ultimately, boarding ran late and we departed well after we were scheduled to leave. Okay, I can attribute all of this to a computer issue and move on. Unfortunately, the issues just kept coming.

While I understand, and appreciate, the importance of the mandatory boat drill, this too lacked any organization. I believed the computer system issues may have slowed the identification of some passengers. I learned at the boat drill that the barcode on my card didn’t work. Having another card issued with another visit to customer service didn’t change anything. While fine for opening the door to the cabin and making charges, the card didn’t identify me and I had to be manually cleared whenever leaving or returning to the ship for the duration. Read more