First let me say I love cruising and I love Carnival. Just not this ship. I have been on 8 cruises with Carnival ( I have also cruised on other lines). I have always enjoyed my cruises on Carnival, but this ship was a disappointment. I read that it had been refurbished, so I expected it to look good. NOT. The carpet in the hallway outside our cabin and other ares had been very poorly patched (looked like a quilt). Big gaps where it was stitched ( big enough to catch the heel of a woman's shoe) and the old carpet looked very frayed and dirty next to the various new patches. The ship was clean, but showing it's age and lots of visible rust in outside areas (like the Lido deck). Poorly Mainted (two central elevators NEVER wored the entire cruise, and another creaked alarmed and screetched if you dared ride it). Also the crew overall seemed very apathetic. Very hard to find a bar waiter unlike on other cruises. We joked that it must be a training ship since the crew was so unskilled and unfriendly, but turns out this was their last cruise before switching so maybe they were just burned out. We even ran into a woman in the ships store the second night that was flat out rude and nasty. We asked if she had any more of a type of rum we were looking for and she nearly bit our head off.
Their were good aspects to the cruise. As I said, the ship was clean, but the menu seemed to have been downgraded from previous cruises, particularly in the dining room. Lots of chicken and fish. More like a roadside diner than Carnival. Our wait staff must have just got moved up to passenger dining as their English was worse than normal and the waiter in particular was very akward and nervous. Good luck getting a cocktail. We only saw the bar waiter one night and when he brought me a Guiness, he not only didn't try to pour it as they always have in the past, he didn't even bother open it. Just sat it on the table and walked away. The other nights he never even came around. It wasn't due to being too busy as the dining room was at least half empty on the busiest night.
The show in palladium the first night was poor and very short. Looked like a cheesy comercial for carnival and lasted about 15 minutes. The other two night the shows were much better. The crusie director ( who the captain clams is number 1 in the Carnival fleet was mostly invisible). We saw her a couple of times, and a few of the things happening around the ship eventually shoed on the cabin TV, but she was far less involved than other cruise directors we have sailed with. It just seemed to be a very disinterested crew altogether. Most of them just seemed to be going through the motions and could have cared less if we all vanished. Our cabin steward wa another ghost and not in a good way. He did bring a chair to our cabin the first day after we request a replacement for the one we were missing, but it looked like it had been dug out of some crew storage locker. Ripped, burned and stained, but then it matched the ripped wall covering and stianed shoeer tiles in our cabin. One night our cabin was never cleaned, and we only got two towel animals. The one from the second night sat forelornely in the chair for the rest of the cruise. There were exceptions in the staff. We had an amazing hostess in the dining room and the paladium waitress remembered our name and drink order after the very first one. I don't want any to be turned off to Carnival. We did still have a good time and the port calls were fine. If I had never been on a Carnival cruise before I might not have noticed most of these things. But if you know Carnival and have cruised with them before as I have I would recommend avoiding this ship. You can have more fun on another.
