We have been Carnival fans for quite some time... telling everyone who asks that Carnival is the way to go. In the past, we had GREAT service on Carnival. Which is why we were so incredibly disappointed that Carnival is cutting staffing by working on some sort of corporate algorithm of maximizing profits while minimizing staffing/service. The ship itself is beautiful. But it was so incredibly understaffed. Our cabin steward went from having 20 cabins to 36 overnight. And they are now asking guests when they would like cabin servicing - morning or night (not both anymore). They also don't have chocolates on the pillows anymore. But this decreasing level of service extended far beyond the cabin steward (who was a really nice guy)... it went to ALL staff. It used to be Carnival staff members were always smiling and happy. This cruise, not so much. They were running their tails off. There was a wait (with buzzers)... sometimes an hour or longer to get into the anytime dining room in the evening. Then, once you got in, dinner took at least an hour and a half because of the reduced staff of wait staff and (probably) reduced kitchen staff. It used to be they had a water person, now they put water pitchers on the table and often don't refill them (so you're trying to flag down one of the few waiters around to refill your water glass). It takes foreeevvver between courses and many people left before desert and sometimes main courses because they hadn't planned to invest 3 hours into dinner (between the wait and the dinner itself) and planned to check out the entertainment. On that note, the entertainment was pretty good. The comedy shows were nice (a little short, though... why not 45 minutes instead of 30 minutes, when they only tell jokes for 20 minutes of that?) The theater activities were also nice. Excursions were messed up, though, too... we booked the turtle excursion in Cozumel in advance of the cruise, we got the tickets for it in our room the first night, and then a piece of paper was slid under our door saying it'd been canceled. When inquiring, we were told the govt shut down that site weeks prior. Why couldn't they have informed us in advance? And... why give us the tickets? Then, we didn't even dock at Costa Maya. We were approaching the dock, then all of a sudden did a U-turn and the captain said it was too high of wind/waves. The communication was terrible - why didn't they let us know in advance that they were going to try to make it into port, but the weather might not cooperate? Very odd. And the waves didn't look all that high or rough at that particular spot. Quite disappointing. Then, to top off the disappointing cruise, they knew fog was coming into Port Canaveral, but they just poked along out in the ocean (when they could have docked BEFORE the fog came in... but they probably didn't want to pay the extra dockage fees or extra in gas to get there sooner). By the time we got into port, there were thousands of people trying to get off the boat, and they had ZERO coordination to get people off according to their zones. They just allowed a free-for-all. Those people who listened to the announcements (which basically said the same thing over and over again - don't come down to deck 3, we'll have more info) and waited were screwed by the masses of people who lined up. Then, when we finally got off, after standing in line for hours (with ZERO water offered to customers by Carnival), they had ONE security guard at the door doing the bloop-bloop scans of the cards. ONE. We missed our 2:20 pm flight, and by the time we got off the boat where we could get a cell signal to rebook, others had rebooked and we had to rent a car and drive 1,300 miles home so we could be back at work the following Monday. TOTAL FAIL on the part of Carnival. We worry they are rolling out these cost-cutting measures to all Carnival Corporation ships. Has anyone heard anything more about this? Very disappointed. We weren't the only ones talking about this. Everytime we sat down at dinner, at a show, waiting for an excursion, in line to get off the boat, etc... others complained about the same things. Shame on Carnival! Reinstate the quality customer service we'd come to expect! Or you'll lose A LOT of business.