My husband and I, along with another couple, chose this cruise because of its itinerary to the Southern Caribbean. We cruised about 3 years ago on the Carnival Destiny, finding it to be one of the best trips we've had on Carnival. Something happened since then. We are NOT prejudiced, nor do we file complaints freely. We are generally pretty tolerant folks and "go with the flow." The only way I can describe this cruise out of San Juan--very disappointing due to the overwhelming number of Puerto Ricans onboard. We had upgraded to a suite, finding that it was across the hallway from interior cabins occupied by entire families of Puerto Ricans. No problem with this at all, except that they were extremely loud (running in the hallways, singing at all hours of the night, talking very loudly, etc.), without any respect whatsoever for fellow passengers. We and our friends had to call Guest Svcs. on at least 4 out of the 7 nights to request intervention in quieting these people. Elsewhere on the ship, the PR's would break in line, dominate the food lines by piling on food, run past you, bump into you (the list goes on and on). I don't think "excuse me" is in their vocabulary. I am quite certain that there were some very nice PR's on board, but we never ran across them. We heard similar complaints from other passengers who were in the "minority." We loved out suite, but its advantages were overshadowed by the miserable feeling that we could not "retreat" to it or be guaranteed a good night's sleep there.

Not sure what the solution here is, if anything. It would be nice if folks booking this cruise could be advised ahead of time of what they might encounter in the way of cruise clientele out of San Juan. I'm sure this could not be done by Carnival in a non-discriminatory way, however. I do believe that the Puerto Ricans may be getting last minute deep discounts to fill these cruises; they sadly do not seem to know how to behave in a cruise ship atmosphere.

I had read similar comments on Cruise Critic prior to our cruise, but just dismissed them as being written by whiners and complainers. I have to agree that they were exactly right. I will never cruise out of San Juan again, and am thinking twice about Carnival for the future. Read more