7 Days Western Cruise. Travelled with kids.

FOOD Ok, nothing great. Huge lineups for buffet at lunch. We ate in restaurant every day for breakfast - we highly recommend this. Public space seemed to be the same as that on their smaller ships. This was most obvious in buffet areas, and on the deck - more on that later. Dining room was ok. Food not great, but good. Unfortunately, carnival now has a pre-paid tip option wherein the $10/day/person is charged to your credit card unless you stand in line and have it removed (we didn't try as we were happy with service, but were told it was a painful process to remove the tips - they wanted you to specify which services you didn't like etc). We usually tip more than $10/person/day, but when they automatically charge that amount, we tend to stick to that. We played along as service was ok. However, on the last night, it was very uncomfortable as you definitely got the impression that your waiter wanted an extra tip - we observed many tables slipping their waiters an envelope. Next time, we'll cancel the prepaid, and give our waiter and assist waiter a cash tip, like the good old days.

PUBLIC SPACE Overcrowded, and by 7am every chair in a nice location had a towel over it, ie reserved for whomever. Carnival has a 30 minute towel policy, ie if you leave your chair unattended for 30 minutes they 'safely store your towel and personal effects at the towel desk', however, this was never enforced. One day, we picked two empty deck chairs from a row of 10, and were told by the guy at the end that he was saving them all for his 'group' and if we wanted a chair we should get up early, like he did. Simple solution, if Carnival wants to increase capacity without increasing public space, they need to enforce these rules. Read more