I will begin with the positives about this ship vs our previous Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises. We cruised on the Celebrity Millennium at the end of Feb. which was port intensive, which we love. Celebrity has gone way down hill in two areas since our Constellation cruise six years ago. That would be in the area of MDR food, quality and creativity. And the entertainment was mostly horrid this time. After that....Celebrity is a superior cruise line over Carnival, for our tastes. And it isn't all that much more expensive. We are both active 55 year olds, and we love the impeccable service, specialty dining room choices, cleanliness, and ship decor(stately and classy) and layout on Celebrity and RC compared to the Triumph. The Millennium and Triumph are both ten years old. Triumph looks 25 years old, and the Millennium is updated and fresh.

PROS: The main dining room food was very good. There was a lot to choose from. The food came hot, creatively plated and tasty. The wait staff did put on a fun and entertaining show each night; dancing on tables and singing. The nightly entertainment in the theater was one step above Celebrity's, and we did like all the different bar venues with various entertainment. The Venezia Lounge (non smoking!) had a 10 piece orchestra and a dance floor. It sure is lively at night on a Carnival, as its name implies. During the muster drill the super small stairwells were PACKED, you could hardly move....but since 90% of the passengers took the elevators, even to go up or down one level...well, we took the stairs the entire time, as they were nearly empty.

CONS: Every thing else! Service in all areas was SUB PAR compared to Celebrity. examples: you would have to ask for another knife or fork when they would forget to bring you one. Same with more coffee. In the Lido buffet they would run out of coffee cups, lemonade, etc. etc. and things would break down and that was that. MDR service was slow. We saw our stateroom attendant twice...which we are not used to. He did the minimum. When we arrived to our stateroom we could smell urine in the bathroom. That is how well they cleaned it. It had a stench of sewer the whole time. The crew for the most part was unfriendly and disinterested. We are used to the crew on Celebrity that always manages a hello and a smile. The stateroom decor made you NOT want to be in there much...maybe that was on purpose. A mish-mash of pinks, corals, oranges, and fake copper...very little warm woods. The bathroom sink is so low you get backache brushing your teeth. The beds were horrible. Woke up every day with a back ache. Our balcony was dirty when we arrived and is badly in need of refurbishing. The right privacy panel was half attached and on high seas nights would bang back and forth. The MDR and everywhere else on the ship is so loud everyone just kept talking louder and louder so you could hear each other. The MDR(we were in the Paris) is so poorly laid out and crowded, the tables and booths are practically on top of each other. I felt badly for the waiters to have to maneuver around that. It also felt so much more crowded than a Celebrity Ship. Super long longs every single day at the buffet. The lay out of this ship is awful. You can not go from one level all the way to the next except on two floors. You have to go up floors, then back down and cut across. It seemed that you always had to pass through the super smokey casino to get where you wanted to go. We love the restricted smoking policy on Celebrity. We were with a group of 460 from a company and all commented how dark and cavernous the ship is. Even in the fitness room, they have half windows to see out of, and they are at an angle so if you tried to see out to the ocean, you would bump your head. This ship seemed filthy dirty to us compared to Celebrity. The public restaurants had dirty toilets and hand towels strewn about, overflowing wastebaskets, toilet doors that had broken latches etc. You did not see the crew positioned around the ship cleaning and shining windows(like on Celebrity) and where you could ask questions (like where the heck is this room or that...as it was super easy to get lost. Everyone was carrying little Triumph maps around trying to find where they were going, even the MDR, after five days...still would get lost) After 10:00 PM it gets super loud on the Triumph!! Kids of all ages running up and down the halls, yelling and slamming doors. Kids were everywhere they were NOT supposed to be! The hot tubs, no adult supervision. We wondered at that time of the year(late April) why there WERE so many children of school age on the ship. If you like to begin drinking beer/fancy cocktails at around 9:30 each morning and go all day....then this ship is for you. We saw tons of drunks stumbling around while their kids played in the pool unsupervised. The pools are tiny also. There were very few areas to go and just relax, find some quiet time....except the library. We could NOT believe the way 50% of the passengers dressed in the MDR, even on the one formal night. We had never seen this before. Men and women with ripped off dirty t-shirts, cut offs and flip flops. It states that men need to have collared shirts and no jean cut offs, but they didn't enforce that rule nor any other rule. Read more