My husband & I were on board for the inaugural cruise and we were disappointed with the service on the ship. We have previously sailed with Carnival and Princess with great satisfaction. We got the distinct impression that Carnival was trying to save money by cutting back on staff and the passengers suffered greatly as a result.

There were long queues/line-ups for everything from check-in to buffet to purser to shore excursions to check-out. Passengers were so frustrated that yelling matches ensued which made everyone uncomfortable. There were no staff to address the concerns so everyone had to wait unattended.

A few examples of what we endured: 1) We were told at the desk that no one could call an elderly couple we met when their tour was leaving the port because they had 3000 other passengers to watch over; 2) We had to spend 2 hours in a queue to pick up our passport on the ship simply to give it to someone else before we could go into port at St. Thomas...2 hours of our vacation time; 3) a fight broke out in a cabin on our deck at 1:30 a.m., and security did not show themselves for over 30 minutes when the fight was over and the fighters had gone elsewhere...fortunately no innocents were hurt; 4) the music was so loud in the buffet areas that my husband and I could not converse and we were sitting next to one another...forget about visiting the couple across from us; 5) debarkation was a nightmare. We were at our station at 7:00 a.m. All of the other passengers were there but no staff to be seen anywhere. We were able to get through this queue by 10:00 a.m., only to join another queue where we were detained until noon. Several people in our group had already missed their flights and ours was leaving shortly. When we went to pick out our luggage (we were in the early group) one piece was missing so we were delayed looking for that. We arrived at the airport minutes before our plane was about to take-off and there was another frantic rush. Read more