This is a review of recent four day cruise I took on the Carnival Destiny to Cozumel, with a "scheduled" stop in Key West. Maybe I should not have picked such a large ship or a cruise line that so aggressively discounts its tickets. As a result the ship was packed, and between the mass of very young children and toddlers crowded into the pools and jacuzzis, tables covered with dirty plates, unfinished beverages. melted ice cream. etc., stateroom corridors full of the same, overused public bathrooms, I felt I was living in a giant floating petri dish. While my boyfriend and I met some very nice people, a large number of our fellow passengers behaved as if they were raised by wolves. The clientele was, in two words, down market - and in the worst way.

Because of the illness of a crew member, the ship was forced to return to Miami after several hours at sea. This was, of course, the right thing to do. However, one of the two destinations on the itinerary, Key West was dropped and we spent a full day at sea heading on to Cozumel. I was puzzled by this decision as we were back out to sea before midnight and when early the next morning the decision was announced by the cruise director to skip Key West, the progress map showed us quite close to Key West. I am not going to speculate in this forum as to other motives Carnival management had in eliminating this stop, but I felt played. By the way, there was nothing in the way of comps offered for the truncated itinerary.

And this brings me to my third disappointment - the indifference of management and an aggressive sales culture that in my view emphasized making a sale over the safety and comfort of passengers. Once we docked in Cozumel, the disembarkation process was chaos. First we were told around 9:00 am that the gangway would be closed by 9:45 due to another cruise ship docking nearby. Since many passengers had excursions beginning around 10:00, there was a rush to disembark. As a line formed before the gangway, it was necessary to shut down the process about 15 minutes earlier as the other ship came in earlier than expected. But passengers continued to come down in the elevators, including passengers in wheelchairs, turning a crowd in a small room into a potential crush of people. Still, cruise management kept its staff and a large cooler chest in the room hawking bottles of water. From what I could see, no effort was made to control the elevator traffic. Fortunately, the disembarkation process was restarted after ten or fifteen minutes, but because no announcement was made to give reassurance that shore excursions would wait for delayed passengers, the crowding did not let up. The ship's security officers thankfully expedited the processing. However, disembarking passengers were accosted on the gangway by photographers for photos to be taken ON THE GANGWAY. I know some readers may think i am an elitist, but too many passengers were oblivious to or unconcerned with the nearly panicked state of the passengers inside and on the gangway. They stopped the flow on the gangway so they could have their photos taken. While my fellow passengers cannot be compelled to be more considerate, at least the ship's crew could have stepped in to clear the gangway. This did not happen. Read more