Plain and simple, this had to be the worst cruise that my wife and I had ever been on. Only good part about this cruise was that we were familiar with the ship, since we recently had been on the Carnival Legend, which is identical except for the decor.

Mediterranea claims to be Italian? The only Italian we saw was the Captain and the majority of the Officers. Not should that make a difference, but the entire crew were mostly from the Philippines, and the food was not of the Italian fare. Which leads me to the service staff. One word was Horrible. The waiters were the worst I have ever encountered on a cruise line. The food was marginal, to say the least. Always brought to the table warm if not cold, and then you never got what you asked for, nor was the order complete. Terrible, terrible service. The dinning experience was so bad, that for the majority of our cruise we decided to opt for the buffet that was a few decks above the main dinning room. The buffet became an obstacle course. The lines ran almost the length of the ship (Exaggerating, but they were extremely long) so much so that I approached one of the officers that was officiating the buffet, and mentioned to him about the long wait, only to be told that this was normal? Interesting! I then saw the Captain passing through and signaled to him about the lines, when he ordered an Officer to open up another buffet line, since there was only this one buffet opened. The food on the buffet, like the dinner seating food, was cold and marginally fair.

Beverages? Only beverage available, was iced tea. No Lemonade, or fruit punch. So if one did not want Iced tea, the only beverage available was soda. Now, what cafeteria have you ever gone too that didn;t supply trays. I mean even McDonalds allows to to take a tray with your selections. Well, this ship had no trays to be found! So what one would do is make a few trips back and forth to the table and hope that their previous food selection was still there. Believe me, this has happened to a few guests that we saw. Because there was no trays available they had to make a few trips back and forth to the table. Their previous food selections that they had placed on the table were gone. Perhaps, because of an over zealous waiter, but it still did not negate the aggravation of having to wait on the buffet line again. In short. The Buffet like the seated dinning was horrible. Read more