Now let me back up a bit. We were first booked for our cruise aboard the Carnival Sunshine,due to depart on April 26th from Barcelona and end in Venice. This was to be a 9 day cruise and we were to stay an extra day at each end. I had spent a tremendous amount of time booking the ‘perfect hotels and off-shore tours’. Well imagine our surprise when my husband, who would keep up with the refurbishment updates on-line that were posted each Friday, noticed the ‘set to sail in April’ note on the top of the screen, change to ‘set to sail in May’ which no prior notice from Carnival. When we contacted our travel agent, she had no knowledge about the delay. No warnings of this cancellation were EVER received fom Carnival…we only found out about our cancelled cruise when our agent contacted them! You can imagine our disappointment. We were offered a refund by Carnival and a 25% discount on booking another cruise with them. They as well refunded any out-of-pocket expenses caused by the cancellation, which included our hotels, which were non-refundable...a plus for Carnival. At that point, we had no choice but to book once again with them as other cruise lines were booked for the itinerary we were looking for. So, we re-booked and this time on a 12 day cruise starting and ending in Barcelona, a city we quickly came to fall in love with.

Positives

The timely refund by Carnival and added discount which allowed us to get the 12 day cruise for just slightly more than the 9 day cruise initially booked. Read more