My wife and I are Carnival loyalist Platinum members. We have been on 22 Carnival cruises and only have 8 more ships in the fleet to go to have been on them all. We just sailed on the Carnival Freedom for an 8 day cruise out of Ft Lauderdale June 22, 2014.

We used to feel and get special service with Carnival as Platinums. Now we're just another guest and here's why I feel this way:

This cruise started with me emailing the Matire'd asking for a table on the main floor with other guests as we like making friends in the dining room--not too demanding of a request I thought. Ian promptly emailed me back to tell me that those tables were taken by "large groups" and my request couldn't be accomodated. We like the center tables so we can enjoy the dances, etc at dinner which we enjoy. 1st night of the cruise we were placed at a table for 4 (just our family) in the corner behind a shield where you couldn't see anything. After getting upset at the assistant Matire'd the next night a table for 8 in the center of the dining room mysteriously became available! Why did I have to get upset day 1 of the cruise to get a simple request for a loyal Carnival customer? Did really try to accomodate my request or just email me the easy answer of 'NO". Too even though we did finally get a center table, we still weren't able to meet as many new friends as we could have if had granted the specific request I asked for. Platinum didn't matter. Additionally he never once came to our table during the 8 nights of the cruise, didn't sing, or anything else. Read more