The main problem with Carnival's Fantasy is that it thinks it's 1975. The entertainment was music and comedians mired in that era of long ago. There is practically no internet access (unless you consider taking 10 minutes to download a few emails, at 75 cents per minute) and no daily news except the occasional CNN report on 12" TV in stateroom. If you want to keep in touch with your friends, family and business via messaging, Facebook, Twitter or the like, you will be out of luck on this ship. Even internal messaging that works within the ship would be a great improvement since there is no cell phone service at sea -- but Carnival has made no such provision.

If you are looking to relax and read in a quiet place, there is nowhere on this ship to do so. Everywhere you go (including the Lido cafeteria) you are assaulted by loud, unwanted music, dating from an era when no one had earbuds and a personal music library on their phone or iPod.

The evening entertainment, sometimes quite good (though dated), was always excessively and sometimes painfully overamplified. We had to leave two performances with earaches as a result. Read more