Just back from our Spring Break on Carnival Freedom. This is our 3rd trip on Carnival (Valor and Liberty before this one). We were very excited, but that excitement dimmed with each passing day. To start, when we got our cards, we noticed an 8:30 pm seating. We had requested Early Seating. So we went to Chic Upper and waited over 45 minutes to be coldly told "Madame, it is a request, not a reservation." With all those people standing in that line, they got a lot of requests wrong! As a 3rd-time cruiser, doesn't my request count? And with the amount of empty tables on any given night, could they not come up with a better system? But we like dining vs eating at the buffet so we withstood the time. Usually there is a head waiter and an assistant. For some reason, we had 2 head waiters and they seemed to be fighting for power. the result -- we had to ask for refills, we had to ask for bread, we had to ask for coffee/tea ... again, not our experience in past years.

A second disappointment was when we discovered John Heald would not be the cruise director. It was Noortje -- a lovely woman we remembered from the Liberty, but we didn't feel she was ready for this prime-time role. We had the pleasure of 2 of the best, funniest CDs -- Josh and John -- and this was a big letdown.

The shows were just OK. Both comedians much lower quality than prior 2 cruises. And I seem to remember much more variety in the past ... this time it was the 2 comedians and singing/dancing acts the other nights. Read more