We just got back from a Southern Caribbean cruise that sailed on 5-18-08. This is the first time I have cruised with Carnival. I have cruised with Princess, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian before. All ships met my expectations until the Carnival Destiny. I'm not really sure if I can rate Carnival's experience with this cruse. Maybe if I had went on a newer ship I would have been more impressed. It doesn't take much to please me but here is my review. I spoke to several people on the cruise and no one really liked this ship. It is one of the older ships so I kept this in mind. Overall the ship was in okay shape for the age. Another cruiser said she had mold in her shower. We didn't. The ship had a water slide which was hardly ever crowded. The aft pool for adults only was rarely used. The middle pool was always full though. We were in a balcony room and it was the smallest room I have been on. The shower was the largest I had seen on a balcony room. The toilet was not in a great spot. It faced the shower and was very weird. However, the staff was extremely nice. Our cabin steward was awesome and so was our waiter. I don't like the fixed seating arrangement though. I prefer the dinning options of Princess and NCL better. We requested late seating in the dinning room and got first seating. We were going to change it but it actually worked out better. We were placed at a table with three other couples and really enjoyed sitting with them. I applaud Carnival for getting couples at our table that were the same age as us and had similar interests.

The food was a little to be desired. The buffet consisted of practically the same food every day. There was not a large selection. The fruit choices were usually honeydew, oranges and cantaloupe. There were no strawberries, pineapples or watermelon on the buffet. You could only get those in the dinning room. The dinning room food was excellent. Most of the time when you wanted to go to the buffet it was closed or there was hardly anything on it. Mostly you had to go to the hamburger grill or pizzeria. The pizzeria was advertised as 24/7 but it wasn't. The pizza was not the best but the cheeseburgers were awesome. So overall the food choices were not varied on the buffet.

The ship was clean in my opinion but overall I would not choose to cruise on this ship again. I read they had renovated in 2005 but I'm not really sure where. I probably would give Carnival another chance but not on the Carnival Destiny. Read more