In celebration of my sister-in-law's 50th birthday, my brother was able to rally 38 (ages 6-69) of us to go away on a cruise together. Her birthday was August 17th so we chose a cruise that would sail during her birthday week and leaving out of NY, as all of us live in the NY/NJ area. The Carnival Sunshine was my 10th cruise. I had been on Carnival 4 times previously and on RCCL 5 times. I had read the reviews on Cruise Critic prior to our sail date so my expectations weren't very high, although I did read them with a grain of salt as I generally tend to go with the flow on trips (and in life in general lol), so not much bothers me. But most unfortunately, Sunshine was my least pleasant cruising experience for a variety of reasons.

Weather/Port Issues:

Now I know Carnival has no control over mother nature. We generally know better than to sail during hurricane season, but as previously mentioned, we were celebrating a birthday in the middle of August so we crossed our fingers and booked. 90% of the days were cloudy and during at least 3-4 of our days/nights we encountered rougher seas than we like. Our first stop was supposed to be Puerto Rico but the port was cancelled all together due to multiple storms in the area. We understood avoiding the port for safety reasons but found out at a later port that other ships in the area simply diverted to different ports as opposed to forcing their passengers to a 3rd sea day. We were also told by staff that Sunshine has missed Puerto Rico multiple times which doesn't feel like coincidence. Read more