We sailed on the Carnival Dream out of New Orleans on June 3, 2018. In our group of 10 were brand new travellers together with seasoned cruising veterans. Half of us had sailed on Carnival in the past. Food servers were slow, forgetful, and inattentive in the main dining room. We were never asked on a single occasion if we wanted something to drink besides water. Not even coffee with dessert. Servers forgot main courses, appetizers, and other items. On one occasion, I waited for an entire hour before we were served our first course. This is simply outrageous. Food servers in other areas of the ship were downright rude at times. Food options were the worst thing I’ve ever seen on a cruise. With so many options available on paper, it sounded like a veritable culinary delight. But the reality is that the majority of the dining options were only open during lunch. This includes the barbecue place, the Mongolian wok, which is really part of the buffet, and the Indian place. The burger joint (which is awesome and should be open longer hours) is open between noon and 6 PM, so if you were dining even slightly late, that is also not an option. Carnival now also charges for room service after 10 PM. With three days on shore, that meant that we only had four real opportunities to dine somewhere besides the Lido deck and the main dining room. Even the buffet was only HALF open at dinner and the selection was sad at best. There was a single counter at the back of the ship open during dinner time. And the two halves of the counter were mirror images of each other. Basically, there were about 20 feet of choices, not counting the dessert bar. And the dessert bar was similarly limited in selection. It felt like a poor man’s Golden Corral. Food quality was also the worst I’ve ever experienced. This obvious ploy to force people to choose either the main dining room or one of the additional purchase option restaurants was infuriating and completely at odds with our last cruise with Carnival. Eating times were silly. Lunch started exactly at noon. If you were hungry for lunch before noon, for example at 11 or 11:30, the only option was to eat at the pizza place. Which of course was jammed because there were no other options. And pizza quality was only fair (except the quattroformagio, which was great!). On the other hand, they had 1/4 of the buffet open until noon, but it only served breakfast options. Again, this is something we have never seen a Carnival cruise.

The entirety of the cruise also consisted of a constant barrage of attempts to sell you things. That is pretty consistent with other cruising experiences, so perhaps I was just more annoyed by this time as a result of the dining options being so limited. Overall, the ship is not aging well. There were dents in various items and walls, the carpeting in our room was coming up, there are places were pieces of trim had obviously gone missing, and generally there was a neglected feel in most of the main living areas of the ship. Room cleaning has been reduced from twice a day to once a day, which was of great annoyance to my mother and aunt. However, our room steward, Ary, was simply fantastic and one of the highlights of the cruise. Cruise director Lee was an excellent cruise director. Also, the entertainment quality has improved. The main shows are still not quite up to Norwegian standards, but definitely better than they used to be. Nonetheless, this is insufficient to overcome the worst dining experience I have ever had on a cruise. We won’t be back.