I have never been interested in going on a cruise (and, truthfully, am morally opposed to them due to the horrific environmental problems). But when my in-laws purchased tickets for the whole family, I decided to suck it up and try to have a good time. Unfortunately, the cruise started off poorly for me and didn't improve.

I'd always heard that the food on a cruise ship is amazing and, if nothing else, the whole experience is worth it just for the food. Being a foodie, I was really excited about this! Unfortunately, I ended up disappointed and hungry. As a vegetarian, I had an extremely difficult time finding food that I could or wanted to eat. Generally, my only options were pasta, bread, or side salad. More than a month prior to the cruise, we had called to see if we needed to arrange special meals for me. We were told to talk with a coordinator when we arrived and that everything would be fine. After a bit more research, we called again and were told to talk to the maitre d' in the restaurant where we had reservations every night and that everything would be fine. We then found info that we had to fill out a special form for dietary needs (note that the form doesn't exist), so we called again and were told that vegetarian options would be available and that everything would be fine. Well, everything wasn't fine. I ended up in tears and hungry on more than one occasion. On a couple of occasions, I couldn't find anything that sounded good so was offered a side salad instead. I went without dinner those times. Absolutely ridiculous. Eventually, we started pre-ordering dinners for me the day before, which ensured that I at least had something palatable to eat, but I was still restricted to very few options that generally included a lot of carbs. What was especially appalling about the menus is that even items that SHOULD be vegetarian (e.g., cream of mushroom soup, vegetable soup, scrambled eggs, etc.) had MEAT in them. Every single soup available on the ship was made with chicken or beef broth. Most of the egg options had meat in them. Even mixed veggies in the buffet had meat. Why?!! Rather than providing only one or two vegetarian options on a menu or in a buffet line, why not mix it up? Provide abundant veggie meals with the option to add meat! To make matters even worse, the food that I was able to eat was mediocre at best. Most of it was rather bland. Certainly not up to par with all the raves I had heard leading up to this mess.

Service on the ship was hit and miss. Some people went out of their way to help us out and make our experience positive. Others acted like we were a bother. One example that stands out is when I ordered an omelette from the buffet. I asked for extra, extra mushrooms (dying for some protein after so many carbs). The person put three mushroom slices in the pan. I smiled and politely asked if I could have more mushrooms, and he gave me a miserable look, huffed, and added a few more in. Read more