My wife and I were headed to the Pro Bowl and decided to make a week long vacation out of it by combining a cruise along with attending the game. I needed to find a cruise that would leave the week before the Pro Bowl, return before the game and go to a port (or ports) I had never been to before. The Carnival Destiny itinerary fit the bill. It left out on Monday, January 25th and returned on Saturday, January 30th leaving us January 31st to attend the game. On top of that, it was going to Grand Turk, a place I had never been before. We were so excited about our trip, we took two of our best friends along. By the way, this trip was booked in the summer of 2009!

On January 23rd (remember, the ship is leaving on the 25th and we are flying to Miami on the 24th), I get an email from Carnival regreting to inform me that there is a problem with the ship's propulsion system and we will not be going to Grand Turk. Instead, we will be going to Freeport (been there before, hated it) and we will be getting a $50.00 per person on-board credit (which basically covers the $50.00 per person charge they add to your Sign and Sail card for tips). Or...we can cancel and they will apply a credit towards our "next" Carnival cruise. Huh? Gee, let me see. I can cancel all my plans and sail with you later. Somebody has got to be kidding me.

As you will read from the multiple recent postings on here, Carnival is taking advantage of their customers with this last minute notification shenanigans. Like one other poster mentioned, they are playing around with our valued vacation time and they are obviously only interested in their bottom line which would suffer if they pulled the ship to fix it. Read more