Dining

My wife and I have cruised over 15 times, three times with Carnival. We sailed on the Conquest a few years ago from New Orleans and it was a pleasure. It still is with one big exception and that is dining room service for the evening meal. In fairness we found the food for all meals to be very good - some of the best we have had. And the service for breakfast and lunch in the Monet Dining Room was excellent. Sur Mer, the seafood grill on deck 10, was as good as ever and we ate lunch there often.

The damper on all this was the dining room wait staff for the evening meal. We had a waiter for our table of 10 who could never get it right. He would deliver some of our orders while leaving some in the kitchen. We never had our water glasses refilled. We were offered one roll each and had to beg for another one. And get this --- we were expected to eat our entire meal with one fork, one knife and one spoon. Just like in a high school cafeteria we were encouraged to keep our utensils between courses. This did not happen at breakfast or lunch in the dining room. Our waiter did not have an assistant. The first night we got our glass of wine one hour after sitting down. We got our appetizer after an hour and a half. We were the last ones to leave the dining room where we were not even offered a cup of coffee because the announcement over the loud speaker was that the wait staff had 9 minutes before the second seating came in. Read more