Okay so this was my 7th cruise, 2nd and last with Carnival.

I booked with Carnival because I had some friends/family that had booked the cruise and my kids wanted to vacation with some kids their age. My family of 4 booked 2 adjoining balcony cabins instead of a suite as we wanted to have a large balcony and 2 washrooms. I was so happy we did book 2 rooms as the rooms were very tiny - much smaller than any room we have booked on RCCL, Regent and Celebrity. They didn't offer any family suites or large suites with more than one washroom so this was our only option. We booked several months in advance and were also told that if the price went down they would give us back the difference. The rooms dropped about 30% cheaper and they wouldn't give us back one penny as it was a few days after final payment (Dec 29) They did offer to upgrade us to a higher floor but they didn't have adjoining rooms. They then told us that the room we booked almost a year in advance could be taken away from us at any time as the rooms we booked were rooms for 4 ppl and we only had 2 in each room -. We told them that if they wanted to move us to non-adjoining rooms that we didn't want to sail with Carnival and asked why they wouldn't tell us this at the time of booking. We ended up keeping the adjoining rooms after hours of fighting with them on the phone - It wasn't starting off well.

We got a call the day before sailing that we should try to board by 12:30 to avoid line ups. We got there at 12:30 and it took about 1 1/2 hrs to board the ship - I guess everyone got that call - we probably should have waited till 2 to board. They let us bring on wine and bubbly and water without any questions - we actually showed it to them when we went through x ray and they didn't have any problems. We walked into the buffet to grab some lunch and stood in line for over 30 minutes to get food - not impressed with buffets to begin with but to stand and wait so long was really annoying. My nephew decided to stand in line to get a burger on the pool deck and waited 45 minutes to get to the front of the line only to hear the muster drill so they closed up and he never got his burger - oh my. Read more