I am writing to you to allow it to be known the dissatisfaction, disappointment, stressful situations (yes, plural) that Carnival made me and my entire family go through on our FIRST trip and possibly the last. It began with our arrival at the port where my husband went to park. At the parking lot, the parking attendant was so distracted talking to multiple people. He told my husband (or so we thought he was talking to him) and told him to “Go”. As my husband went, he ended up hitting the gate arm because according to the attendant, he had not been talking to my husband. Since my husband drives a big, tall truck, he couldn’t see the arm and ended up hitting it. The guy told us they were going to charge us 10,000, all because the attendant said “Go”. They ended up reducing it to 900.00 and yet, that is something their own attendant is at fault for. Why should our family be burdened with a 900 dollar repair bill when it was Their attendant that messed up by not communicating clearly and being aware of the vehicles and guests.

Moving on to the embarkation, we were ready and still excited regardless of the set back. When we get to the check point, they tell us our children had to get tested for COVID. I remind you that the vaccines for children had just recently come out and by the time the vaccine was approved, we would not have had time to get them fully vaccinated regardless. Prior to the trip, our rep advised us that we would need a negative COVID test as well as exemption forms for each child. We did all this to the foot of the requirements and expectations of carnival from their guests. We are enraged to find out that now we had to pay 150.00 per child (450 dollars total). When we spoke to someone, they told us that the policy had stated that they needed both an antígen and pcr test. We showed her on the policy where it said they only had to have one negative test and their exemption form, which we had. We asked them to show us where in the policy it stated that our children had to have both, an antigen AND pcr test. They told us “oh it’s a new policy”, however, when we paid and booked our trip, the change in policy was not disclosed to us, nor was anything given to us in written or verbal manner, breaching the legal contract Carnival had with us when we first booked. Regardless of this, we were required to make the 450 dollars. We decided that we would just pay and get the tests done to just be able to leave it all behind and get on the ship. Well, that did not happen. As we went into the testing area they required us to sign in through our phones. Phones that did not work inside the ship because of lack of signal within the ship. We spent an hour and a half of our boarding time sitting in the testing area with hungry children and stressed out because of these ridiculous testing requirements they implemented apparently last minute.

When we were finally able to board, hours later, we went to our rooms. We then proceeded to go to guest services to arrange to have our card placed on multiple accounts. It was our entire family’s first time and so we were making sure their staterooms were covered under one credit card. There was 14 of us in total that we took on this trip. Guest services continued to mess up with cards and charges, so we ended up removing my parents from our account and putting them on their own account. Because they did not have a card on file, my sister put their excursion on her stateroom. It took us going to guest services about 8-10 times for them to figure out that they (guest services) had messed up and owed my sister 140.00 that were missing from her account. It was such a waste of time, stressful, aggravating and just a very unpleasant experience dealing with guest services. They finally figured it out and realized they messed up, but our time lost standing in line and dealing with guest services will not be returned nor fixed. That time is lost. Time that should have been spend with family, enjoying of a vacation. Read more