This was our 25th Carnival cruise, 43rd overall. The greatest benefit of this "milestone", as Carnival calls it, is a substantial credit when we book another cruise. Once onboard and when when venturing to our room we were surprised to find a white cruise card rather than our normal silver one. White is normally provided to guests with the elite Diamond status, but it will be sometime next year before we will actually achieve that. It was nice to pretend for this cruise, as everyone on the crew mistook us for Diamond.

Entering our room (M11) we had a few misgivings about booking an inside room. We wanted to try a porthole room and had two previous bookings which were cancelled with the Covid scare. Third time finally got us there. We really thought that the recessed double porthole was interesting -- not a great view but at least some light for an inside room. What else that we found was interesting, but not in a positive way. We found that our king bed had only a single nightstand, placed by the outside wall -- unusual, but not so terrible. Although storage was a bit scarce compared to our normal cruises, this five day did not present any problems. But the next item was just absolutely ridiculous!! There were no cups or glasses of any kind in our room. We asked the room steward if we could get something to use in the room -- at least to take our meds. He said that he would see what he could do. (Which was NOTHING.) Later, we went to guest services to see if we could get glasses to use in the room. They indicated that they were shocked that such a thing would happen, and said that they would tell the captain. Of course, that was just a ploy to be rid of our presence at the desk. What did happen was that room service came to the room while we were at dinner, presumably to deliver glasses, and no one answered the door. The service was on our bill (no charge) but nothing ever came of that effort. And anytime we brought buffet drink cups or bar glasses to the room to use in the room, the room steward promptly removed them the next time he came to the room. He did, however, dutifully provide us with an ice bucket with ice every day as we requested. (We always tip extra for such services.) About the only thing that we could do with the ice, however, was hold it in our hands and feel how cold it was. When we arrived in Nassau we purchased a set of six cheap glasses to have in the room, and the room steward did leave those alone.

Another thing that we immediately noticed in our room was that there was no furniture as I might have expected. There was a 7' X 10' area in the room completely vacant. This was easily one third or more of the total cabin space. There was no sofa of any kind, no upholstered or hard chair, and no second night stand. About a foot of the inbuilt desk top at one corner was the only thing occupying this large area. We again made a request, this time for a chair, table or small sofa to use and to occupy this space, anticipating room service placing a tray somewhere other than the floor, or the ability to sit at the desk or relax in the cabin in some place other than on the floor or bed. The only response from our room steward or the Service Desk was that they would look for something to place there, but NO. Read more