First of all my wife and I experienced cruisers who are not very particular, demanding or complainers. We take events as they come along and always make the best of any situation. We make our own good time.

Carnival Magic was advertised as this large, brand new, technically advanced marvel. More on that later.

Our first disappointment was when we met with the Carnival representatives at the airport in Barcelona. We were to take an excursion that would end up at the ship. We presented the representatives with all of our documentation. We were told where and what time to meet. We wandered around the general area as we waited. Approximately one hour before our excursion was to meet and leave, we saw a Carnival representative caring a sign with the name of our excursion with a group of people following her. My wife and I commented to each other that this must be a popular and crowded excursion and that this was the first group to go. As our departure time approached we noticed other people lining up with a different color sticker. I suggested that my wife go over to a Carnival representative and ask about our excursion. My wife came back to me in a furious state of mind after finding out that our tour group had already left and we had missed it. We were absolutely certain as to the time we were to meet as it was repeated to us several times by the representative and we repeated it back before we wandered off. My wife was beside herself with anger so I took over communicating with the Carnival representative who eventually admitted that perhaps there was a communications problem. We were told of another excursion that would end up at the ship and we reluctantly accepted it. The satisfactory conclusion to this mix-up was that Carnival gave us a full refund for the more expensive excursion we had booked and gave us a 25% discount on the excursion we had reluctantly accepted. Read more