The not so good
1. Food - not great. I’m pretty sure my “angel hair pasta” was Mr noodles. Quesadilla in Chibang was a taco shell with a melted cheese slice inside it. Portions very small across the board. Low quality food unless you paid a premium for the “good food”. I think with the price of cruise fare, you should get better than what was served most of the time. Most food was bland. Very little variety.
2. Lido Buffet - so disappointed what this has become. I remember our cruises before covid and the lido was huge with lots of different choices. There was one small buffet at each section with a few options. None of it tasted good. It was all bland, reheated food. The only fruit was melon. Desserts very limited.
3. Breakfast - lido was not good. The exact same thing every day. No variety at all. Eggs Benedict always cold with stale muffin. You can’t get your own bacon. They serve it, and it’s not good. All stuck together. If you go to the Pig and Anchor buffet for breakfast, they serve the exact same food as the lido. MDR breakfast bland, no variety. Seaday brunch same. Underwhelming.
4. There are many “free” food venues on Mardi Gras, but they were only open for short periods of time each time, even on sea days.
5. Chibang was a miss. Poor unfriendly service, tiny portions, and they brought the wrong appetizer (the cheese slice quesadilla which ended up coming with dessert and no apology whatsoever)
5. Most staff met the minimum expectation for friendliness, very few felt sincere though. It felt like most were phoning it in and I understand many are at the end of their contracts. We had one fellow in the MDR breakfast who was rude and slammed things down on the table. I’m not sure what his deal was but his partner was quite pleasant.
6. Our cabin was too narrow. We had an ocean view suite. There was barely room for one person to walk between the end of the bed and the wall and the metal bed frame is hard on the knees in the dark. Nowhere to stow 4 suitcases. Two chairs to sit in for 4 people as the couch got turned into a bed and left that way. They don’t flip it back during the day which I think they used to do.
7. I’m not sure I like the stacked balconies. On deck nine you have no roof so I couldn’t sit out there in the rain and there was no privacy.
8. They only come to your cabin once a day. No more turn down and chocolate on the pillow. You are stuck with dirty dishes until the next day. With 4 in a cabin, you accumulate lots of wet dirty towels and such. I saw a lot of dirty dishes littering the hallway.
9. We only saw our room steward twice, not counting the times he just opened the door without knocking. On past cruises, we saw them all the time and they always seemed to be around. I really felt like he did the bare minimum. We paid $700 in tips. For that money, I expect more than that. I realize that the staff don’t set that, Carnival does, and I wonder how much of that the staff actually get.
10. Tips. As mentioned above, we paid $700. That is a lot. I think adding an 18% gratuity on top of that to anything you buy is just greed. And as if that’s not enough, when you give me my bill there’s another tip line to add more tip? Um what? Greed, greed, greed. And once again, I blame this on Carnival. Pay your staff better.
11. Carnival maybe try not to be so obvious with your corporate greed. Opening the casino at 530am on debarkation day and sending multiple notifications trying to get you to come spend more money left a bad taste in my mouth.
12. The alcoholic drinks had very little alcohol.
13. There weren’t enough pools and hot tubs for 6000+ people. They were usually too packed to enjoy. And they’re very small. This was one area where I did notice the volume of people on the ship.
14. The elevators - oh my the elevators are a problem. There’s not enough, and there was one out of order in every bank it seemed for the duration of the cruise. On the subject of elevators, and I’m sure I’ll get slammed for this, but let’s talk about scooters. I don’t ever remember seeing so many scooters on a cruise ship before. Elevators are first come first serve. Being in a scooter does not give you a pass to the front of the line. Just because people can walk, doesn’t mean they can climb multiple flights of stairs, nor should they have to. The entitlement of some of the scooter people was unbelievable.
15. I missed the atrium and the piano, and the promenade. The centre theatre felt like an afterthought and was not designed well.
16. There was no enforcement of the dress code whatsoever. I saw ball caps, ripped jeans, t-shirts, athletic clothes, spandex in the MDR. Even on formal night at teppenyaki, which I presume formal night extends to (?) a fellow had baggy track shorts and and a grubby white t-shirt on.