peanutzmom

This describes us as well. We are Platinum, but we don’t return to Carnival for the free perks from the loyalty program. We have cruised on other lines (most recently RCI and MSC), and we have found that Carnival best fits our needs as far as itineraries and prices go. The food, service, cabins, and entertainment are at least comparable and sometimes better than other lines charging higher prices, so we are happy to continue doing most of our cruising with Carnival, regardless of the perks (or lack thereof).

I’m sorry you have bad memories of your first visit. St. Martin is our favorite Caribbean island! We’ve done several land vacations there and always look for cruise itineraries that include it. We personally prefer the French Side and take a taxi to Orient Beach any time we cruise into this port.

Looks like Port Canaveral.

Thanks for your response! We’ll be docked at Havensight. It looks like the taxi to Crown Bay is about 15 minutes according to Google - is that accurate?

We have cruised to St. Thomas several times and have done the usual land excursions (with either Sonny Liston or Godfrey), beach days at Magen’s Bay or Sapphire Beach, or DIY days hitting the sky ride then walking around Charlotte Amalie. We want to do something different this time, but don’t feel the ship will be in port long enough to do St. John on our own, and the St. John ship excursions are very high priced for very little time on the island. So, we’re looking at doing Water Island and Honeymoon Beach. Any recommendations about what to do, etc.?

Paper copies of Fun Times (which are pretty much extinct) used to be called Carnival Capers. When I clicked on this thread, that’s actually what I thought the OP was talking about, too, because I’ve never heard of the Clue game being called that! 🤣 So, this response was from someone who also thought the OP was talking about the paper versions of Fun Times/Carnival Capers.

Thank you both for your replies! We’ll keep it on the list if possible excursions!

Hi! It looks like it costs $22 to rent an umbrella. Do they put some sort of tag on it to show who rented it? Like, if we get up to get in the pool or grab some lunch or something, is it marked so other people can’t take our spot? Thanks!

We will be in Amber Cove in June. I’m considering booking Iguana Mama’s Eat, Drink, and Be Merry tour. Any recommendations?

I wouldn’t pay extra for the ship excursion. There isn’t a trolly stop directly at the port, and it’s literally a three minute walk through Mallory Square, where you can buy the tickets without the ship mark-up. That’s probably where the ship excursion would take you anyway!

I couldn’t agree with you more, on all of your general comments. We did the Divina in December, and I feel like I set $1000 on fire. I would have rather stayed home and used that money on something else.

This. We did the Divina in December because we got a great rate and we’re terribly disappointed. I won’t cruise on this line again, unless there are some serious improvements.

Ummm, we didn’t enjoy pretty much any of it. I guess I was trying to be nice and throw them a few bones for what they did right? We spoke to MANY, MANY other passengers on the ship - several newbies to cruising said they would never cruise again after this, and we tried to assure them that most cruises are a lot better. We talked with other seasoned cruisers like ourselves, cracked a lot of jokes, shook our heads, and agreed that we wouldn’t cruise on this line again.

Day 4- Nassau We got up, grabbed some pastries, and got off the ship as quick as we could. Nassau was nice. We’ve been there probably a dozen times, so we just went up to the zoo/gardens, got lunch in Fish Fry, strolled around Junkanoo Beach, then headed back to the ship about an hour before debarkation. Full of yummy food from Fish Fry, we didn’t even bother to try the formal dining room and just grabbed pizza and burgers (again) from the buffet. And let me explain- we are adventurous eaters and not at all picky. We spent several years overseas while my husband was in the military, and we always enjoyed various local cuisines. We’ve traveled all over most of Europe and almost all of the Caribbean islands for vacations and always enjoy the food we try, however strange it may seem to typical American palates. The food on this cruise was just bad. Period. There was a section of Indian vegetarian cuisine that we were excited about. It was horrible. I felt bad for all of the vegetarian passengers, because I saw them at the buffet eating mostly fruit and French fries, because the vegetarian options were that bad. We hit the duty free liquor store (the one highlight - hubby got his favorite Scotch for half price), wandered the ship for a bit, and tried again to order drinks. I asked for a White Russian, and all I got was vodka and half- n-half because they were out of Kaluah. Maybe tell me that before you make the drink?? We weren’t on a beverage package (we don’t drink enough to warrant it), so we had to actually pay for our drinks. We were not impressed by their quality or how quickly the bars ran out of things. Knowing we had to get up early for debarkation, we headed to bed after that, hoping to get some sleep in before the neighbors got loud. It was basically the same as the previous nights, and we got up at 6:30AM to prepare for self debarkation. Debarkation actually went smoothly for us, but a lot of people got turned back because they never linked their credit card to their room key at those kiosks. It wasn’t because they were trying ti get away with something - they simply didn’t know! It wasn’t well publicized, just occasionally mentioned in the Daily Planner that was not regularly left in most people’s rooms. I know this may sound nit-picky, but it’s really not. We’re kinds go-with-the-flow travelers. If one, or two, or six of these things had gone wrong, we would have just shrugged it off. But it was constant. Everything was just not well thought out if up to basic standards. We will not be cruising MSC again.

Day 3- Private Island - Ocean Cay We were allowed briefly back on Ocean Cay in the morning. Since our neighbors were already up and being loud, we threw on clothes, wolfed down some pastries, and headed out. It was overcast and a little windy, but still beautiful. We chilled out until close to the 12:00 debarkation time, then went back onboard. We headed up to the buffet for lunch, and absolutely nothing was ready, even though it was after noon by this point. Slowly the stations started opening, but a lot of things were missing (including forks - how can you eat without forks??). Almost all of the food was reheated leftovers from the buffet on Ocean Cay the previous day. We grabbed a bite to eat (which included a burger and some pizza), went back to our room to enjoy the sail away from Ocean Cay from our balcony, then left to explore the ship. Things were fine, but there wasn’t really much going on for what was basically a Sea Day. I spent most of it reading a book on a deck chair. That was probably the most relaxing and enjoyable part of the entire cruise. We got ready for dinner and headed down to the dining room. At our new table, a family of 6 was there ahead of us, and they had basically taken up the entire table - dad and three kids in the chairs, and mom and a teenager taking up the entire tiny settee bench that was supposed to seat four. Since the dining room food hadn’t been very good anyway, we skipped it and headed to the buffet. It was pretty much exactly the same food that had been served the past two days, and we defaulted once again to pizza and burgers. We attended the show (more of the same), then hung out on the pool deck to take in the atmosphere. We went to the pool bar for a drink, and they were OUT OF ALMOST EVERYTHING! Their shelves were literally 3/4 empty. I managed to get a rum and coke, and my husband got a beer. We enjoyed the evening atmosphere for a while longer than returned to the room. Hoping for at least a few hours of sleep before the 2:30AM wake- up call from our neighbors, I went to bed early and my husband went in search of a hot tub. Most of them were roped off for the night. He found one still open, but kids were in if, jumping and splashing and doing cannonballs in the hot tub. Not the pool, where that is totally appropriate. He got kicked several times by kids before he gave up and got out. Once again, we had our 2:30AM wake-up call. Ugh.

Day 2- Private Island - Ocean Cay We woke up and saw that we had pulled up to the private island, Ocean Cay. It was really beautiful! My husband popped up to the buffet to get us some fruit, pastries, and coffee for us to enjoy on the balcony. We started to enjoy it, then our next door neighbors came out. It seems they were traveling with the people on the other side of them, and thought yelling back and forth across the two balconies was the best form of communication. More yelling and swearing, like our 2:30am wake-up call the night before. We gave up trying to enjoy any peace, got ready for Ocean Cay, and left the ship. This was definitely the highlight of the trip! The island is very pretty and well-laid-out. It never felt crowded, and we tried a couple of different areas. We sat near the lighthouse in the morning and enjoyed a livelier atmosphere. Then we got up and had a great lunch at one of the two buffet areas. The fruit and salads were fresh and cold. The jerk chicken, ribs, and burgers were all hot and fresh. I loved to corn on the cob, and the desserts were perfect for the beach atmosphere, especially the delicious banana bread! We wandered up to a quieter area on Sunset Beach and sat for a while until it started to drizzle. We decided to go back to the ship and catch a nap, so we could go back out in the evening for the beach party and lighthouse light show. Unfortunately, the weather continued to deteriorate, and by 5:00 in the afternoon that made everyone return to the ship and closed the gangplank. The evening activities on the island were all cancelled. So, we decided to go to dinner in the dining room, then watch the 7:30 show, and end the evening at the casino. We went to dinner and sat at our assigned table. Fernando came over to take our drink orders. I requested a glass of wine on the menu that was one of the “May We Suggest…” selections. He returned shortly and informed me they were only selling that wine by the bottle (even though it was clearly available by the glass on the menu). I asked if they had any other rosé wines available by the glass, and he said only Berlinger White Zinfandel (which is NOT rosé, and IMHO almost undrinkable). My husband told me to go ahead and purchase a whole bottle of the rosé, and we could drink it on subsequent evenings with dinner, so we did. Fernando brought our wine and our bread, Tony took our orders, and we sat back to relax. Suddenly the Maître d' appeared, apologized, and said he would have to move us. We asked why, since our room keys clearly stated that we were at the correct seating time and table number. He explained that the other diners were a family of six with two small children, and they didn’t want to eat with strangers. I thought it quite odd that they were moving us - who had been there two days - rather than finding a different table for this family that just showed up halfway through dinner on the second day. We got up to move, and Tony rushed over to see what was wrong. We explained that we didn’t have a choice - the Maître d' told us we had to move. Tony went to ask him what was going on, then he and Fernando apologized and helped us move to our new table. It was also a seating for 8, and again we were the only diners there. It was in a different station, but Tony told us our new waiter was very good and we would have great service. We thanked Tony and Fernando for their wonderful service for the short time we had them and tried to find a bright spot to the change - we were now seated by a window and could look out into the ocean while we dined. The new waiter and server never introduced themselves to us, and they seemed rushed and like they couldn’t bother with us. Our appetizers were brought out - French onion soup for my husband and pear salad for me. I think the pear salad was the best thing I ate the entire week! I ordered duck, which was nice but nothing to write home about. My husband ordered ribs that were once again inedible. There were three tiny chunks, and most of it was fat. Again, he shared my entree (I don’t eat much). Sad that we couldn’t enjoy the night activities on the private island, we went to the .7:30 show (pretty similar to the previous night), then hit the casino for a few hours. We had a good time and went to bed in high spirits. Until we had a repeat of our 2:30 AM neighbors - sitting on their balconies and yelling loudly to each other for hours.

Day 1- Embarkation was pretty average. Our arrival window was 1:00-2:00. After parking the car (a frustration due to ambiguous signage, but not MSC’s fault), we arrived at the terminal around 1:10 and got in line. There were the typical lines to get through security and check in, and we were on the ship shortly after 2:00. My husband’s key card wasn’t working when we boarded the ship, so security sent us to the information desk to have a new one issued. There were several other people waiting there for the same reason. After we got a new card issued to him, we stopped at our room to drop off our carry-on luggage and check out our room, then went up to the buffet to grab a snack. Our dinner time was 5:30 and it was already after 2:30, so we just grabbed a burger and a slice of pizza to share because we wanted to be hungry for dinner. It was fine - typical buffet pizza and burger. Little did we know then, but we would end up pretty much living on pizza and burgers for the next four days because they were the most edible choices on the ship. We wandered around the ship a little bit, looking for one of the kiosks where we could connect our cabin keys to our credit cards. The only reason I even knew to do this was from reading Cruise Critic. All of the kiosks that we found were Out of Service, so we assumed maybe they weren’t turned on until after the ship was sailing, so we decided to go back to our room and rest until the muster drill. We had gotten up very early and had a long drive to get to the port, and we wanted to feel well rested for the evening. The muster drill was scheduled for 4:20. At 3:50 (about 15 or 20 minutes after we laid down), announcements about the muster drill started. They were super loud, piped directly into the staterooms, and were given in 4 languages. The entire announcement took about 2-3 minutes each time. At 3:50, we were told it would start in 30 minutes. 4:05 we got the 15 minute warning. 4:10 was the 10 minute warning, and 4:15 was the 5 minute warning. Each one of these announcements was at least 2-3 minutes long, so they were sounding off almost nonstop. Needless to say, we were unable to rest! At 4:20, we turned on the TV to the correct channel, watched the information, and called the phone extension given at the end of the video to log in that we watched the video. Thankful to be done with that, we finally laid down, only to have someone beat on our cabin door. I jumped up to answer, and it was a steward telling us to get our key cards and report to our muster station. There was nothing in the video or on the announcements that told us we would have to do this additional step! So, we threw our clothes back on, grabbed our key cards, looked at the placard on the back of our door to locate our muster station, and headed down. We got to our station, scanned our key cards, and were free to go. We decided to skip the nap at that point and try to link our credit cards again. Most of the kiosks still weren’t working, but one staff member directed us to a small one on Deck 5 that was operational, so we were able to check that off our list! It was almost time for dinner, so we went back to the room and quickly freshened up, then headed down for dinner. There were two lines at the dining room - a line for people with the 5:30 seating waiting to go in, and a line for people who were never given a dining seating. The line for people with NO dining seating was longer than the line of people waiting to get in - easily 70 or 80 people! There was a lot of grumbling from people in that line, who didn’t understand why they hadn’t been assigned a dinner seating before they got aboard and why they now had to spend an hour in a line in order to get a seating assignment. I’ve never heard of that many passengers who hadn’t been given a dining assignment - usually people only go to see the Maître d' if the wanted to change their dining time or request a certain table, not because they were never given one! We were seated at a very tiny table that was meant to seat 8 people but would probably barely seat six comfortably, but we were the only ones there. Fernando, our server, greeted us with a smile. He explained how to scan to QR code to pull up the menu, dropped off bread and water, and took our drink orders. It took a while for Tony, our head waiter, to get to us, but he was also extremely pleasant and helpful. We placed our orders, sipped our drinks, and finally began to relax. We were on vacation! Our first courses arrived - Caesar salad for my husband and tomato soup for me. The lettuce was pretty limp and unimpressive and the croutons were stale, and my soup was kind of bland. We added some salt and pepper to the soup and shared it, and didn’t worry about it because we still had the main courses and desserts on the way. I ordered the prime rib and loaded baked potato. The prime rib was large, well cooked, and had a flavorful au jus, but the potato was completely plain - no butter, sour cream, etc. There was butter on the table for the bread, so I added some of that. I’m used to waiters coming table side with horseradish and sour cream when prime rib was served, but that didn’t happen. My husband got the blackened grouper, and it looked wonderful - until he cut into it, and it was completely raw. He didn’t want to bother the waitstaff to replace it - we know the first night in the dining room can be hectic - so we decided to make the best of the situation. He shared my prime rib and enjoyed the veggies and rice on his entree, then we had dessert and left. We realized we didn’t have any sort of schedule left in our room, so we went down to the information desk and requested a Daily Planner. We were informed that our cabin steward should have left one in our cabin. Well, she hadn’t. She also never introduced herself to us or asked us how our stay was or if we needed anything during the entire cruise. I like to introduce myself at the beginning of the cruise and request that our ice bucket be filled each day, but I never had that opportunity. So,I would go up to the buffet and fill 2-3 glasses with ice, then take them down and fill the ice bucket myself. Our steward was one of the few staff members that seemed apathetic and didn’t seem to care. After receiving our daily planner, we strolled around a bit, went to the 7:30 show (it was small with no set changes and few costume changes, but it was nice), grabbed drinks up on the pool deck and chilled for a while, then decided to go to bed early and get a good night’s sleep. Unfortunately, our room was directly under the buffet, and every time people moved the chairs at the tables above us, it sounded like a bowling alley. That settled down by midnight, and we drifted off to sleep. Until our next door neighbors arrived at 2:30 AM, yelling, laughing, and swearing. We hoped they would settle down after a few minutes and go to sleep, but they went on for over an hour. Finally, we were able to fall asleep.

For background information, my husband and I are seasoned cruisers. Most of our cruises have been on Carnival - not out of brand loyalty so much, but because they have a wide range of itineraries at reasonable prices. We can usually find something inexpensive that fits the dates we have available to travel and visits some interesting ports of call. When the opportunity presents itself to try another cruise line, though, we look forward to trying something new. So, when we made a somewhat last-minute decision to take a short cruise before the busy holiday season, I was delighted to stumble across a deal on the MSC Divina that included a free balcony upgrade and $100 onboard credit. It was a short trip to their private island and Nassau, and sounded perfect for just relaxing and recharging. We didn’t have any expectations other than being able to chill out on our balcony, eat good food, and get a good night’s sleep. Unfortunately, we didn’t even get those things. First the Pros: —The ship is absolutely beautiful! Very classy and sophisticated decor, and the Swarovski crystal staircase is definitely something to see! —Ocean Cay, the private island, is one of the best private islands we’ve ever been on! It’s beautiful, well laid out, and never felt crowded. The food on the island was also surprisingly good. Unfortunately, the weather turned bad and we weren’t able to enjoy it as long as we would have liked. —The staff (with a couple of exceptions) was really friendly and hard working, and they tried very hard to make our cruise experience a great one. I told my husband, “They really want to please, they just haven’t been given the tools to do so.” —Express Debarkation at the Port of Miami was one of the easiest debarkations that we ever experienced - super quick and smooth. Not so for some of the other passengers, but I’ll get to that later. OK, now onto everything else. I’m going to break this into a few posts, so it won’t be too much information in each post.

I’ll admit, I don’t love the brand of wine available to pre-order to my room. If I buy a full bottle of nicer wine at one of the bars onboard, will I be able to take it back to my cabin to sip on while hanging out on the balcony? Every other cruise I’ve been on has allowed passengers to carry on 1-2 bottles of wine to consume in the cabin, so I’ve never run into this problem before.

This will be our first MSC cruise (though we’ve been on over a dozen cruises). I didn’t know about Status Match until after I booked the cruise and signed us up for the Voyager Club. We’re Carnival VIFP Platinum, but I’m afraid to contact customer service about Status Match in case it will change our booking price just to get us a small gift!

After almost 20 years of being loyal Carnival customers, we got a really great deal on a really great itinerary on a really great ship through RCI for this Spring Break. We thought it would be fun and interesting to try another line, and the price was really great. I have to say, we were disappointed. First, the food was really lackluster - ranging from average to downright awful - even in the MDR. The buffets were pretty bad - we avoided them whenever possible. Second, the staff was less friendly and engaging, and a couple of times we had some minor issues with service. We’re not the kind of people who expect perfection - we are pretty much happy just to be on vacation - but a couple of incidents were pretty unprofessional. Finally, we had problems with our onboard charges - at least twice, we were charged for bar drinks we never ordered and had to stand in line at Guest Services to have it fixed. And Guest Services didn’t seem very apologetic about the incorrect charges once we brought it to their attention. None of it ruined our vacation. How can you NOT love spending time on the beautiful Caribbean islands? But for our next cruise, we will definitely come back home to Carnival!