Carnival Cruise Lines
Reviews and Complaints

To: Carnival Cruise Paradise,

We sailed on the 6-1-07 weekend, I played bingo in the Normendy room for the grand prize to be a cruise giveaway. I won on card number 91695. The numbers would be B 2,5 I 20,23 G 50, 57 O70,62 this makes the letter X. The last number called was B2. They said they could not give the cruise to , two people so what they did was the next ball out of the machine. It was to be who would get the highest number. Well the person on stage said since the other lady got to the stage first she could have the first ball out,which is totally unfair considering the fact she was on the first floor and I was not, not to mention I am handicap. The other unfair thing is you could plainly see te ball was an ) ball ... tell me who doesn't know that , that is a high number. Needless to say she won the free cruise with O67 and I was given G47 and a bottle of Champagne. How unfair is this? I was completely outraged. It put a damper on the rest of the cruise. I was reminded how unfair it was but people on the pool deck, for they recognized me, also at the dining room or dinner. Ladies from two other tables came over to say how unfair it all was. It's hard enough to win let alone win and then lose. I have such a bad taste in my mouth due to this I am not so sure I can get past this. Everytime Carnival Cruise comes up this horrible story does to. This does not make for good advertisement for your line. I would appreciate an explanation of this behavior. Cindy MacDonald... Cindy. [protected]@yahoo.com

We went on a New Years Carnival Ecstasy cruise to celebrate a wedding anniversary. The previous Ecstasy return voyage was several hours late to port according to officials on shore prior to departure. As a result, embarkation was a nightmare, with 2 hour waits to board. Because we were the last in priority of the three cruise ships to load potable water for the trip, the port water pressure was very low by our turn. Consequently, we left over 8 hours late. We missed our first port of call (Cozumel) by 10 hours, and had only 1 or 2 hours of real daylight there, depending on how long it took you to get off the boat, so we had most of the excursions cancelled or shortened, some on the mainland dock as we lined up to leave. Because of the high number of excursion cancellations ,we waited for over an hour to attempt to find an alternative. There were also water pressure problems on the boat during the cruise, resulting in either no water (all morning) to rusty water later. We had water pressure problems for one entire morning, and rusty water for several hours afterward. Because of the dire need to make up for time, the boat was pushed to its limits, causing pitching and rocking that made us sick the entire first day. We had very limited activities on board and no compensation for the missed excursions/late port of call. The second port was also abbreviated due to "unforeseen circumstances with the port authorities waiting to approve our docking" (why do we have to wait over an hour if they know we are arriving? Whats THAT all about?). The lunch buffet was unfit to eat, consisting of vegetables (of which we would not eat, not knowing the cleaning standards of the ourdoor buffet) and some breadsticks. When we returned to the ship, and complained to request our money back, the lines were always long at the Shore Excursion booth, with ONE person attending at excursion times, and during complaints. When you finally got to the head of the line, they either sent you back to the info booth to repeat the story again, and then you were told to return at a later time, wait your turn again that you had to come back when the purser was there and available to answer your questions. We were finally told we HAD we had to complain to Miami, that they were NOT authorized to reimburse any amounts to customers. Now we are being told by Miami that if we did not correct the problems and notify the purser to remedy them immediately, once we left the ship the complaints will not be resolved. There has to be some sort of guarantee of performance these cruise lines are required to provide. If not, someone SOMEWHERE should find a way to put them out of business until they deliver what they promise. I am certain we will never receive compensation, and the promise of 10% off our next cruise is a JOKE. Thanks alot, Carnival! You ruined our anniversary, and we can't replace a milestone such as this, but do you care? No way! So just keep on booking people who are mistaken enough to think these are just one time occurrances. Also, customers are on to your ploy of having Carnival employees who respond to these complaints with rebuttals about their own "utopia experiences", hoping that people will discount the complaints. All they have to do is take a look at the wrongful death suits and the barrage of complaints about their customer service. In fact, I challenge them to find an ACTUAL CASE that was handled to the party (ies) complete satisfaction that can be verified by written/verbal confirmation. Let's see if they meet that challenge like they meet their complaints - empty handed!

We would like to file a complain about carnival cruise lines, and our travel agent bill browns plaza trave/capitol marketing [protected]) , our travel agent name is maggie haberstick, her number is [protected] and her email address is e-mail.

Our honeymoon trip, a cruise to alaska (Booking#5jx290) had to be canceled after problems at the us postal service and bureaucracy at the uscis (Former ins) prevented us from having our international travel documents in order in time for the sail date. Accordingly to carnival's policy, we will get 50% refund of our payment (50% of $2,500, about $1,250). We canceled our trip because of below reason.

One of us is at the final stages of the u. S. Green card process, and needs, like anyone else in that category, permission (~{!0~}travel document~{!1~}) from the uscis before traveling abroad. The normal processing time for travel document is 30 to 90 days.In order to be well in time, we sent out the paperwork on january 30 (Almost twice the maximum stated processing time before sailing!). However, due to unknown reasons at the us post service, it took until february 22 before it finally got delivered. When the 90 days since the initial filing passed, we started calling the uscis customer service hotline (Which is the only way we are allowed to inquiry for our case) , our inquiries were replied on june 7, at which time we were told that it may take up to an additional 60 days! Since then, we called uscis again on july 12, and this time we were told no following up inquires will be written by the customer services for any case within 6 months since the initial receipt date, for us, it is february 22, which means until august 22, any inquiry from us will not accepted by them. More than anything, this exemplifies the bureaucratic incompetence that we are up against.

We write a detailed letter to carnival to ask for a voucher towards future cruise, and hoping carnival will understand that the problems caused our cancellation are purely the fault of third parties which is totally out of our control, but all we get is a free upgrade subject to cabin availability within the same class accommodation. Compare to the 3 level free upgrade promotion program often offered by carnival. Clearly we didn't have anything back from them. Just like a lot of complains we saw online, it looks like carnival never put them into other peoples shoes.

Not only that, we canceled our trip around jun 10, up to now more than four months after our cancellation, 2 and half month after our cancellation, we still didn't have our refund back. We made many inquiries to maggie haberstick by phone and email, but never receive any reply from her.

We will really appreciate it if you could help us solve the problem or direct us to the right person who can assistant us further.

After having an amazing cruise on Royal Caribbean one year, my family (husband, 2 kids, parents & brother) decided to try out the other cruise lines out there...

like Carnival. Maybe we were spoiled on Royal Caribbean or maybe Carnival "Fun Ship" Cruises just take no pride in quality of service. Before we even got on board the Victory, we were handed a change of itinerary stating that we would not be going to Nova Scotia Canada as intended, but instead, St John's New Brunswick. Ok, no problem seeing as there was a slight tropical storm in the way and we'd never been to St John's Canada anyway.

First off, let me just say that as we boarded the ship, it just seemed so unrefined. The interior was decorated in such a tacky way, it reminded me of a gambling resort type, not so much Las Vegas, but maybe Atlantic City. Right off hand, you can smell the cigarette smoke, that eminated throughout the entire ship. It was disgusting to say the least.

That night we were looking forward to dining and having a good meal. Yet, another disappointment. The food was horrible and cold. My husband had ordered the NY strip steak with potatoes and green beans, what came on the plate was basically a rubber steak with a side of fat and grizzle. My chowder was warm at the top but ice cold towards the bottom. The chicken satay appetizer was so dry and tasteless. They tend to concentrate more on quantity rather than quality.

The next morning, we had a full day at sea, the ship was moving at such a slow pace like 15 knotts, that most of the passengers on board, including my mom got terribly seasick. Everyone rushed to the doctor on board for those drammamine pills. We didn't understand how a ship this size created so much rocking, people were swaying from side to side, it was aweful.

Not once did we feel any kind of swaying on our Royal Caribbean Cruise.

We thought that there would be at least something to do on the Victory besides drinking at the bars (there were several by the way), we tried to go play ping pong, but there was only ONE table that was placed in an enclosed area by the stairwell the size of my closet! Of course there was a line of people waiting to play so we checked that off our list. Next, we headed to the arcade or should I say "money eating machine". Almost every games we tried to play with the exception of the surfing and the car racing games were broken. It cost $1 to play each game and once you put your tokens in, they don't start up and you don't get your money back. Carnival Cruise Ship attendants don't bother to put an "out of order" sign. What to do next? We opted to work out at the gym for a while, of course, why did we even bother? Their freestyle weights were either too light like 7 lbs or too heavy like 25-30 lbs. There was nothing in between. Their running track was mediocre as well. Their pool slide was closed half of the time and when they did decide to open it, the water was icy cold. The jacuzzis would have been nice if only they enforced the "no children" rule. It was crawling with kids under 12, even at the "adults only" jacuzzis. Some kids were even eating in the jacuzzis and that was just plain nasty, but no one did anything. Even late at night, there were still kids in the jacuzzis and we had to wonder, where are their parents? Getting drunk of course! Afterall, Carnival Victory is basically a "Floating Bar" designed specifically for people who just want to drink, get drunk, leave their kids unattended to do whatever they please even if it means upsetting the other passengers, and for people who are too wasted to even know what the food should taste like. I think that's why the food is so aweful, most of the people are just too drunk to realize it tasted like crap. For instance, on our last night, we ordered pork chops and out came this pork chop with some green juice oozing and bubbling out ( I kid you not). We were appalled and afraid to eat it. The food by the 4th day was still cold and we really dreaded dinner time. We opted for pizza and burgers instead. Luckily the only thing this ship had going for them was the 24hr pizzas and the late night burgers and fries. Their 24hr soft serve ice cream was the only treat worth having, as the desserts they served during their dinners tasted like cardboard. We were really hoping the dinners and meals would be gourmet and just tantalize our taste buds, but it was far from that and it just left us with a bad taste in our mouths. It's pretty sad when pizza is the only thing worth looking forward to, and I am not a big pizza fan.

The service was also mediocre, the room attendants and waiters looked like they hated their jobs and wanted to jump ship. Our room attendant did however, do an ok job in tidying our rooms and placing extra towels etc., but he didn't go that extra mile with the towel animals every evening. He made us one freaky towel animal that didn't look like anything we've seen, more like a towel mutant which scared the kids. Maybe that was his intention, who knows. Our waiter forgot our salads one night and the asst waiter totally ignored us and forgot to serve us any bread, as he just stood there chatting away and laughing with the other waiters. Karma works in mysterious ways as that asst waiter tripped while the ship still swayed from side to side.

This was truly a disappointing cruise ship experience. We will never step foot aboard a Carnival "Fun Ship" ever again. Our travel agent was so right when she said that if you want a family friendly, adventure-type cruise choose Royal Caribbean or Norwegian, but if you want to just party and get intoxicated, choose Carnival. We should have listened, but we live and learn.