Carnival Cruise Lines review: Lost luggage / unsatisfactory state room

FIRST TIME CRUISERS

The first issue that we had is that Carnival lost one of our bags (we still have not gotten it back to this day). It was supposed to be a carry-on bag, therefore it didn't have a luggage tag. However when we brought our luggage to the porter to be checked in, he grabbed the bag from my husband's hand and said that it had to go with the check-in luggage, despite the fact that my husband told him that it was a carry-on bag and was not supposed to be checked in with luggage.

When our luggage was finally brought to us later that evening, my suitcase was missing and so was this carry-on bag (that had all of our toiletries in it and some OTC meds). We were finally able to find my suitcase (that was with checked-in luggage and had a luggage tag), but ONLY b/c my husband found it. When we reported it missing, we were told that we had to look for it ourselves. My husband finally found it with a bunch of other luggage in a different part of the ship. However the carry-on bag was never recovered. We reported it missing the very first day and checked with guest services every day, sometimes multiple times a day. We even reported it to the Port where it was first taken, but no one was able to locate it. Because this bag went missing, I was forced to use the soap and shampoo that was in the bathroom in our state room (which by the way left my skin and hair feeling very dry). We were given a voucher to buy soap and other toiletries on the 3rd or 4th day of the cruise, however there wasn't any kind of body wash or shampoo in any of the shops on the ship. To make matters worse, me and my 2 kids got sea sick and stayed sick the last 2 days of the cruise. We were miserable b/c the meds that we brought with us were in the bag that was lost.

The second issue that we had was our room. We paid for an Ocean View Deluxe state room as we are a family of 4 and needed the space and extra bathroom. The Air conditioning was not working from the moment we first got in our room the first day and it smelled the sewage really bad. Thankfully we brought 2 small fans and were able to get through the first night. Carnival did give us another room the next day (after standing in line for over an hour) that was all the way on the other side of the ship and on deck 8 (our original room was on deck 1) so we had to go back and forth from each room as the room they gave us was not big enough for all of us to fit comfortably. The room that they gave us was a much smaller Interior room (with no window and was very closed in). There were 2 fold out bunk-bed type beds (folded out from the wall) for my kids to sleep on, however the room was very cramped and only had 1 bathroom for all of us to share and because it did not have a window, it was very closed in and made us feel claustrophobic. My 14 year old son is also 6 ft tall and weighs 280 lbs, and we were scared the bed was going to break and fall on us (my husband and I slept on the bed directly below both of the fold out beds).

Carnival did give us an onboard credit for our inconvenience but in my opinion it was not enough to compensate us for the inconvenience. Plus we did not get to enjoy the room that I actually paid for.

This was our first cruise and we are seriously considering never cruising again.

One unhappy Camper