Feel free to share. I have only been on one Carnival Cruise, but it was much better than I expected from all of the reports and Carnival's general reputation. I think they are trying to change their product and go for a somewhat older audience.
I also know people who took a Carnival cruise to New England and Canada and loved it. They’re about 50.
Well, don't say you didn't ask for it. ;-)
Anyway, my mother wanted us to all go on a cruise for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. She tells us about the idea in early 1998, scheduled for June 1999. My wife is very skeptical initially. Our younger son at this time isn't quite a year old, and he's a crawler! He's also an escape artist! The idea of him at not-quite two years old and running around on board a ship where there's ocean overboard doesn't thrill her.
My mother replies, it will be so much fun! The food is so marvelous! All gourmet!! And, ALL YOU CAN EAT!! And they have movies in the rooms!! First-run movies!! It's right here in the brochure!! Sure enough, it says, “first-run movies.” And there's shows, there's gambling, there's all sorts of activities - port calls, shopping, tours!!
So, we ask, what are we going to do with the kids while we're at the shows at night, or in the casino? How will our life be any different than on dry land, in our own home? You guys (my parents, my uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins) will be off to parties and shows, etc. while we're back in our cabin changing diapers.
Oh, my mother says, there's Kamp Karnival for the little kids. I note that the literature specifically says absolutely no one in Kamp Karnival under the age of two. My younger son will be 23 months exactly the day we board.
And it will be so much fun! They have so many activities! And everything, EVERYTHING is included in the price of the ticket, except for alcoholic beverages. When you're out on the deck, you can get any water, iced tea, sodas, all for free. If you want to get a snack between meals, all for free.
I also note that the staterooms for which my mother is paying are rather cramped for two adults and two very active children. You can upgrade, she tells me (on my own dime, of course).
So, we talk to her travel agent who assures me that “absolutely no one under two” doesn't mean that 23 months isn't acceptable, and he persuades us that we'll find the suite, at an extra $4000+, very, very spacious and comfortable.
Okay - but we'll need a crib. We ain't puttin’ the little guy in a bed. He'll just get up, walk out onto the balcony, and dive into the sea. No problem, we're told, we can guarantee a crib. Remember, this is nearly EIGHTEEN MONTHS in advance.
So, we get talked into the whole thing, fork over $4000+ in addition to the $2000+ my mother forked over for the basic stateroom, and we all plan to fly to Florida to board the boat on June 7, 1999.
The hellacious night in the hotel the night before the cruise is not the fault of Carnival, but it doesn't help. The shady character providing the towncar service isn't the fault of Carnival, but that doesn't help, either.
So, we get to the dock. Hours-long wait to check in. Already feeling like a schmuck. We get to our room. This is the SUITE?? The LARGEST ONE ON THE WHOLE DAMNED BOAT?? I HAVE BIGGER WALK-IN CLOSETS AT HOME!! I'M PAYING (ALONG WITH MY MOTHER) NEARLY SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A WEEK OF THIS??? Yikes!
And then. No crib. The little vermin who is our steward or purser or something tells me, no, no crib. I tell him, we reserved a crib 18 months in advance. Sorry, no crib. We ran out. I ordered a crib. Too bad. I have to have a crib. I'm not signing for the room unless I have a crib. We'll see what we can do, but no guarantees. All right, I'm leaving, I want a full refund - $7000. Right now. You can't do that. You can't leave. You can't have a refund. Yes I can. I haven't signed yet for my room, we're still in boarding. Here's the contract [out pops the contract from my hip pocket] and here's where it says that if I leave before completing boarding, I get a whole refund...
...You'll have a crib.
...And I'll sign when I get the crib. Oh, by the way, we ordered one double bed, not two singles. Too bad, that's what you got. Okay, let's gather up the kids and the luggage, we're leaving. Mail me my refund check. Oh, and,... what's your [unpronounceable] name? I want to make sure I spell it right when I write to the president to tell him why we left and got a full refund...
...It'll be a double bed in half an hour.
Good, says I! I'll sign your papers when everything is right.
So, we move into the “suite” and lo and behold! There's a big bottle of water on ice! After four hours in line to get on board and then nearly two hours dealing with the moron steward/purser/swine, we're really thirsty! And there's even a nice card on the bottle welcoming us on board! Things are looking up!
Or not... If we open the bottle, $3 will be charged to our room. Well, we were thirsty, and it was just three bucks (although I'd never actually paid three bucks for a bottle of water before in our life).
So, we get everything squared away and go to dinner.
On the menu is filet mignon. Yes! NOW it's starting to get good! I order my filet medium rare. You can't have it medium rare. What do you mean I can't have it medium rare? It's either medium or well-done. Those are the only two ways you can order it. You're kidding me. You won't cook me a steak medium rare? You're going to cook filet mignon MEDIUM OR WELL-DONE?? What type of BARBARIANS ARE YOU PEOPLE??
Well, it turns out that the “gourmet” food is all cooked cafeteria-style. They cook the food without regard to individual order, half one way, half the other. And then they put ‘em under heat lamps. Just like a Morrison's cafeteria down south. Worst “gourmet” food I ever ate in my life. Pure crap. Not worth fifty cents a meal, no less the thousands of dollars this fiasco is costing me.
Oh, and you CAN order seconds,... but it won't come out until after your cattle call, er,... uh,... “dinner seating” is over, and the waitstaff are anxiously waiting for you to vacate for the next herd of cattle - uh,... er,... “dinner seating.”
Okay. Well. It's late. So we turn in for the night. It's sorta cool on the balcony looking at the Gulf of Mexico. But that gets old after a while, so we go back into our “suite,” and try to find a comfortable configuration for the four of us to sit in front of the TV to watch a “first-run movie.”
It's June 7, 1999. Of course, it turns out that they're only playing one “first-run movie” for the entire one-week cruise. And that “first-run movie” is... wait for it... you're gonna love it...
TITANIC!!
Yes!! We're all on our first night on this big-ass ol’ cruise ship, and the “first-run movie” that they're playing is TITANIC!! ROTFLMAO!! I'm thinking, what sort of sick bastard picked this one out???
I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!
And then... think about it. When did Titanic come out? December 1997! Here we are, 18 months later, June 1999, and they're pawning off TITANIC as a first-run movie!!
The next day, we get breakfast. The “gourmet food,” cafeteria style (Here, there's no pretending; you get in a line, go through the line, folks slap slop on your plate as you pass by them, some of them look nearly human.) sucks. But, the wife and I are gonna enjoy some alone time. We're taking our kids to KAMP KARNIVAL!!
We take them down to the Kamp, and they look on their computer screen, and snottily inform us that we “lied” when we said our little guy was two, he's only 23 months and one day (yes, the stupid little nazi young woman actually added, “and one day.”) and “two means two, not twenty-three months and one day.” But they permit us to leave the two guys with them, promising some sort of fun. We tell the guys we'll be back for lunch in a few hours.
So, my wife and I run off for a romp. First we try to sit up on the deck and sip iced teas poolside. We're not big drinkers, and besides, it's like... 9 am in the morning! But to our surprise, lots of folks are well into their third, fourth, or whatever cocktail. Anyway, we see a waiter passing by and ask for two iced teas. You need, he says, to fetch those yourselves from that line, as he points over to a line that stretches out of view. We only will bring you alcoholic beverages to your chairs, he informs us.
After waiting 45 minutes, I finally get my wife and I an iced tea each. It appears to be an 8 oz glass, and about 75% ice. I make my two oz of iced tea last a good three or four minutes. Not wishing to get back into the line from Hell, we decide to try the hot tub on the upper deck. Filled with short people (as in, under 16 years of age, as in, not supposed to be in there, as in, nobody from the cruise line really gives a damn). We wait nearby for an hour or so until they depart. We approach the hot tub. We recoil at the sight. More mildew and mold in one place than we've seen cumulatively in our entire lives. YUCK!! I'm pretty sure that last group of kids will all have VD by the morning.
So, we walk through the boat until it's time to pick up the guys at the Kamp. It's a very big boat.
We get to the Kamp to check our guys out for lunch, and find them in a corner together, crying. The younger one is inconsolable, the older one is trying to keep it together, trying to comfort the younger one.
WHAT IS GOING ON? I ask. My older son relates that a little while after we left, the younger one started getting mopey. He missed mom and dad. The “counselors” were having none of this, and put him in a corner by himself. Then, he started to wail. They ordered the older guy to go take care of the younger one, because, after all, he's not even two years old and he doesn't belong here in the first place!!
You'll need to wait for me to continue as I work to get a grip from the memory of this. I hope the two filthy verminous little whores of Satan came to an ugly death in some back alley of some verminous Mexican village at the hands of a gang of filthy, dirty, illiterate thugs.
They let my sons sit like this for the better part of three hours.
We took them and proceeded to [an atrocious] lunch. My older son begged us not to take them back to Kamp Nazi - uh,... Karnival. He really didn't need to beg. We had no intentions otherwise.
That night, after we choked down more cruise ship slop that they labeled “dinner,” while sipping iced teas that came at a severe emotional cost in the lounge, they had a bunch of the other prisoners - ..., er,... children - being held hostage - er,... uh,... being..., uh,..., ... ... “entertained” - THAT'S IT - THEY WERE “ENTERTAINING” THE LITTLE TYKES - put on a little “show” for us adults. The looks of fright and horror in the eyes of the prisoners nearly brought us to tears. My younger son cried hysterically at the sight. My older son wept silently. I assured them that we would never, ever put them back in that hellhole ever again, and this eventually comforted them.
Obviously, without the services of the Kamp Koncentration - uh - Karnival - we were unable to visit the casino or go to the shows or anything like that. So, we stayed in our suite every night of the cruise save two and read books with the guys. My father babysat one evening so we could go to a show. Yeck. Pure crap. Dancing girls who sang out off-tune and off-key. My nephew and his girlfriend sat for us when we went to the grand and glorious Midnight Buffet! What a waste of time. More glop and poop, just served in limitless quantities. And besides, who really wants to pig out at midnight?
The next day, we were hanging out on board the ship in the mid-afternoon, and we got kind munchy. After all, we could barely stomach the crap they were serving at meal times. We decided to check into the “limitless and wide array of snacks.” Which turned out to be pizza that saw its heyday sometime during the Korean War, and frozen yogurt. Vanilla or chocolate. Oh, and pudding. Or at least, that's what the sign said. I won't say what it actually looked or smelled like. No one was permitted to eat the pudding. Our “suite” was, as noted, rather tiny, and we didn't want to worsen the conditions by inducing gastrointestinal distress on the part of any of us.
We did have some nice times together as a family. We saw a show in a town on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. I bought an onyx and some other stone chess set for my older guy, there. We did the glass-bottomed boat in the waters of Grand Cayman Island. New Orleans was sort of a bust because it rained the whole time, but we were together, and on the bus, no one tried to make us eat ship food. What a relief!
However, I will note that our “all-inclusive” trip didn't cover the cost of anything at all at the ports of call. Every show or tour we saw or went on was extra. As well, the pre-negotiated “discounted” prices we paid on shore at shops (the cruise line required that we identify as Carnival cruisers) was laughed at by the locals, as we saw them sell the same stuff for half the price to folks not from Carnival. When we looked again at the brochure that Carnival gave us listing “approved” shops, we found the fine print that indicated that 1) the “pre-negotiated” “discounted” prices were not necessarily cheaper than what we could get on our own and 2) all the merchants listed paid a “nominal” promotional fee to Carnival for the privilege of being listed in the guide.
The Carnival thieves get you coming, going, going forward or backward, up or down, or inside out.
Toward the end of our trip, my wife needed to do some laundry. We'd been in Florida, and then on board the boat, for an entire week. So, in went a week's worth of laundry - shirts, undies, socks, whatever. But, out came less than a week's worth of laundry. Five of seven of my older son's underpants were missing. My wife had seen one of the staff, breaking the rules, “doing laundry” in the guests’ laundry room. She felt uncomfortable in his presence, he kept leering at her while she loaded the washing machine, taking inordinate interest in what she was putting in. As best we can tell, he was pedophile and he stole the underwear for purposes unmentionable.
On the last day, we were pressured strongly to leave “tips” for the staff. I didn't want to, and neither did my wife. Tips for this rotting garbage scow? But my relatives didn't want us all to look cheap because my wife and I wanted to leave without tipping at all. And the steward/purser/swine was rather aggressive in “explaining” why we needed to leave these “tips.” I wanted to give him a tip: find a new line of work.
But we relented and parted with several hundred dollars’ more cash on our “all-inclusive” cruise trip.
As we're debarking and getting to the limo, someone shouts out my name. I turn around. A fella with a badge. Local sheriff's deputy. Yes, can I help you, I ask. Do you know your towncar driver isn't licensed to drive commercially, he asks. No, I didn't order the driver, our travel agent did. Well, the driver comes over and silently takes the officer of the law behind the now-open trunk of the Lincoln, and it appears something is exchanged from the driver's hands to the "deputy's" hands, although we don't have a good view because most of the Lincoln is in the way.
Anyway, the "deputy" reappears and says all the paperwork is in order, and we're free to go. It takes me a little while to figure out what just happened, because I can be slow on the uptake when folks are paying other folks extortion money and all that. When I go to ask the driver about it, he tells me to shut and enjoy the ride.
When we got home, I wrote the president of Carnival. He sent us back coupons for a free trip. I burned them with great ceremony.
Never, ever again.
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