To start off with and give a little bit of context, my family chose this cruise in particular to celebrate my grandparent's anniversary both of which are smokers and refuse to set foot in Mexico thus limiting our options. I've cruised two other times, once with NCL and another with Costa. This experience was the worst of the three and I can easily say I will never ever cruise with Carnival again.

It's pretty typical that cruises try to sell you a lot of garbage while you're stuck on the boat, but Carnival really blew the others out of the water in this endeavor. There is quite literally nothing to do on the boat other than spend money and if you happen to find the one activity that is there for the guest's enjoyment... don't worry, give it a few minutes and you'll be offered something, I promise. Carnival even goes so far as to add extra alcohol to their drinks in an effort to justify them jacking the price up to over $10 for a mojito. If you know anything about bartending, you know that you can't just change the proportions like this without the drinks tasting awful; and besides it still wasn't enough to justify the amount of the price hike.

As experienced cruisers we researched the stops fairly well before getting on board so we weren't dissatisfied with the stops, but that was mostly because we already knew there was little to do there. This is a cruise where you will need an excursion in order to enjoy the area, except for St. Maarten where you can just take the ferry over to the beach for $7 for unlimited trips the whole day. Read more