In general I would tend to give Carnival the benefit of the doubt, as it is nothing more or less than it aspires to be — a no-frills, inexpensive means of getting together with friends or family members while soaking in some sun. But this trip was just out of sync from the get go. It started with the luggage arriving nearly five hours after we boarded (we had priority boarding), and continued with the safety instructions, where the guy giving the presentation was routinely interrupted by the cruise director and the captain in a wholly uncoordinated manner (I know they’re not in the same room, but don’t they have any idea the other ones are talking?), and continued right until the end, when we rolled into port six hours late and missed our flights. The captain repeatedly mentioned that we can’t control Mother Nature (True Dat!), but with 36 hours of sea time to get back from an island just off the coast it seems like a little planning may have helped, and I think what was most irksome was the fact that they couldn’t even be bothered to keep us up to date, or to some extent manage expectations. Hence on the departure morning, after being kept awake all night by a *loud* fog horn that blasted every four or five minutes, the cruise director couldn’t even be bothered to tell us that we shouldn’t, as instructed, appear in the departure bay at 7 a.m., and that things would in fact be delayed by several hours. So we checked out of our rooms and sat in the departure area for several hours before hearing said announcement, at which point the persons waiting were pretty salty, and certainly not in a mood to be hectored by Cam the cruise director about being patient. Overall, just a real mess of an operation