We chose this ship as it was another NYE trip. We had the most fun on one last year. This was my 5th cruise with Carnival. I will go to other ones as I love the experience. We had the best room service, steward, and dining service on this boat. Unfortunately, we had two really bad experiences with shore excursions. They were a nightmare. If it had been our first excursions, we may have opted to never go on any again. There seemed to be a lack of communication on this ship. Our excursion at the Cayman Islands left without us even though we followed the exact debaracation rules by their excursion person. They had to refund or switch half of that excursion and by the time we asked to switch there were no beach excursions left. We were told to go to Guest Services to have it refunded. That was from the lady who was taking our tickets after we missed our excursion. She had a stack from our group. We went to the Guest Services and then were told we had to go to the Excusion Desk that would be 3 hours later. The man at the Excursion Desk knew that many people missed the excusion, but continued to act as if it was our fault. He kept asking us questions such as the exact time we got off the ship and then told us it was easy to get to the beach in other ways besides using Carnival. We walked as soon as they called our excusion and did not stop. Those that were able to make it we think left before it was called. The excursion person we talked to was condescending and didn’t seem to care we missed our beach excursion. Our Cozumel excursion ended in riding a ferry in which they were blowing carbon monoxide on us as we waited to reboard the ship. People not only were throwing up but a lady passed completely out from the carbon monoxide. She was okay almost immediately after she fainted as she was out of the carbon monoxide area. She seemed to be ok, but that could have been very bad. She could have fainted on her head.

Getting off the ship was an issue as well. My roommate had a flight to catch so we asked for early departure. We have issues with carrying luggage so we have to leave them outside the night before. We understood that would stall us a little. We were given tags and told to wait in a lounge until someone came in to dismiss us. No one came in to dismiss us and we couldn’t hear the announcements being made. We were number 3. By the time we started walking to debark, they had called 1-7. We actually never heard them call 1-4. She could have missed her flight during the confusion. As soon as we started moving, Galveston was great to debark from and it was quick through all lined.

This wasn’t our first trip and we will go on others, but we are going to be more careful with the excursions we book. The cabin and dining were excellent. We had the best steward we have ever had on a ship. Overall, we had a good experience minus the two excursion issues and embarking the ship.