Mary Petty

Age: 38
Occupation: Accountant
Number of Cruises: 3
Cruise Line: Carnival
Ship: Carnival Valor
Sailing Date: March 6th, 2005
Itinerary: Western Caribbean

This was our 3rd cruise with Carnival and probably our last. Sail date March 6, 2005 Western Caribbean. With passengers’ ages varying from early 20’s to 60’s, a polite crew and perfect weather, you would have thought it would have been a great cruise. But, this cruise lacked in the entertaining department. We found ourselves bored at times. Because of 6 to 8 foot waves we couldn’t tender to Grand Cayman, which also meant the entertainment couldn’t get on board – namely Jim Brick (great comedian). Thus, we had no “Vegas” quality comedy for the remainder of the cruise. We felt that Carnival should have had a replacement brought on board once we arrived at Cozumel, but they didn’t. If you decided to stay on ship instead of taking an excursion part of your entertainment was watching a movie. Yes I like to spend a lot of money on a cruise to go and watch a movie. But sadly there was one point where that’s what we did. We did love Ed Rrocks the entertainer in the piano bar. We went to see him three nights. He was funny, interacted with the passengers, and was a great piano player. Some of the other entertainers were okay but nothing to write home about. I had to practically beg to get our invitation to the past guest party. I had to finally go to the information desk to have them print one out. The buffet this time seemed to be nearly the same every day with just minor changes. It didn’t help that on the last night of the cruise the late night buffet looked to be leftovers. The next morning my husband was very sick from something he ate off of the buffet. Disembarking - after being in business for 30 years, you would have thought the Carnival would have mastered the art of disembarking. Well the Valor hasn’t. Carnival has started self-assisted disembarking (you take your luggage off ship) to speed up disembarking. This of course would have worked if they had announced deck by deck instead of a general call. We had to walk down 5 decks because the elevators were stuck on the lower floors or completely packed due to so many people trying to get off the ship. I’m glad there wasn’t an emergency we all would have been dead. Picture hundreds of people with all of their luggage packed in the stairwells. It took 45 minutes to just get to the deck to exit the ship.