Carnival Cruise Line
Carnival Fantasy
7 Day Bahamas

Michelle Terry
Age: 37
Occupation: Director of Advertising
Number of Cruises: 1
Sailing Date: December 4th, 2005

This was a family trip for Christmas with my parents, sister, nieces and my husband.

We will NEVER cruise with Carnival again.

We thoroughly enjoyed the rooms, dinner and dining staff as well as the bar staff. That was the highlight of the cruise and the only positives I can muster up.

2 of the 3 excursions we booked got cancelled and rescheduled (we didn't find out until we got off the ship and ready to go on the excursion - our steward didn't deliver the notification until after dinner the next day - and he was NEVER available). Due to the rescheduling - we were not able to get to a beach on EITHER port of call. Carnival offered a $51.00 credit on $300 worth of excursions - which was a start, but did not make up for missed experiences on the islands.

We booked 3 rooms - 2 in January 2005 and 1 in February 2005 - Carnival did not put the rooms close or even on the same deck - even though we requested it that way. Carnival did not book us all at the same dining table, but we were able to fix this prior to setting sail fortunately. We were surprised at the casual nature of dress in the dining rooms as well - like the passengers didn't care to even look nice at dinner.

No instructions on room to room calling, room service, laundry service or any other in-cabin services were available to us. Phones did not work to call the desk most of the time and our room steward ignored any calls that we made to him to request even ice - yet we were required to tip him.

There was a Bingo fiasco that my sister was appalled by. The lady calling numbers was doing it wrong and over 25 people got Bingo - then were throwing a fit because they all wanted free cruises (security was called in at this point) - they were promised another game later in the day and 3 free cruises instead of 1 - when the rescheduled Bingo came - they were told that the cruise line would not let them give away 3 cruises.

Karaoke was a joke on board. The Karaoke guy couldn't sing a note, and his selection was worse than I have ever seen with a minimal selection. There was a group in this lounge that would take the Karaoke books to their rooms the night before and fill out their forms, stack them all up on the KJ's stand before he got there and put everyone else's on the bottom of the stack. We counted 12 singers in a row from this group one night until someone different from the group got chosen. We tried to participate every night and usually didn't get a song until after 11:30 each night (they began at 9:00 and closed at midnight). This event was open to children as well, which really was not appropriate - especially at a late hour.

Leaving the ship was a nightmare. We were told to wait in the Universe Lounge at 7:55 for instructions. By 9:00 - we were so chapped that we got in the cattle line to exit the boat - no one ever gave us instructions. Passengers were cranky, pushing and complaining. As we got to customs, there was only one man there with a cart - we had to drag all our luggage ourselves, holding up the line behind us because we were dropping our bags. I felt bad for the people behind us.

So, Carnival - thanks but no thanks. This was not a relaxing vacation - at least being with my family was fun - but we could have done that for free at home.

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