Carnival Cruise Line — Attraction in Doral

6/27/19-7/1/19 From Miami, Florida to Key West & Mexico (4-day cruise) Carnival Sensation. This will be a long, in depth review, as well as my first review ever because I am so dissatisfied with Carnival. I will say, I only created this Yelp account because I had such an awful experience with Carnival, so I wanted to warn others. This was our first ever family vacation, and it was 15 years in the making, so needless to say I am not happy about the outcome. This was by far, the worse vacation I've ever experienced in my life!!!! If I could give a negative star review, I would! I needed another vacation, just to recuperate from this one. Which, Thank God, we had a condo in Florida set up after this, so we did at least have some fun afterwards. However, cruising on Carnival did not help us relax at all! My husband couldn't be more accurate when he said that Carnival is a fitting name for them, because the whole time it felt like we were in a circus! First of all, the entire ship has no organization or direction for passengers. Fortunately, I have taken other cruises, and could figure things out on my own. However, this would definitely not be a good cruise for 1st time cruisers. I should have known how bad the experience was going to be by my first time ever talking to Carnival. When I had questions about the ticket contract I signed upon originally buying our tickets, I called to inquire and no one in customer service could answer my questions. So I had to guess what would be okay to bring on the ship. On top of it, when I called, I was told I would have a mini fridge in our stateroom with a King size bed. What I walked in to was a room with no fridge, and 2 twin beds pushed together. I was displeased, but whatever, I was on vacation and I could deal with that, not a huge deal. Then when we went to a Bingo show they had constant technical difficulties throughout the entire show, so we had to keep waiting for the screen to come back up. Then when we went on our excursion to Playa Del Carmen, the crew members in charge were again, extremely unorganized and rude. Everyone was supposed to get a sticker for their individual excursion, but they ran out of stickers, so when I inquired about what we should do, I was rudely told I needed to sit down and wait for instructions. To which no one ever addressed, and eventually when everyone started walking down to the bottom levels, my family and I just started to follow, worried that we would miss the boat to the mainland. Once we were at the entrance to the boat, we were rushed onto it, with no answers to my questions, but hopeful we were on the right track. Once we were on the boat to the mainland, there was no one on the boat that could speak English, so again, my questions went unanswered. Thankfully, we made it through Mexico and back on the ship, with no help from Carnival. Again, this was a Carnival excursion we paid extra for, we should have had more direction and help. Once we were back on the boat, we went to dinner and my husband found a hair in his ceasar salad, which didn't seem like a big deal to the crew. Then the next night at dinner, it was a total of 2 and a half hours just to eat (not by choice). It was 45 minutes before we received our appetizers and drinks, then another 45 minutes to get our dinner, which was all wrong and we ended up having to send it back. Meanwhile, this whole time, no one seemed to care that we were dissatisfied with our experience. There were also multiple times where me or my husband would have to track down the bartender for our drinks because we were waiting 25 plus minutes for them. Which we never understood, because the bar was directly below where we were sitting. If it was just what I mentioned prior, I would not be writing this review. However, there was one thing that sent me over the edge. I tried to set up an additional credit card to our account, and it didn't work. I will say, this was our fault because we didn't inform the card company we would be out of state. However, when I was standing in an incredibly long...

Worst experience IV had I got a 7 day to keywest/Freeport/Nassau. Freeport was cancelled a week before departure

The "restaurants" were all just inconveniently arranged buffets with Luke warm food. The main dining was nice as far as sitting (I did anytime dining so I got whatever seats available between 6-9) but the food was ALWAYS luke warm. the coffee in the buffet is free if you get the same coffee in the main dining with dessert it's 4.00$. Norwegian had little free restraints that were 24/7 with like 13 table per restraint and stuff was made to order Carnival has Luke warm buffet lines for like 3 hours at a time and the only 24 hour I got close to finding was a cold deli window at 10pm

The smoking decks are deck 3 (outside the main lobby) deck 10 and in the casino's on floor 5 WITH NO DOORS so the whole ship smells like cigarettes. my room was above the casino it smelled heavily of cigarettes and vanilla. the cleaning guy said the vanilla was a air freshener in the ceiling to hide the cigarette smell creeping in from the below floor. customer service moved us to another room that didn't smell like vanilla but the first room had a good quality bed the new room has what I imagine a prison matress to be like. the entertainment on the boat is almost all raffles (times share esk scams)movie projected above the pool at 5&8 without subtitles and terrible audio so all the kids screening in the pool make it impossible to watch.

live entertainment was a comedian at 7,8,10,11 i never laughed once he basically did card tricks and mocked woman in the audience.

live shows from "playlist productions" did like 6 lines of all the famous songs of a genre with dancing it was the best part of the cruise even tho that's not my thing

A show they did Jimmy buffet/beach boys mash up show where they pumped different smells into the auditorium the "bacon" smell was unbearably gross. it turns out that they did another Jimmy buffet show really late at night and my new room is above the auditorium the smell seeped into the new room in the middle of the night The only actual entertainment starts after 7 they just want you to day drink until then shore days Keywest was amazing (butterfly conservatory) Nassau for "2days" arriving at 12:15 (they were late 12:45 which is "boat time" so 1:45 you know the REAL time) so actually a 1.25-1.5 days in Nassau. When we realized that its arrival at 1:15(1:45)we asked to move our excursion to Atlantis(two days before the excursion) because the water park day pass is 9am-7:pm and their aquarium is open until 11pm and we want to get the same amount of adventure even though it's only a few hours of daylight (cuz all the other sites close at 4 ACTUAL time) the afternoon through the night being our "shore time" WAS A COMPLETELY WAST OF TIME DUE TO ATTRACTIONS BEING CLOSED AFTER LIKE 3 EVEN HARD ROCK CAFE AT 5 ACTUAL TIME we tried to explain to guest services that the national parks and historical places all close at 3:30-4:30 ACTUAL TIME which is 2:30-3:30 "boat time" and we get there 2.5 hours before everything closes they acted like they didn't know that the island was a different time zone than "boat time". shore excursions customer service just said "it's not our problem we're going to be in Nassau the day you bought the excursion for (6months ago) regardless of the schedule change "non refundable" is printed on the ticket so you can go to Atlantis the half day if you want to pay 150$ per person at the gate but we don't help because we're going to be there the day you got the excursion for" the half day we got accosted by locals while trying to go to different places and the national parks/ historical places ended up closing at 2:30-3:30 actual time (which is 1.5 hour before their posted times) so we got a taxi across the island for nothing then had to take another taxi back just for all the restraints to be closed early Went to Atlantis with the excursion and it said 7:30 bus ship time be 15 minutes early. got there at 7:10 and ended up being passed over for the bus in favor of people...

Just returned from a 5 day carnival cruise on the Valor. Well there is nothing special to say about the ship seems all of the old ships look and have the same things in board. It was about 16 in our group. We really enjoyed ourselves. As always we took advantage of the comedy shows and karaoke. The two comedians were really good Melvin and TJ. The last night of the comedy show the comedians really showed up and showed off. I now referred to my popeyes chicken as "Barry white" chicken, you have to be there to get that joke. The cruise director jasper wade was ok if I had to rate him, I would give him an 8. Only because he was not as personable and entertaining as the one I had in April. UNCLE JOHNNY. Now that is a cruise director. He was the best. The food of course goes without saying NOT THE BEST. Carnival really needs to do something about the food on their ships. I like going to the buffets but it is not always appetizing. I definitely go to dinner every night, what is a vacation without someone else serving you, and washing the dishes, right. I like the experience of sitting back and ordering as much food as I want and someone else having to go back and forth to get it. But the food in the dinning room really really really needs improving. The meat no matter which kind, piece, or cooking method is always over cooked. One dish that really got me was the pepper steak, which was nothing more than that boiled steak with gravy then they had the nerve to top it with French fries. French fries who does that. Mash potatoes, baked potatoe, potato wedges but not fries. I could not believe the attitude of one of the guess when entering the dinning room one night. This man was so rude he yelled at us to hurry through the door, now mind you there were a lot of people in front of us and to keep from stepping on these people we had to walk at the same pace as them. But this ignorant fool was so hungry he became an animal. I wish I would have gotten his name. Anyway, I would like to try the carnival mardi Gras cruise but I am afraid the food will be the same. Paying all that money just to get subpar food. Even though the entertainment, relaxation, and excursions were fun the food is still a big disappointment. Please Carnival do something to improve the cooking. I have a suggestion try to make some of your meals meet that of the city the ship leaves from. So for those cruises leaving from New Orleans have a new orleans cuisine. The ribs where tough, the chicken parmesan had so much cheese i could make a grilled cheese. Now for the steak house on board. Sorry to say but that was the worst food. The steaks are not grade A but select. I had a cowboy steak supposed to be medium well. It was cooked so uneven. One side was rare, middle was well well done and the other side med well. It was dry. The below picture is the steak even though it looks appetizing it doesn't taste that way. Then a few of us had the filet mignon that is supposed to be the most moist and juiciest part. All of those were cook well well done, so tough you needed to drown it with steak sauce just to chew it. A good steak doesn't require steak sauce. Another got the ribeye. Same situation unevenly cooked. Then for dessert I got what I thought was a cheese cake, at least that is what the description said but it was nothing more than a cake with some strange taste. Needless to say no one at the table was happy with it. About 3 or 4 of us had that. Then a few of us got onion rings. Those were not fresh cut onions but frozen pre-made rings like you get at burger King. Needless to say this was the worst steakhouse experience I have ever had. The cooks have to learn to cook a steak right. I could have gone to the dinning room and saved my money. The concentration here was more on setting the table to meet s certain standard. Positioning the dishes to fit that of an upscale restaurant but lacking the attention of cooking the food to perfection. I would have rather had a plastic folk and plate but a good tasting and perfectly cooked steak. And a real...