Carnival Valor cruise ship — Local services in New Orleans

Let me start by saying that the staff has nothing to do with this review because in between the cruise Director Mr Felipe(flop) or Fliper and Mr Blingo i cant decide who made the cruise bearable. Great hosts and super funny. Now let me give you the reason for the 1 star. Starting with the food, food was not only terrible every time but most the times the “elegant dinner” had the same menu as the buffet. The buffet had the same things in the main area and the middle area every time with almost no variety. Food was bland and not nice looking and it honestly reminded me of Field rations in the military. The eggs were terrible and the few times we had bacon available it was severely undercooked. The pizza was paper thin and im not exaggerating one bit. You could see through the dough and they serve you 2 slices. You would need to go through the line 5 times to even get a bit full. The tacos were bland and honestly not good at all. The burger place was the only decent food you had and after 2 days it gets old real quick. If you want any sodas you need to buy the drink package… YES BUY THE ALCOHOL PACKAGE to be able to get sodas… or deal with water and lemonade at the buffet. The ice cream is cheap and a lot of the time the machines are down. Overall the food experience is bad. Accommodations are terrible, either you get a twin mattress that feels like 1 million 300Lb people slept on it and they never replaced it, or if you want a bigger mattress to sleep with your spouse, they’ll put two of those same mattress together and thats what you get, and you will feel the space in between no matter what. The rooms look like 1950 whenever the ship was first built and the bunk beds are literally on top of you on the twin double mattress. Definitely built to fit as many people as you can in a ship. The rooms on 4 and 6 floor on the back wont be able to sleep until the night club is done because the music is so loud you can hear it the entire night. The casino is a money pit, i dont think i single person won anything while there. The arcade for the kids is expensive and the prize machines wont let you win anything. There is no internet without the internet package which is expensive as in the cruise isn’t expensive already plus all the little packages that you gutta buy separately to make your stay somewhat comfortable and enjoyable. The pools are small and always full like sardines, the basketball/volleyball court had 1 basket and 1 ball. The mini golf has not been updated in ages and there are barely any balls. The ping pong tables are in the worst part of the ship where the wind blows 50mph the entire time and you cant even play and they have beach chairs next to it which people use to take naps near the tables and you are unable to play. The slide always has a line longer than the buffet and get ready to either burn your feet to crisp or leave your shoes at the top and have to come back all the way up to grab em after which will burn your feet anyways on the way up. There is no secure location to leave anything so the second you leave anything unattended thieves will steal your stuff while you waited in line to slide once. You better carry your luggage to your room because if you checked them in and you have them bring em to you, you will be looking for your luggage all over the floor.Last but not least when you are debarking, get ready to sit like sardines again in 1 floor packed with everyone on the ship because it doesnt matter if you have express debarking and everyone has set times to debark, people will ignore all and try to debark and get upset because the lines arent moving, all while they tell you that you need to be out of your room by 8:30 because the rooms need to be cleaned because as soon as you debark the new idiots are coming in to leave on their cruise. A total disaster. With the money you are spending on the cruise you are better off going to Mexico or whatever location and spending a week there with netter accommodations and better food. My cruise was free and i will never...

Ah, Carnival Valor — the “fun ship.” And by fun, I mean the kind of fun where you’re constantly confused, frustrated, and mildly concerned for your safety. This was my first-ever cruise, and wow… what an introduction to life at sea.

Boarding was like a high-stakes game of human Tetris. Let’s pack hundreds of people onto one deck with nowhere to sit, luggage everywhere, zero clear signage, and then see what happens. Spoiler alert: chaos happens.

We were told helpful announcements would be made at 8:00 AM to direct us to our excursions. So when one finally came in at 8:15, we had a luxurious 15 minutes to guess where to go while navigating through a panicked crowd also playing the same game of “Where’s the Exit?”

The casino staff were top-tier at one thing: sending us in circles. We asked how to put cash on a gambling card. Their answer? “Not sure — try the other desk!” That desk? “Oh, go use the kiosk!” The kiosk? “Surprise! It just charged your soda tab to your gambling funds.” Eventually, guest services gave our money back, and we decided the slot machines weren’t worth a side quest from a Scooby-Doo episode.

Let’s talk security. After one excursion, they started grabbing people’s belongings — passports, phones, wallets — and chucking them onto the belt like we were in a TSA-themed escape room. Instructions? You had maybe ten feet to process them before getting barked at.

The highlight of absurdity was the stateroom attendant who tried to get into our room — not once, but multiple times — to “look for someone else’s lost luggage.” No security, no documentation, just some guy who swore he needed to dig through our personal stuff. Hard pass, my guy.

And then came the youth apocalypse. Screaming kids, teens fist-fighting, girls laying in hallways daring adults to step over them, and hormonal boys yelling at my fiancée. Security? Oh, they were probably at the buffet. We never saw them. It was like Lord of the Flies: Cruise Edition.

Our stateroom? Imagine trying to sleep inside a washing machine while someone microwaves a diaper. For $2,000, we got a vibrating, overheated room with a hallway that smelled like weed and sewage. Five-star ambiance.

Dining? We had a reservation… and still waited 40 minutes. Meanwhile, a table of nine rule-breakers who weren’t even assigned to that dining room argued their way in and were seated ahead of us. Love a good reward system for being difficult.

The guest service motto must be “not my problem.” Every issue? “Go ask someone else.” Every question? “That’s not my department.” It was like playing cruise-themed hot potato, except the potato is your frustration and no one ever catches it.

On the bright side, our photographer Ratchie was amazing. A true professional who made our engagement shoot special. Too bad the package we were told would be $200 turned out to be $2,000. Classic bait-and-switch. Nothing says romance like sticker shock!

Final Verdict? This cruise was… unforgettable, in the same way food poisoning is unforgettable. Between the disorganization, lack of accountability, chaotic energy, and wild west-style youth management system, I’m not in a rush to “cruise again soon.” Two and a half stars. One star for the open ocean, one for Ratchie, and half a star because no one actually went missing...

I am giving the review a 2 star only because the dining staff was so amazing. We had two staterooms, one for my husband and me, the other for our adult children. Next to our kids' staterooms was someone who partied all hours off the day and night listening to very vulgar music on a speaker as loud as it would go and then yelling over it with her friends on the balcony. The first night we complained, security showed up about 30 minutes later. The partiers had finally settled down by that time (about 1:30 am, after about an hour and a half of partying). The second night they started at about 2:30 in the morning after shouting down the hall then attending their balcony for another fun filled night. Security came again and this time after about 30 minutes of tapping on the loud parties door for their attention someone finally came to the door (I'm not sure how he got their attention, maybe one of the people stepped out to yell in the hallway?). He let them know Carnivals company's policy that after three noise complaints, they will be removed from the ship. The next day, the girl confronted me asking if she was too loud. I informed her that indeed she was since she had to yell over her music for people to hear each other. The third night they partied for a short time but with the music quieter so no noise complaints were made. You cannot request to be moved to a different stateroom because it will not be granted. Back to the first night, once we were awoken, my husband moved his arm from under his pillow and saw blood under it. Neither of us were bleeding. When we opened the sheets, there was another blood spot further down by where his knee would be. After about twenty minutes someone came to change our sheets. Finally by about 2:00 am we were able to lay down. They gave us chocolate covered strawberries the next day to make up for the biohazard of a room they provided us with. Our new sheets that replaced the blood stained sheets had a grease looking stain on them. That stain remained for the full five days which means that our sheets were not changed for the full duration of our cruise (it was five days). The Valor smelled and looked like it was burning oil which made using the balcony difficult. There was intermittent black smoke. It smelled like an old car that burned more oil than it did gas. But we paid for a balcony, I wanted to use it. While sitting out on the balcony there was a cockroach there enjoying the view as well. Needless to say it was not a great experience. The good things from the trip, the dining staff was amazing and the only reason why our steward received a tip at all. The man who brought shots in the dining room was probably the best person Carnival has ever had work for them, he was friendly, funny, and a really nice person. The excursion with the wibets (water jump castles), catamaran, and snorkeling was great. This is the second time we have done this excursion and both times...