Cruiser Beware: Please resd this if you are considering a Carnival Cruise, you may want to reconsider.
My girlfreind and I just returned from a 5 night Cruise on the Carnival Inspiration out of Tampa, Florida (2/27-3/4/06). We visited Grand Cayman & Cozumel, Mexico. There were many things that disappointed us in this cruise. We know many people who have cruised in the past (on a variety of different cruise lines). Everyone always raves about Food, quantity and quality.
There was definately no shortage of food, but the quality left something to be desired, hit or miss at best, more miss. The Lobster tails on the formal night were over cooked and tough, the scrambled eggs at breakfast tasted powdered, and bread on sandwiches was a lot of times dry and/or chewy. There was veal on the 3rd night that was more like shoe leather than veal. The Lido Deck Cafateria was usually our best bet for lunch or breakfast. The food was fine there if you like cafateria style eating.
For the most part the staff was great. They were friendly and available for most any request. We enjoyed meeting so many people from Europe and Eastern Europe. They were more than willing to talk about where they were from when asked. The brightest spot was our cabin steward. His name was Adolfo and he was from Hounduras. He was always available and took wonderful care of us. Too bad the Food was not as good as the Cabin Service.
One other complaint that we had was that if you were not a drinker/partier or over 65, there were not a lot of scheduled activities on the Sea Days. We are 35-45 and don't like bingo and we don't like to drink ourselves stupid. We also aren't gamblers. It left us out of most activities. It would have been nice to have more activities for our age/interest group.
Another bright spot was Rina. She was the Supper Shopper. She armed us with coupons, maps and information. Told us where to shop and how to avoid getting ripped off in port. She also told us where to get free stuff and good deals. Armed with this knowledge we felt that we made some good purchases in both ports of call.
Even though there were some good things about our vacation, the bad ones (poor food quality, lack of activities, etc) were very disappointing and we will not cruise with Carnival again. My girlfriend cruised on Royal Caribean a few years ago and felt that the food was much better and that activities were better planned. Maybe we will try them next time.
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