Never ever again!
Written: Apr 15 '08 (Updated Apr 15 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Spa services are great, but expensive.
Cons: Ship smelled like sewer, long lines for buffet everyday!
The Bottom Line: If you like to spend a lot of money on the same things you can do by your own home for much less, why not try a Carnival Cruise?
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| carey934's Full Review: Carnival Paradise |
I wanted to go on a cruise to relax and get away from work. I had never been on a cruise before and wasn't sure if I'd like it, so I didn't want to spend a lot of money.
I booked a 4-day Carnival cruise leaving out of Long Beach, CA., and going to Catalina Island the next day, then arriving in Ensenada, Mexico the next day, then a day at sea, then back to Long Beach the next morning.
The problems started at once: the terminal, where you get your tickets and board the ship, had a line we had to wait in for an hour. Once on the ship, our room was E1, located right down the hallway on the same floor as you enter the ship. Our room was at the very front of the ship with two small porthole windows.
The hallway to the cabins always smelled like a sewer - truly disgusting. Every morning, when the ship would drop its anchors, our room would rattle and shake and the noise would wake us up for 30 minutes as it felt as though we were having an earthquake.
Two of the three shows were extremely amateurish. A comedian did five tricks, 2 of which are commonly sent along in emails and very obvious. The food was the worst. I had stomach cramps and diarrhea for the first two days and when we finally got to Mexico I paid money to eat at a Mexican restaurant where the food was much better than on the ship.
The fine dining was anything but fine. The ships crew was made up of people from Egypt, Afganistan, Italy, England, Haiti, etc...etc.. and it was often quite difficult trying to communicate to them. They would often nod and smile as if they understood my request, then vanish and return with something completely unrelated to what I asked for.
The soda fountain card is a joke. There are no soda fountains anywhere on the ship and it costs $6 a day, plus tax and tip. The idea is you can drink all the soda you want, except you have to go to the bar to get a soda and all soda is in cans. The cabin we were in also had soda in cans available, but if you drank them, they would charge you $1.95 each, regardless if you had the Fountain Fun Card. Ridiculous!
The buffet ALWAYS had a line, and when I was eating alone the first time, I waited in line, got my food, found a table, walked to the bar, waited in line again, got my drink and then returned to my table to find the crew had thrown out my food and cleared off the table.
So, I'd take my drink with me in the buffet line and drink the whole thing while waiting to get food.
They constantly want to take your picture every where you go, even at dinner! Then they put all these pictures they take and expect you to pay $20 for a simple digital print with no editing at all. They want you to buy booze and cologne and perfume and jewelry all 'duty free' and still quite expensive.
The ship took 15 hours to get to Catalina Island, which is a 60 minute boat ride from the same port using the Catalina Express. The waters are too shallow around Catalina for the ship to dock, so it has to anchor out a sea and a 'tender' boat comes and picks up about 40 passengers at a time and takes you to the island. The wait to get off of the ship and onto a tender was an hour! Once on Catalina, the wait to get back on a tender to the ship was another hour!
The fine dining was a nightmare. People lined up for it 30 minutes before the doors would open. Crazy! There were two jacuzzi's, one labled for adults 18 years of age and older, yet there were always kids in it and the crew did nothing to enforce those rules.
All the people on the ship seemed to want to drink and be loud and obnoxious and all I wanted to do was relax. As we were walking back to our cabin one night, we see a plastered young girl in a wheel chair being wheeled back to her cabin, too drunk to walk and the wheel chair seat dripping wet with...something!
The internet access on the ship was .75 a minute unless you bought a minimum of 60 minutes for $30, in which case it dropped to .50 a minute and was slower than dial-up! Almost totally useless!
Once you arrive in port, they want you off the ship as soon as possible. Even the last night they did not make up our cabin as they did the previous nights. They started asking people to disembark at 6:30am!
We ended up paying $249 per person (minimum 2 person charge) for our room, plus a $40 fuel surcharge, plus tax plus an additional $10 per day, per person ($80!) for tips, then they asked us to tip our maitre'd separately because he wasn't included in the built-in tips, and every time we bought a drink at the bar, a 15% tip was added and, if we were in port at the time, we were charged tax as well. In all, $772 in on-board charges plus the $600 we paid for the cruise, plus $100 in gas to drive there and back.
It's a party ship with mostly people who live in the LA area as customers.
Not what I was looking for and I will never go on a Carnival cruise again. I was afraid of spending a lot of money for a cruise in case I didn't like it, and it turned out I didn't like the cruise because it was cheap! Next time I will spend a little more money to go on a much nicer cruise line - like Royal Caribbean or Princess.
Recommended:
No
Best Suited For: Students
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Epinions.com ID:
carey934
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Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 0 members
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