Have you ever taken a cruise? My wife and I have been on many and all have been very enjoyable, except for the last one.
We booked a 6 day cruise that left Long Beach and traveled to Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. A couple of days before our scheduled departure we received an email from Carnival notifying us that the ship "Splendor" would be a day late in arriving in Long Beach.
The problem was that it got stuck in fishing nets at their last port. We were told, because of that, our trip would be cut to 5 days and only visit Cabo San Lucas.
After spending two nights in a California hotel instead of one, we arrived for early boarding on the newly scheduled departure date, only to stand in line for over 4 hours!
Questioning a Carnival staff member as to the situation we were told that all the people that check in passengers were part time and had other jobs during the week. Since this was Monday there were only a hand full of people to process over 3,000 passengers. It was a total fiasco to say the least! There were no apologies and not even an offer for a bottle of water while standing in a two city block long line.
Arriving back home I wrote an email to the President of Carnival and expressed our dismay but to this day have not heard a word.
The fact that this ship, a couple of years ago, had a fire in the engine compartment, coupled with our recent experience, and the fact that the Carnival ship "Triumph" recently experienced a fire and spent days stranded in the Gulf of Mexico, we no longer wish to use this company for any kind of a "Cruise Vacation!"