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We booked a "Southern Caribbean" cruise using
a Carnival Cruise Lines travel agent. This trip was booked nine (9) months in
advance of the departure date, and among other things we reserved a 5:45
restaurant dinner seating, rather than the later 8:15 seating. This 5:45 reservation
was
necessary because of our age and health considerations, and the early seating was confirmed in
writing by Carnival. When we boarded the ship we discovered that we had
been assigned to the
8:15 dinner seating! Rather than go into more detail here, the entire
fiasco was detailed in this
letter which was sent to Carnival Feb 25, 2008.
If you've read the letter, you realize that Carnival refused to honor their commitment and we we had no choice but to eat all our meals at the buffet. This was
unfortunate because the meals in Carnival restaurants are sensational as we had discovered
during our two
previous Carnival cruises. Had we had any idea that Carnival was going to switch us
to a late dinner seating, we would have immediately cancelled the cruise! We
were in the position of being a captive audience ~ unable to do anything since
we were already on board and committed to the trip.
If you think we're over-reacting to this situation, please be reminded that we
booked this trip nearly a year in advance so that we could have the departure
date
we wanted, the stateroom we wanted, and the dinner seating we wanted.
Having all this confirmed in writing, then having any reservation withdrawn
after arrival at the ship should be illegal and Carnival should be given severe
sanctions for such "bait and switch" tactics!
It was exactly 5 weeks before I finally received a response from Carnival to our
letter. As you can see, the response was brief, basically saying that it was not convenient for them to
honor our dinner reservation. Additionally, they offered us $100 which would be given to
us after our next booking with them, but of course
they know that there will never be any such
booking. In this letter Carnival referred to our reservation for early dinner seating a
"preference" rather than a reservation, but I'm not sure this makes any
difference since it was never made clear to us that they could switch us to a
difference preference without warning.
This page was created to warn you that Carnival has little respect for their
customer's needs as evidenced by our shabby treatment. Since Carnival attached
no importance to our dinner reservations, I find myself wondering if other
commitments made by Carnival (stateroom, side trips, departure date, etc.)
can also be changed at Carnival's whim? If it is important to you that a
cruise line honor their obligations, possibly you should be looking at another
company? And if you have any friends that are thinking about cruising
with Carnival, maybe you should send them a link to this page?
If anyone has other online complaints/warnings/etc. about Carnival Cruise Lines,
please send me the link and I'll include it on this page!
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