Carnival Ecstasy - Time to Sink this Ship!

By btate

• November 29, 2015

After sailing almost exclusively on Princess for the past 10 years, it may be possible that this review is biased, but I don't think so.

My wife and I are in our late 30s early 40s and are from the west coast. We booked three cruises in Florida around the last NASCAR race of the season out of Miami. We picked this cruise because one of our favorite bands, Lady Antebellum, was to play on board. This was the last cruise of the three - We did back to back cruises on the Emerald Princess before sailing on the Ecstasy, and enjoyed that so much more!

To start, embarkation was good. Port staff got us hooked up quickly. We immediately found that we were out of our league while getting on the ship. We don't smoke, so we don't stink, but so many others did stink. Now remember that we are NASCAR fans and we are pretty redneck as one might say. I don't want to put myself in some elite group here, but I am not sure who Carnival markets to?! There were people on this ship who they would not let into a NASCAR race and that is not a lie! That said, we did find several nice people who sailed with us who shared a similar negative experience as us. If you are going to sail with Carnival, I recommend that you stick with a newer ship. This ship was old, run down and the staff was very negative and angry. Very little help with even the simple things. Time to sink this ship.

Lady Antebellum was one of the most fun entertainment experiences I have had on a cruise ship. That said, it was VERY expensive to see them. We paid more to see them than the cruise cost us. As good as they were, the rest of the experience made this cruise horrible. Plumbing backed up into our shower, sewage ran over the threshold and out into the hall. We had to smell that nasty smell for the entire cruise. Food was pretty bad for the most part. there were some places we found where food was okay, but after you have such a bad taste in your mouth, nothing else seems to help. The entire ship smelled like sewage or smoke.

Bottom line is this ship belongs in the bottom of the ocean. You could not pay me to get on that ship again. I am running back to Princess from here on out. Always a nice experience there.