Any BAD experiences aboard a cruise ship?

deb1220 · August 31, 2009

We've all had great.....fabulous....fantastic....awesome experiences onboard....BUT....has anything ever happened to almost spoil your cruise experience?

The only one that sticks out in my mind is.....on our last cruise aboard the Carnival Valor, we had a cabin steward that was only trying to make his job easier. We had 3 people in our stateroom with the usual twin beds that, pushed together, became a queen-sized bed.....and we had a sofa that converted into a twin bed - for our son. When we entered the room, the sofa was a bed. We asked the steward it we could have it as a sofa by day and a bed by night....."oh no..when you have 3 people, it has to be a bed". Well, after that conversation, we would just take the sheets off the "sofa" and stack them up....for 2 days until he FINALLY got the hint and made it the way we wanted it. I know....a minor glitch. The rest of the cruise experience and the ship were fabulous!!!

cruznchris · August 31, 2009

We have had our share of good and bad some of the worst, was due to the weather, we were between 2 hurricanes on the valor. Rough seas and just a sense of unrest among the people knowing what had happend to miami as we left. when we got back into port there were boats up on the ground, houses covered with tarps just kinda sad.

I guess the worst on boat experience was with a stateroom attendant on the carribean princess. He was like the soup nazi from Seinfeld. When we arrived to our room he came to our door and knocked he walked in introduced himself and them said, " If you do not put the sign on the door to make up room I willl not make up your room. So put sign on, do you understand?" I was like aaaa I guess? Then by the second day of the cruise we were almost out of toilet paper in out stateroom, to the point we had to ask for some. I found our attenedant and asked him if we could get some toilet paper. He said not joking with confusion on his face, "I will have to see if we have any?" Me and my wife were laughing thinking wow there is gonna be about 3000 unhappy people if he cant. All the other people at our table were braging about the interesting towel animals and how they recieved one every night. The entire 7 days cruise we didnt get one single one nor did he pick up our room as others had done in the past. This was also our first balconey suite so we assumed the treatment would be considerably better. Guess not... lol. We removed our room steward tip and wrote on the comment card our level of unhappiness with our steward. I dont believe we ever heard back from them about it. Kinda tainted the whole trip for us. I know for us, if it was to happen again, we would immeditely take care of it by talking to the pursers desk. I wont let somones bad attitude ruin my vacation again.

Longboysfan · August 31, 2009

other than a table mix up with a group cruise I don't think anything has been a big problem. At least not of a crew or staff problem...

Well there was that one girl on cruise staff from Celebrity one time.

sailingrose · August 31, 2009

The overflowing toilets on the Tropicale and the Destiny as well as the non-existent kids program. Thats why we don't sail Carnival.

deb1220 · August 31, 2009

Wow Chris, it sounds like you had the same cabin steward as we did. He didn't know if they had any more TP? Unbelieveable!

KeithnRita · August 31, 2009

We went airborne from our bed on the Norwegian Sun. The seas had 18-20 foot swells that night. We also got a couple of bed bug bites. Other than that it was a great cruise!

cruisetarp · August 31, 2009

Thinking back now it's really pretty funny be we definately did not see the humor in it at the time. 1977 we hit a Noreaster coming out of NY bound for Bermuda. Boy that little ship (Cunard Princess) was rocking - waves crashing over the deck. Since Jim & our friend Nick were determined to be good sailors they dropped Alice and I off at the beauty parlor to get our hair done for formal night since the Captain had promised things would calm down by dinner time. In '77 hair styles were very long and for dressy occasions you wore it back in long curls. Here are Alica & I getting shampooed and I swear just when we both had a head full of shampoo the lights first flickered and then went off. NO WATER! After about 2 or 3 minutes they rinsed our hair with club soda (yeah - nice and sticky). They ended up putting our hair up in rollers and sent us on our way. We had to walk around the ship in curlers until the power came back on more than an hour later. Then we went back to the salon and sat under the dryers for the rest of the afternoon.

deb1220 · August 31, 2009

Funny story but, like you said, not so funny at the time :biggrin:

jobowl · August 31, 2009

On the Carnival Victory Our toilet didn't flush. It took four days to get it working. Yuk. The lights on the mirror didn't work. Just bad service in the cabin. Still had a good time.

On one of the RCCL ships can't remember which one the mattress was so bad the joke was I looked like a hot dog in a bun. Only put up with that one night got a new bed the next nite.