Carnival Cruise Lines Carnival Carnival Cruise Lines is like spending your entire vacation at a "carnival." Not for families!!!!! Internet

We were excited to take our family on a cruise and scheduled one with Carnival Cruise lines leaving out of San Diego to Cabo about a week ago.  We were very dissappointed and should have shopped around on some other cruise lines.  Carnival Cruises are not for families with kids.  It was like a floating Spring Break party, with druken and drug intoxicated 20 somethings running up and down the aisles at all hours of the night.

Truly it was just like being at a carnival in more ways than 1.  The first night of our cruise we were awoken at 3 in the morning with kids yelling outside our door and knocking on the doors and laughing and having fun right outside our door.  We asked them to stop and they would for a little while, then just came back again.  We called security on the ship to ask them to help us (in fact their customer service desk and secrurity office was on the same floor as we were!).  It continued to happen through the night and they either didn't send anyone to check it out, or they didn't know how to tell the people to stop.  I complained the next morning as we had had a fairly sleepless night.

In fairness to the cruiseline, the next three nights were ok and we didn't hear the party happening outside of our door, but on our final night there, the same thing happened again.  I thought the cruiseline would really keep an eye on this because we were not the only room that complained.   However, three times that night we had to tell the hall partiers to shut up.  Where was the security detail?  Did they not think this would possibly happen on the final night?  And 2 of the 5 nights of our cruise, we and our children did not get a good nights sleep.  Kind of ruins your vacation to have children who are crabby because of all the noise at all hours of the night.  And I didn't mention the drunk and stoned college students our kids were able to observe during the day and night.

In addition, like a carnival, our experience was that this cruiseline just spent the whole time trying to hawk a bunch of additional products/services to us.   We felt at times like the whole thing was a set up to try and get whatever additional money they could from their "guests."  We had already paid a sizable fee to go on the cruise.  Did we need people following us around the ship snapping pictures of us that they would later try to sell us?   Even at dinner one night, we had a photographer come around shooting us while we were eating. ?!?  There were extra charges everywhere, for many of the activities on the ship, for most anything you want to drink on the ship, including soda pop.  Even a "free" healthclub seminar we went to was just an excuse to hawk a $1200 detox program to us. 

One night they sent our three kids an invitation to a fun party.  This sounded like a great activity and our kids were excited to go.  What they didn't put on the flyer they delivered to our room was that the party would cost them $25 a piece.  I have never been invited to a party where you have to pay a fee to attend.  And every time they got on the loud speakers it was constant plugs for their off shore excursions, shopping on board, bingo, etc.  We were bombarded.

They now automatically charge you a hefty amount for gratuities -- it is no longer your option to tip and your discretion as to the amount.  But in spite of this nonsense, they still left an envelope in our stateroom on the last day asking for more gratuities from us.  Amazing!  And even the boat that took us from the ship to the shore came around with a can asking for tips every time we went from the ship to Cabo.  Shouldn't this be included in the cost of the cruise and the mandatory tip pool they take from guests?  I think for our family the Tip extraction billed to our credit card was between 4 and 5 hundred dollars.

And like a carnival, we stood in multiple lines everytime we did anything.  Lines to eat, lines to get off the ship, lines to get a golf club to play minature golf, lines to get on the elevator.

So, as much fun as a carnival can be for one night, think twice before you decide to spend your valuable vacation time or money to spend multiple days (and nights) at one.  If you have a family, skip Carnival Cruise Lines.