Blue Odysseys

We went on a Carnival cruise in August 2009. After cruising on Royal Caribbean just 4 month prior and having a wonderful time, our expectations were high. Boy were we let down – our experience with Carnival left something to be desired. The room itself was really nice, the balcony terrific, but that’s pretty much where the positives end. We were on the ship name Carnival Legend, and how apropo because how bad this cruise sucked is already legendary to us. Let’s break each horror down one by one, shall we?

• The food. We thought people who went on cruises always talked about the food, the food, the food and how much weight they gained. We BOTH lost weight this week. Since neither of us are morning people we decided to have room service for breakfast on the first day. The only choices were cereal, a banana, milk, coffee and not much else. Big fat whoo. The next morning, we decided to go upstairs and figured breakfast food is pretty safe, right? Wrong.. The eggs and bacon were SO greasy because they didn’t put anything under them to CATCH the grease, they just left it there to sit and soak. *yum*. I had milk in a little kindergarten lunchroom container and prayed for better luck at dinner. Well my prayers fell on some pretty deaf ears because in an entire WEEK, out of all the nonsense they put out, the pasta with plain sauce was the only thing that didn’t make me nauseous. Of course they only served it ONE TIME. Yippee for me. My friend, who is braver than I, tried a variety of these culinary disasters only to have one bite and push away the plate.They had numerous desserts, and I love desserts and am not picky about them, I will eat cake made from a box mix and be happy. I tried them all and can’t say I liked (or finished) ANY OF THEM!! HOW DO YOU SCREW UP CAKE? Seriously? HOW? These people did DAY AFTER DAY. WTF? You can get pizza and cheeseburgers 24-hours a day but they even FUCKED UP PIZZA!! How gifted do you have to be to do THAT? I can make Ellios pizza from a box in the toaster oven and not like it but it was still better than that undercooked NONSENSE. It should at LEAST BE WARM. The burgers had zero taste (which may have been a blessing) and once again, cheese isn’t melted and it isn’t even WARM. WTF? We even ordered a grill cheese sandwich, again from room service and the cheese was NOT melted. How does that make it a grilled cheese sandwich? So pack a lunch folks if you plan on going anywhere with Carnival.

• The casino : 9000 machines, all of them THE SAME. All boring and OLD! Whippee again. And hey, let’s not say anything about the CHILDREN constantly running around who were brought in by their parents darting in and out of the Texas Hold “Em room or running back and forth to the Follies theatre. Thought there was a law against that but I guess not. The other folks we talked to were not having too good a time either because every single slot machine was jinxed against the player – HAH!! No wonder Carnival cruises are so cheap!!! On the last day the hideously perky cruise director said, and I quote, swear to god “Why not spend some time in the casino and try to win back some of the money you lost?!!”. Need I say more? Actually I do, but the entertainment choice for the casino is getting its own number, which brings us to number 3.

• Tony Ray. Yes, Tony Ray. While passing around a crack pipe at  annual “Carnival cruise think tank” meeting, some idiot came up with the brilliant idea that the casino needed live music. ????????? WHY would you want music to be louder than the sound of the slot machines which encourage passengers to play? Oh, that’s right, they never pay out anyway, so you might as well have music. They then decided to make a bad idea even worse and hire Tony Ray, a band of one, to deliver his “smooth sounds” that are probably the soundtrack playing in HELL. He picked all the favorites folks, and delivered them in an order that made zero sense.

  How do you go from Lionel Ritchie’s “Hello” to Ozzy Osbournes “Crazy Train” and for God’s sake WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? His vocal range is non-existent, and we want to know is if he is the cousin of someone who works for carnival cruise lines or if he made a deal with the devil. Even the devil and all his powers couldn’t get this dude a gig better than a carnival cruise ship in the casino! He had a captive audience!!!! If you wanted to gamble you had to suffer through 5 hours, 5 grueling hours, of Tony Ray. He even had a SHTICK. Think Bill Murray doing the lounge lizard singer Jerry Vale on Saturday Night Live! We would have been thankful for Bill!!!! Actual line uttered by Tony Ray : “Yes you once, twice, six times a lady”. I have WITNESSES!

• If you are not an American citizen, any my friend is not,  be prepared to be UP and OUT of your room at 6:15 AM on the last morning of your cruise to go through Immigration. They don’t tell you this until about 8pm the night before by leaving a piece of paper on your bed. If you don’t read it, you are screwed, so you better fucking read English AND it says that they will not start unloading the boat until ALL non-US citizens have done the Immigration walk. Great time for them to take a chance like that, don’t you think?

• Before you get on the ship and actually go on the cruise you get NADA, NIL, NOTHING. Nothing telling you where you have to go to get on the ship, what time you have to be there, what you can and cannot bring, tips, rules, what to expect, warnings about tony ray, NOTHING. We had to look it up online and even that was bleak because the goddamned website was problematic. They should send something to your house, in advance, like Royal Caribbean does, so you know WTF is going on!

• Free ice cream for 24 hours a day! Yay! The first problem is they are so well hidden you will need a treasure map to find them. The area is such a mess you would think 98 gremlins came and trashed the place. Every time we saw it, it looked as though the machines exploded. Three flavors were available. THREE. No sprinkles, nuts, topping, nothing. Guess buying a vat of sprinkles would have broken the bank.

• The captain needs some people skills too. He never made a single announcement that we heard, so we never heard his name or his voice. We never got a “This is your captain…” WTF? When he walked through the casino and we caught a glimpse of him he made ZERO eye contact with ANY passenger on the ship or said hello, he was too busy hanging on and kissing some lady that he was obviously involved with and the next time he was talking with another member of the crew. No gold stars for him when it comes to friendliness, but we sure heard enough, and we mean ENOUGH, of our cruise director… good thing we never saw the bitch, we would have thrown her overboard!

• Children running and screaming in the hallways – why do parents allow this??? We did not do that when we were kids, we were not allowed!

• We don’t want to buy your stinking diamonds. Even at 50% off!! Even with the additional 20% off. Yes, cruise director shoved this bullshit down our throats hourly. Why the FUCK would we go on a cruise to buy god damned diamonds???? Hell, every fucking port you stop at the god damned cruise villages, that were obviously built with the help of the cruise lines, have DIAMOND INTERNATIONAL. Why oh WHY do I want to buy diamonds in Belize, Cozumel, Honduras, Grand Cayman AND on the fucking boat. Knock if off with the fucking jewelry sales already.

• Cruise photographers… we just wanted to stab them. You can’t even get on or off the boat without some stupid fucking Kodak moment with either Mayan warriors, Mexican folk dancers, a parrot, a pirate or the stupid Carnival smoke stage super hero. WTF? ENOUGH already. I won’t buy it so leave me the fuck alone and get out of my face.

After our Carnival experience we will only be sticking with Royal Caribbean in the future for all future sailings… so if you want to avoid us, make sure you book your cruise with Carnival!

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