ABL                         Cruising-with-Carnival-Cruises         Update on 22/1/06

My wife and I have had six cruises with P&O.  We have had one with Fred Olsen.  P&O were far better, with Fred Olsen definitely taking second place..  But Carnival Cruises takes bottom place.  Some of my complaints are as a result of differences in the culture of the British and American societies.  It seems that the Yanks are much more tolerant of things that would spark a riot in Britain.

"Everything's Big in America": so says the song.  If it is not big, they give it a pretentious name to try and make out it is the biggest.  They do not drive cars: they drive automobiles.  They do not have lifts, they have elevators.  And Carnival doesn't have cabins on their boats, they call them "staterooms".  What a load of twaddle; a stateroom is a room of state.  The Queen or the President warrant rooms of that ilk.  Little me is quite satisfied with a cabin.  That is what P&O call them, and I have a high regard for that company.  They have proved themselves to me.  Carnival have also proved themselves in a way that make me declare "never again".  This comment is not only mine, but was echoed by several Americans on board.  Read on!

 Things started off badly.  I was interested in a cruise that went through the Panama Canal.  Having read David Mc Cullough's book "The Path between the Seas" on the history of the canal, I wanted to see the real thing.  Nottingham Library has a copy of the book, and I recommend it as a history book written in a very interesting way.  I started searching the web and chanced on "Cruise Control" as a travel agent who specialised in Carnival Cruises.  I'll never use them again, either.  Once they had my money they seemed to lose interest.  They didn't  answer faxes and their scam telephone number piles up the pennies while they keep you waiting.  Not quite true, I did get one telephone call from an English male who said that I would be receiving an email answering some of my queries, but no email ever arrived from Cruise Control.  I said "from an English male" as all of the other persons I spoke to otherwise were foreigners whose English accent was difficult to understand.  I should have gone to Bolsover Cruise Club, a small family firm in Barlborough near Clowne in Derbyshire (01246.819.819).  They have served me well in the past, and I was a fool not to use them for this cruise.  But perhaps they know of Carnival and avoid them.  Skills of Nottingham has asked me for comments on their future expansion plans.  I told them to avoid Carnival as they will give them a bad name.

We flew from Heathrow to Miami Business Class.  It's expensive but you do get pampered.  At Miami we had a long wait going through Immigration Control, and another delay getting our cases.  When we got to the public area of the airport,  the coach that should have taken us to the over-night stay hotel had gone without us.  I got assistance and advice from a tour rep of another company.  "You'd better get a taxi or you'll be here all night".  I took his advice and climbed into the taxi after the luggage was loaded into the boot (trunk).
"Where to?"
"The Intercontinental Hotel"
"Which one?"
"You mean there is more than one Intercontinental Hotel?
Yep, and they're are a long way apart.  What is the address?"
So we partially unloaded the boot so that I could look more closely at the papers I had..
"100 Chopin Plaza" was the address, and he drove us there.  The driver was obviously skilled at negotiating the local traffic  It was a nightmare with me expecting a noisy crunch at every moment.  But we got there without incident and were booked into a room on the seventeenth floor.  A nice room with all sorts of goodies in a display rack   How the staff knew what you had taken was beyond me, but a mini-first-aid-pack was on our bill when I checked out the next morning.  Beryl had put that item in her purse.  When we checked in, our credit card number was required.  What do you do in the USA if you don't have a credit card?  Join the drop-outs, I suppose.

Before I start to slang Carnival. I must stress that every member of crew on board I met was as helpful as it was possible to be.  It's the management that were sloppy in their procedures (or rather, the lack of them).  All our  fellow-travellers were also most courteous and helpful.  Negotiating the melee and carrying our cases would have been a nightmare without the assistance of some others in the queue.

A snack evening meal in the bar-restaurant and breakfast the following morning was all on the final bill. The checking and recording at a set-up desk was a bit confused with so many people not confined by any physical barrier.  At that check-out I complained about the coach leaving us behind at the airport.
"Put the complaint to the desk when you get on-board" I was told.  I did this later and got the twenty-five dollars fare credited from my on-board account.  It must be a regular affair.  But twenty five dollars off over five hundred dollars is not a lot.  And we kept our spending under tight control.  Half a pint of beer was over four dollars

By coach from the hotel to Fort Lauderdale and booking in at the port terminal.  They wanted to know everything about me except my inside-leg measurement.  Getting on board was no worse than with P&O or Fred Olsen.  We were directed to our cabin.  We had paid for Concierge Class which seemed to be a higher-class than the hoi polloi paid for.  A comfortable settee, a balcony, a mini-bar, and copious mirrors.  The room was temperature-controlled with a thermostat on the wall of the toilet cubicle.  Various small bottles of lotions et cetera were provided free.  But there was no facilities for making tea or coffee in the room.  You had to go up a floor and use a machine that dispensed warm coffee, not nearly hot enough for my liking.  There was fresh fruit and canapés daily, but I am not keen on smoked salmon on a square of dry bread, or a shrimp on a piece of dry bread with a skewer through it.

There was a TV in the room but it was most weird.  When you turned it on, after a moment or two you were assaulted with a deafening roar and the picture of a manakin howling out some sort of message.  The remote-control unit reacted to lowering the volume, but only very slowly.  Beryl's and my name were programmed in somehow so we could examine our on-board account on the screen.  But negotiating the strange menu options meant that, for me, it was a random trail and error exercise.  I did once find a travel programme featuring the King of Jordan showing the camera what that country could offer a tourist.  Quite a good video.

I forgot to mention that when we recovered our cases at Miami airport, the handle and wheels of the case had been torn off.  The large heavy case must have exercised the baggage-handlers beyond their patience.

One thing I didn't like on board was the notices saying "mind your step".  But in many cases the trip-kerb was obvious but the sudden slope in the carpeted floor was not..  I never fell over, but it came close on several occasions.  In the cabin, one day Beryl climbed into the toilet cubicle over the four inch up and two inch down parapet and leaned on the side wall.  But the wall didn't exist, it was the shower curtain.  I heard the thump clearly at the other end of the cabin.  Beryl bruised herself but did no other damage.  It could have broken her pelvis!

The dining room was very badly designed regarding acoustics.  We were at the low-ceiling end of a long room.  When all table were occupied the clamour was considerable.  One had to raise one's voice to converse with the next person at the table.  And to add to the din, there was a loudspeaker immediately above my head blaring our loud classical music.  It was good music if it had been in the right place.  I do know a little about acoustic engineering, and it is quite possible to dampen down the noise, but metal-panelled ceilings are certainly not the material to do this.  Whether the French builders or Carnival are to blame, I know not.  But Carnival accepted the defective dining room, so I blame them.  In quality assurance, you are not allowed to blame sub-contractors for defects in the product you offer to a customer.

For a start, the food was quite good allowing for the fact that when I ordered something, I never got what I expected.  The names and style of the grub is entirely different to what we get in Britain.  And as for a cup of tea, forget it!  No matter how many different sorts of tea-bag they offered, dipping a bag in tepid water doesn't make acceptable tea; at least, not to me.  Their coffee would have been the normal good American coffee were it also not hot.  I wondered if the litigation culture so prevalent in the USA made boiling water "too dangerous to use".  I spoke to one American woman about the "tea" and she said "I make proper tea, I use boiling water".  My quip-reply was "yes, I know there are small islands of civilisation in the USA"

Breakfast was the most different from what we expect.  Their porridge was good, except that they call it by another name.  If you ask for an egg, you always get two.  But the waiter will grill you for several minutes to explain how you want your egg cooked.  I found that "sunny-side-up and medium" provided Beryl and I with what we wanted.   A poached egg was a mystery.  How one can roll the egg into a ball and cook it is beyond my comprehension, but that is how it arrives at the table.  Quite good to eat though.

Everything you paid money for on board was either expensive or very-expensive.  You always paid by your on-board credit card that doubled as an ID.  The wine list took my attention.  A good French plonk was twelve dollars.  I took that to be a bottle, but it turned out that was the price of a single glass-full.

But the food was a bit over-exotic without meeting my expectations.  We never had mashed potato, it was always a puree.  This complaint occurs in the UK too.  A second vegetable was rare; carrots and peas were non-existent.  I used to have "Thousand Island dressing" on my salad, but one day I asked for "Three-Mile Island dressing" in error, and my neighbour quipped "you know that stuff glows in the dark".

We had a family of poltergeists above our cabin.  They would start their business in the early hours of the morning. Initially I thought that the noises came from the mini-bar fridge, but then decided that they sounds were of equipment operating behind the panels in the corridor.  I rang down to the reception desk and asked if there were any maintenance personnel available at the time of night.  The girl said that she would send up a security officer.  He arrived and I heard him in the corridor and went out and spoke to him.  He left, and soon afterwards the noises stopped.  Five minutes later the phone rang and I was informed that the noises were caused by staff cleaning in the kitchen above our cabin.  For several days the night was uninterrupted by noises-off.  Then one night a little later, the poltergeist family moved house and I heard them moving the wardrobe using a sack-trolley.  I complained again.

But those two complaints must have started something because I got several recorded messages on the phone, and written memos apologising for "the inconveniences".  The poltergeists were not fully silenced, but the noises lasted a much shorter time after that.  There is a problem with perfection.  The engine noise was totally absent on the Infinity.  Whether a gas turbine is quieter than a diesel engine, I do not know.  On the other ships the engine noise was quite noticeable and it probably drowned out other extraneous noises in the night

The lifts were excellent.  the acceleration and deceleration was superb.  The floor-levelling was excellent too.  If the Frogs put the lifts in, they were GOOD.  But whoever designed the automatic voice
"Doors opening.  Going up,  Doors closing". must have been good for blind people, but the ghastly voice made you want to scream.  It sounded like a badly spoken working class girl who was trying to make out she was posh.  The trouble with the lifts is that you had to wait for one to arrive.  But nowhere in the corridors or the foyers was there any seating.  Sometimes I used to sit on the stairs.  The same in the foyer outside the restaurant when they were late opening the door.  Standing for five minutes is more than a chore to me, it is a torture.  Two gammy feet are my punishment for my misdeeds in my earlier life.

Towards the end of the cruise, Carnival tried a scam on me.  I had paid a significant sum to avoid on-board tipping when I originally booked the cruise.  So a day before we left the boat, I got a set of envelopes addressed to various crew members, and a note saying they were for my gratuities.  I suppose some folk would be pressurised into tipping twice.  I object to tipping anyway.  The employer should pay a reasonable wage and the customer should not be expected to make up for an inadequate salary.  I know the arguments in favour of tipping, however.

Getting off the ship was the greatest trauma of all.  If it were only that, I would reject going on another Carnival cruise.  The organisation (if you can call it that) was ridiculous.  We were required to attend one lounge to go through Immigration Control.  We had been out of USA jurisdiction and re-entered it so we had the palaver of entering the United States once again.  9/11 (or to an Englishman, 11/9) has shown that the Muslim terrorists have won.  The USA has gone berserk over security.  The number of enemies it has produced are legion.  I am not an enemy of the USA because its people are more than civilised, but the USA authorities have so gone so much over-the-top that it resolves me not to go to that country again.  I'll simply converse by email.  Now that is something the USA can be proud of -- the Internet.  And, of course, the Panama Canal. That too is a monument to the engineering ability of the country that has highjacked the name of the continent to use as the name of its country.

Yes, the exit from the ship shows just how disorganised the USA can become.  "Everything's big in America"; even their chaos.  We were to be at the lounge at 7.15 a.m.  .We arrived on time to find an enormous queue on the open deck  I don't know how many people were there, but it was a lot.  We waited and waited with no seats.  I would have fallen over had I not left the queue with Beryl looking after our cases.  The Yankee passengers, again, were most helpful and eventually some movement was observed.  We moved forward as someone split the queue in two with half the people being diverted through another door.  This must have been half an hour after we joined the original queue.  It seems that the Immigration officials were late getting on board..  We crept forward a bit at a time and eventually met the other half of the queue merging with our half at to top of a stairway..  So the splitting of the queue was purely cosmetic.  We continued to creep  around a long curve corridor into an open area where there was a desk and some USA officials doing their documentation-checks.  We knew they were immigration clerks by the enormous badge that they had on their sleeve.  Even shoulder badges "are big in America"  We heard the PA-system several time trying to locate one person, with the statement that the Immigration would not release the ship until EVERYBODY had been accounted for.  If that person had fallen overboard, I suppose we would still be there.

Beryl didn't put her outer coat in the luggage as she didn't want to crease it.  But during the melee of the queuing, both the coat and a black carrying bag must have been put on the floor when we moved on.   I manage to contact the Guest Relations Office (another pretentiously-named facility) and was told that the item had not been handed in.  So we moved on to the baggage collection in a shed ashore.  There was a problem there too, in that my case was eventually found in the wrong group.  We travelled by coach to the airport, a journey of about half an hour. San Francisco had a large number of high-rise buildings of strange-but-attractive design.  I kept on thinking about the 1926 earthquake in that city  The airport is modern and looked as it it was built not more than a month ago.  After booking in with more queuing, two wheelchairs took us to the British Airways transit lounge.  Beryl wanted a port, but after I introduced her to Sweet Martini, and she may well request that in future.  Nibbles and booze were all free with excellent relaxing armchairs.  British Airways Club Class isn't cheap, but they really do spoil you.

It was similar on the aeroplane.  Free drinks with a choice of three main meals.  The steak I had was superb with a little English mustard.  When I said to the steward "You do spoil us in Business Class, what's it like in First Class?."  He waved his hands and said: "We spoil them a little bit more".  At Heathrow two wheelchairs took us through to luggage-collect where the pushers rescued our bags  from the carousel.  We walked through to meet our driver using the luggage trolley as a mobile walking frame.

Back to Nottingham and a decent cup of tea: the first in over two weeks.  Yes, we got our fix with a proper cuppa.

Next day I rang Carnival at Addlestone in Surrey and a very faint voice gave a list of menu options.  I tried the most appropriate one and it rang for several minutes without getting an answer.  I hung up and sent a fax.  That has not been answered yet.  The next day (Friday) I sent another one to a different fax number.  I am still awaiting a reply.  It looks as if Carnival use the same technique as Cruise Control.  Once they've got your money, "just ignore them".

.Just for the record, Carnival Cruises are definitely linked with Royal Caribbean Cruises, Celebrity Cruises and maybe one other whose name I cannot recall.  If anybody reading this essay is considering a cruise, take note of the above.  I very much doubt that I have been singled out for their special attention,

Codicil  Number1dated 24 May 2005
There is another gripe that I forgot about.  In this one there is not a lot a lot of difference between P&O and Carnival, except that P&O is slightly better than the American company.

When one moves around the ship, it is often difficult to find the lounge or other facility that you want.  There are quite a lot of lifts in three groups: forward, amidships and aft.  Each group of lifts are interlinked so that if you press the call button for either up or down, you are never certain which lift will arrive,  With my gammy feet it always seemed to be the farthest one from the button I pressed.  Murphy's Law, I suppose.  But that is not my complaint, I can't imagine Murphy taking much notice of someone with the name of Campbell, can you?.  No, my complaint is much more levelled against the designers of the information boards.  Every group of lifts has a notice that tells of the lounges and facilities on each floor.  But it doesn't say which side or end of the ship the lounge is on, or whether one has to walk the length of the ship when arriving at the correct floor.  And at some floor levels, it is not possible to reach the lounge you want.  You have to go up or down one level to be able to travel towards the wanted lounge and then go down or up one level.  The notices don't actually tell lies,  but not tell the whole truth either.  It's like telling a caller that Mr Smith lives at number four, without telling the caller that Mr Smith is in the Navy and only comes home once a year.

Now, with P&O you get a piece of paper that gives a total layout of all the facilities available to passengers.  This is a deck by deck plan.  And, of course includes the self-service laundries on P&O boats.  On the Infinity, the only written data on 'what lounge is where' is given on a credit-card-sized folded piece of paper that one needs a magnifying glass to read it.  And I can read the Daily Telegraph without glasses in good daylight.  On the P&O boats the only cost of doing some of your own laundry is the cost of the soap-powder, available from the shop at about the price you would pay at the corner shop.  P&O will do the laundry for you at a modest cost, as will Infinity.  Two dollars fifty for three shirts.  Quite well done if you exclude the button that failed to return with one shirt.  And, of course, it was the top neck one that is the most important one.

And finally, both P&O and Carnival seem to like to keep their passengers in the dark as to which way you have to walk to get to the bows, or the stern.  If you are by a window and the ship is moving, it is not very difficult to deduce that the sea goes towards the stern of the vessel.  When the sea was out of sight, I never remembered which way is which.  If a crew member was in sight, they invariably were able to help.  It would be so easy to post an arrow on each landing, pointing the the bow.  Everyone could remember which way the arrow pointed to "the boat goes thataway".  Even I could remember that!

PS        Since writing the above, I have been asked what the canal itself was like.  I'll try and give some idea.

I didn't see the actual entrance to the canal from the open sea as it was bucketing it down with rain.  I went up to the open deck to see us enter the waterway, but retreated into a covered area due to the rain.  As far as I could judge, the entrance was like entering into a river with a huge delta slowly getting narrower as you progressed into the canal proper.  The start of the all-day journey looked like a river with the banks being a hundred feet from the ship.  There were buoys that marked, what I presume was the dredged channel.  There were quite a lot of scooped-out lagoons in the banks.  Before the canal was excavated, the terrain was virgin rain-forest, but the modern appearance didn't look as daunting as it must have done in 1900.  There were a number of small roads on the canal banks with the occasional vehicle travelling along the road.  At one point there was a medium-sized road going off into the jungle.

We passed under a huge bridge at one point.  Not quite up the the Golden Gate, but a really superb structure.  I imagine that Panama is quite well developed in some places.  The bridge must have been used for traffic of some sort.  But it was the locks that impressed me the most.  There were three all told, and they were large chunks of steel and concrete. 

The GTS Infinity is ninety one thousand tons and is the largest vessel that can get through the canal.  Looking over the rail while the boat crept through the waterway, one could see that the hull and the concrete sides of the lock were not more than a foot or eighteen inches clearance.  One of the pilots gave a commentary on the canal while we were negotiating it.  Bur his English was so heavily accented by his Spanish native tongue that I missed a lot of what he was saying.  I kept some of the paperwork that we got prior to us going through the canal, but most of it was lost with the bag that we lost in the disembarkation melee.  I have to work from memory having read the papers in the cabin soon after we got them.

The boat travels through the canal and the locks under its own power.  Whilst in the locks a pair of "electric mules", one on each bank, pull the ship (using hawsers), away from the opposite side of the lock.  These mules are high-torque electric locos with a pair of buffers at each end.  They are purpose made for the job and cost more than a million dollars each.  The tracks that they run on have a rack and pinion drive, this is to allow them to take a great load without slipping on the rails as a normal loco would do with simple flat steel on steel wheels.  One of the locks has two parts at fifty-to-a-hundred feet difference in height.  The ramp that connects the lower and upper parts is at about forty-five degrees.  You can see why rack and pinion drive is necessary.

At one point in the travel across the isthmus the boat travels though a series of interconnected lakes.  I imagine the channel is dredged from time to time.  Marker buoys suggest that the channel needs to be clearly marked.  But even in the apparent open water of the lakes, the forward speed is extremely low.  91,000 tons takes a lot of stopping!

Latest on Wed 8 June 2005        Today I received a letter. And guess what it said:  "We are currently investigating the points you raise and we shall respond fully in due course."  They then thank me for my patience.

Latest on Fri 24 June 2005        I am still awaiting the letter promised above

Latest on Thu 30 June 2005      Received a letter from Carnival at Addlestone Surrey.  The writer wanted to know  the cost and the date I bought the dinner jacket.  He also wanted me to send the receipt for the purchase of the said dinner jacket.  It was obvious to me that he had not read my letter and were going to haggle about the second-hand value of what we had lost.  I rather expected some sort of waffle reply that usually comes from large companies when you complain  My reply letter was not very polite and I don't expect any further communication with that load of  w????????s.

So, be warned, Carnival Cruises are an outfit to be avoided.  Use P&O; they are good.  And I should know, we have had six cruises with them.

Latest on 31 August 2005    I received another letter from Carnival today.  A much more reasonable one, and they seem to have read my last one to them.  They've contacted the ship and the lost luggage office in Miami and they are unable to find the missing items.  I rather expected this.  However, a sensible letter by fax is the only reasonable thing for me to do.  They hope to see me again; but I will thank them for the letter and tell them that I am most unlikely to sail with them again.  I will refer them to this website so as to be honest and let them use my complaints as QA-feedback

Sunday 22 January 2006    I take the Sunday Telegraph, and today there is an article on page 19 of the paper of a man who disappeared on a Carnival vessel on a Mediterranean Cruise.  The story is a bit involved with a lot of innuendo and allegations of cover-up.  It seems that the couple were on their honeymoon and the man was probably murdered.  But the body has never been found, and the only evidence comes from a bloodstain on an overhang just below the cabin verandah, coupled with report from an adjoining cabin of a heavy thud on the night of the man's disappearance.  The bloodstain was rapidly removed by the crew, leading to the allegation of a cover-up.  The Turkish police at the ship's next stop made some investigations, but found nothing.

This is another reason for my not wanting to travel with Carnival again.  The ship's management may be  totally innocent of any charge, but my experiences on the Infinity don't give me a lot of faith in that company.