We were a family of 9 travelling for Spring Break. Two over 60, 3 mid twenties, 2 teenagers. We live in Florida so no planes, just drove to the port. Embarkation seemed fine, got to the room, things looked good, had lunch, explored. Happy at this point. Went back to the room and our luggage was there. I opened by bag and the first thing I noticed was that a lot of my clothes seemed to be in the outside zipper area. I thought maybe the lining had ripped but I soon found out that my luggage had been opened and over $300 worth of items were missing. At first we thought theft but soon realized that Carnival had gone through my bags, seemingly dumping items on the floor, and then shoving what they could back in, obviously leaving a number of things behind. We figured this out not because of my missing $40 hair conditioner, or 6 pieces of clothing but because I had ONE Nike shoe! and one bathing suit top and two tank tops with large black footprints on them!
I immediately called Guest Services and went down to the desk for a tearful 45 minutes. Their response was "we will open a case and if we find your things, we will bring them to you". Two days later I received a letter in my stateroom saying they didn't find my stuff, sorry, contact corporate when you get home. We certainly started off on a sour note.
The cruise itself was nice. The teenagers enjoyed everything on board. We really enjoyed Serenity. We cruise on Princess a lot and you have to pay to go to the Sanctuary but on Carnival this area was free. It was a nice quiet getaway from the Spring Break crowd.