Oh my. Where to begin. Hmm. Let’s start with the boarding process.

Embarkation was so poorly planned (regardless of the ship being late). Little to no signage. Onsite staff didn’t have answers… or had conflicting ones (one said to come back; the other said to stay). We had an 11AM check-in time and were told to come back at 2PM. We came back at 1PM (to be safe) and there were no clear signs of where we should go. We had to ask other passengers (they were confused, too). There ended up being one massive line (for everyone), regardless of original check-in time. So a good chunk of those in front of us had later check-in times. We stood in the sun for about 2+ hours. When we finally got inside, the [mess] continued. They had about 5 high boy tables ready to check vaccination status. The only problem? The staff just stood there. The line didn’t move for another hour. No one walked over and told us WHY there was no movement (or why the Carnival staff was just standing around, smiling at each other). I’m sure there was a logical reason (e.g., spacing things out up ahead), but the fact that they didn’t tell us… just pissed everyone off. There was a poor lady behind us in a wheelchair who had been on 50+ Carnival cruises (she kept saying, “This isn’t right”… and, yeah, she was right). It took them forever to finally come over and allow her to skip the line. When it was time to go over our status, the guy didn’t even ask to see my BFF’s vaccination status or test results (he only checked mine), so I’m sure there were PLENTY of people onboard who weren’t asked to show proof. So much for protocol.

Ok… fast forward to my thoughts of the ship itself. Read more