Just off the Vista Barcelona to Athens in Family Harbor

[Mrsqster]

The good:

The ship has a great design, lots of new seating areas. Loved deck 11 for shade in the yellow chairs at sail away. Didn't think I would use the IMAX but went to Earth a beautiful planet and was very impressed by the sound as well as the film itself. The itinerary was fantastic. We visited so many places. I will admit that I was one that was worried about getting off the ship in Turkey. There was no reason to worry. We booked an excursion through Carnival and never felt uneasy about safety. It ended up being one of our favorite stops. Family Harbor was nice although we did not use the lounge much except to get drinks when coming back from a long excursion. Speaking of which....I really was worried about having only one sea day but many of our excursions that we booked privately got us back by 2 or 3 so we definitely had some ship time too. No noise from above in Family Harbor room 2447. Loved the port of call additions to the menu.

 

The bad: The American Table menu was very disappointing even my teens said that it was stuff we eat at home and not very exciting. I love to gamble a little but the casino was so poorly ventilated that I never got to play. It was bad enough to walk through that most of the time we would go up an extra flight of stairs and back down not to have to walk through it. Upon disembarkation we are told the night before that porters are on strike and it is best to carry your own luggage off. This was difficult with elevators being full or out of service. Carnival should have had luggage carts waiting at the dock to help out.

 

The ugly: The service in the your time dining room was really bad on 6 of the 10 nights. On 5 of the nights the waiters actually apologized for the service. Two different waiters said they were not in rhythm. I'm not sure if that was because it was new or because they were understaffed. One night we waited 25 minutes for water and then another 10-15 for our order to be taken. The worst was one hostess that could not find the table we were supposed to go to and left us standing there then came back and showed us to a table for 4 and we are a party of 5 and then never came back to resist us. We went bAck to the front after awhile and she argued with me and said I could have pulled up a chair.

 

 

Overall a fantastic cruise. I must also add that this is the first cruise director I would rave about but Matt was fantastic. My girls also loved circle c and Dave the director in there. Any questions just ask.

Edited June 21, 2016 by Mrsqster

[Maimim]

Thanks for your review! Can you share any photos of your cabin with us? :)

[tortgirl]

How would you describe your experience at the airport in Athens? Was security fast and efficient? How early would you recommend getting there? Were people allowed to disembark prior to 6 a.m. in order to catch early flights?

[Mrsqster]

Security and checking took less than 30 minutes for our early morning flight. Official disembarkation started at 5:30 but I'm not sure if you could get off before that.

[fuddrules]

Im quite surprised you had bad MDR service. We too did the walk around the MDR finding the table but otherwise the 5 of us ate there 9 nights and had good service 8 of them. The other night was marginal. I also think we had 9 different teams serving us so we got around.

[Max Circus]

Question on the Barcelona cruise terminal. Was there a place to purchase wine and alcohol after you get through security?

 

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

[BaseballMomof4]

Im quite surprised you had bad MDR service. We too did the walk around the MDR finding the table but otherwise the 5 of us ate there 9 nights and had good service 8 of them. The other night was marginal. I also think we had 9 different teams serving us so we got around.

 

Same here, we ate there I think 7 nights and only had 1 night that we felt the service was not up to par. We had 3 different service teams and really did not have any issues with the exception of that one night.

[solongshakespeare]

We had the same issue with service problems and a menu that was just "meh". We utilized the alternative restaurants on 7 out of the 10 and had great experiences at all of them.

[BaseballMomof4]

We had the same issue with service problems and a menu that was just "meh". We utilized the alternative restaurants on 7 out of the 10 and had great experiences at all of them.

 

Totally agree on the "meh" menu. Definitely not a fan of the American Table menu. If I want mac and cheese I can get that from Kraft, I don't have to pay thousands to cruise. Part of the overall cruise experience is the dining and I think Carnival is slipping on this one.

[trvlgirlmq]

We had great service every night in the MDR on the June 11 cruise. We did find about night 5 a team we loved and asked for them the rest of the cruise. We hate AT too. Several nights 1 or 2 of us opted for only appetizers and we skipped dessert.

[Mrsqster]

As for service we did have some nights with good service as stated before but others were just bad. Waiting so long for water is just not good service. We also had one team try to speed up and not on our recommendation or complaint and served us our appetizer and main together. Blah. As for alcohol in Barcelona yes there is a place to buy but you can buy it in any port and bring it back on no problem. They do not take it from you in any port. We bought wine in each port and had the bottle at dinner that night.